Hi everyone! In the previous episode of Developer Diaries
we told you about a new battle type—Team Battles.
Today we present you with the Soviet cruiser
branch that is coming to World of Warships.
Full ahead!
The development of the Soviet cruiser branch began about two years ago.
The work on any branch in World of Warships
can be divided into three main stages:
searching for references, designing the game model, and producing it.
The main objective is to recreate ships
with special attention to their authenticity, details, and historical accuracy...
We must study the entire history of a ship...
Who worked on it, who designed and developed it.
We also need its operational record.
Before going material hunting, you need to carry out a great deal
of preparatory work and amass specific literature,
study it, and understand what and where you should search.
The creation of the Soviet cruiser branch
is no different from any other branch in World of Warships.
Only two peculiarities should be taken into account:
firstly, the classification of Soviet ships differs from the Western one.
All the ships from the branch are light cruisers
according to the Soviet classification.
Only cruiser Moskva is medium.
We didn't have any heavy cruisers as Europeans understand it.
We recreate a historical ship,
for example, Chapaev or Mikhail Kutuzov,
it's a light cruiser, but according to international standards,
it's huge, it's almost as big as a battleship.
Secondly, shipbuilders in the USSR often had to look for inspiration in the fleets
of major naval powers, who were also their possible adversaries on the battlefield.
Without any doubt they have a larger fleet of real ships.
They are naval powers that built warships for a long time and in large quantity.
In this respect, the Soviet Union had to play catch up.
That's why we'll have more ships that didn't
leave the design phase one way or another.
The Soviet cruisers branch will be crowned by Project 66 Moskva...
The ship wasn't laid down, but it was designed with enough details.
Blueprints exist showing her armor layout and describing her inner construction.
In our game this ship will oppose USS Des Moines, as it could have done in real life.
World of Warships will have four Soviet cruisers
that, in reality, never left the drawing board.
Three of them had graphic data available,
regardless of the fact that many monographs stated that there were no blueprints.
However, that wasn't true; we managed to find some archive drawings on Project 94.
If a ship was only planned, even the people who research
the history of shipbuilding might not know about it.
The Project 94 cruiser isn't mentioned in professional literature
(in the game she will be called Budiony).
Then you come to an archive and find it!
Excellent! And it fits perfectly into this branch and this tier.
But they weren't even going to build it.
Fifteen blueprints are all you’ve got.
And you need to select just one variant out of all that were designed on paper.
A ship doesn't appear out of the blue, it's the result of thorough engineering.
Of course, we base our work on tactical and technical
requirements that the military had given to engineers.
As a result of this hard work, we get a basic design
which considers every detail in the construction of the ship.
Then, thoroughly elaborated drawings of the Soviet cruisers
are submitted to the 3D Art team…
We started modeling the Soviet branch last year in August.
We got drawings of cruiser Kirov, properly arranged them,
designed the hull of the ship, and got on with the
most difficult part—allocating misс objects, i.e.,
objects that could be used from other ships...
Then we proceeded with the main superstructures, such as bridges
and gun positions...
After that we did the texture modeling.
When working on the Soviet cruiser branch, it was decided
to try a new approach to ship production:
two modelers, called strike team,
were assigned for each ship.
This allowed the developer team to speed up the process of designing texture models,
details, ship break effects, and artistic elements,
such as rust, stains, or drips that make a ship look realistic and inhabitable…
We had to draw dirt, rust, stains, or drips precisely in those areas
where they had been on the real ship.
We had problems with drawing rust, because its
color ran together with the color of decks
on Soviet ships, which had been red.
Almost every ship has its own peculiar feature.
And we’d like to make these features visible to players with the help of Easter eggs.
But we don’t want them to be apparent for everybody.
We want those players who are fond of warships to
examine our ships more thoroughly in the port.
Usually, we place Easter eggs in such a way that it takes some time to find them.
And Kirov does have such an Easter egg.
All ten ships for the new branch were designed by a team of 30 specialists.
It took about half a year to design each cruiser...
We design ships in the same way that Soviet designers did,
in compliance with military requirements.
Our task is to design ships that would look like real ships
and meet the requirements that were specified for warships of the last century.
If you are really interested in naval history,
then every aspect is interesting to you.
I mean you don’t focus on individual things.
You just enjoy them all.
You get your kicks from working with real drawings
that were drawn by a genius ship constructor.
And when you do this every day, it’s a real pleasure.
After all the love and effort put into their creation,
Soviet Cruisers are ready for battle.
Take the helm and prove your worth!