In just a few days…
Nothing old will be left in the game.
We will be introducing 12 maps with improved quality.
They look just like real life!
So, today we’ll talk about the Sandbox.
SANDBOX NEW GRAPHICS
Back in 2008, we purchased a license for the BigWorld engine.
At the very beginning, the engine proved to be a good one;
its server part was the best at that time.
It allowed for full implementation of the game logic on the server,
minimizing the number of cheats.
Over time, the architecture of the client component
of the BigWorld engine gradually became outdated.
In 2014, we started converting the vehicles into HD quality.
Many players were asking when we would do HD maps.
We updated the graphics as we could, but we realized after a while
that we couldn’t support the graphics at the required level
by using old technologies and just renewing the content.
So it was decided to put together a team of graphics engineers
in the Minsk development studio and start remaking the engine.
When developing new graphics improvements,
we decided to switch to our own client engine called Core.
It will support the same hardware the BigWorld engine did,
but at the same time it will allow us to improve the picture
for the high-performance hardware that is already on the market.
Since 2014, every little detail of the game engine was reworked.
We revamped the terrain, we remade the water,
and we reworked the trees, grass, and bushes.
We fully reworked the lighting, and also improved post-effects.
In just a few days,
our players will be able to play the maps on the Sandbox server.
We will be introducing 12 maps with improved quality.
Each map has a different setting. Each map has its own atmosphere and mood.
There are spring, winter, and autumn maps.
Also, we tried to bring more regional-specific features to the maps.
Himmelsdorf became more German, Redshire became more British,
and El Halluf now has more vivid oriental colors
and oriental flavor in general.
The work on the maps is still underway at the moment,
but we really want our players to already have the chance
to play these maps and see what we managed to do.
We’ve been making new maps for about a year.
And all the content in the game will be new. We’ve been reworking
all the content from scratch. Nothing old will be left in the game.
It takes 2-3 months to produce a map. This is the time
from prototyping the map to when the beautiful picture is ready.
Then the map goes through the optimization, stabilization,
and internal testing stages. And only after that, it can be tested
by the players on external testing, like the current Sandbox.
For us, the Sandbox server, first of all,
is a tool to gather your feedback about the new maps,
gameplay on them, and of course performance.
Our main goal is to improve the graphics without changing the gameplay.
Globally, nothing changed on the maps. The same old landmarks remained.
But we couldn’t leave everything untouched,
because we’ve developed more details and improved flora.
All this affects the gameplay, and there will be no high-quality balance
between the beautiful picture and gameplay
without level-design corrections, namely hills, gorges, mountains, and so on.
There are unique objects on each map.
Some of them were put there just to improve the picture and atmosphere.
For example, a ship on the Himmelsdorf map.
This is not just a ship, it’s Bismarck!
Now it’s a feature, a landmark of the map.
It’s located beyond the map border, but it improves the general picture nicely
and doesn’t affect the gameplay in any way.
There are also objects that were put on the map to vary the gameplay.
For example, there are destroyed Mark I tanks on the Fisherman’s Bay map.
They are located in the playing area.
They are objects you can hide behind, so they affect the real gameplay this way.
When introducing changes like this,
we work very closely with our level designers and game balance department.
We suggest things, and if they don’t interfere
with the gameplay, but improve it, we implement them.
One of our main tasks when reworking the maps to HD quality
was not to harm the gameplay.
And not only avoid harming it, but also improve it if possible.
Orienting on the maps is one of these tasks.
We tried to make it as simple as possible.
Map zoning is another matter.
We tried to make the main routes on the maps unique.
They are unique due to specific objects we’ve put there
or specific events that are happening or have happened there.
So there are places on the map that the players
can recognize and name without any problem.
The Steppes map can be an example of such work.
There's a central field and two flank routes, which are the most played.
The old map had its differences, but they weren’t clearly noticeable.
On the new map, we’ve put a small sand pit filled with water
on the left side of the map.
So this place immediately received an obvious name.
On the right side, we have a small running river.
So, you can divide the map into three directions right away:
fields at the center, sand pit on the left side, and river on the right side.
Quite simple.
Terrain is the base of the map.
Before now, we had a map size of approximately 1.4 by 1.4 km.
But technology moves forward, so we realized that we needed
to enlarge that area. And it should have been enlarged significantly
to convey the scale of the tank battles.
Before, the maps ended near the red line, and there was fog beyond it.
But now the area beyond the map border
is a vast space with its own objects, flora, and so on.
This enlarges the map visually, giving players a perspective about the area,
and it looks like there’s more room on the map.
To do so, we had to rework a lot of content. We used special drones
that captured the required terrain areas using photogrammetry.
After that, we created a unique landscape behind the border line
for each map using the data we gathered.
And the map seems endless thanks to this.
Another important task that we had
was to improve the terrain detail at close range.
We needed to render not only grass, stone, and asphalt,
but also other types of surfaces such as mud, wet grass, sand, and so on.
Previously, we used only four textures.
Even three, in fact, because one of the textures is just global tinting.
So, there were three textures, roughly speaking, 100 by 100 meters.
This wasn’t enough. Now we can use 8 textures plus global tinting.
Also, these textures have capabilities that we haven’t had before.
Due to the new technology of texture blending, we created a very nice effect
when several objects located on the ground
are rendered correctly at the right height level.
This effect allowed us to detail our terrain, make it diverse,
and create our own atmosphere for each map.
Thanks to the unification of lighting,
introduction of the physically correct lighting system,
we can render a lot of different materials
such as fabric, metal, plastic, paint, glass, and so on.
Simply put, the physically correct lighting or rendering means
unifying different materials. All surfaces behave the same way due to this.
This means that we can apply modifiers such as soaking to the surfaces,
and it will work consistently for all surfaces we have in the game.
The new lighting system allowed us to add such interesting effects
like dynamic vehicle soaking and dirtying.
Now when the vehicle goes into the water, it will get wet.
When it leaves the water, it will become dry after a while.
The same effect will apply to the tank if it rolls through the desert:
it will gradually get covered with dust.
And when a dirty, dusty tank rolls into the water, it will become clean again.
We couldn’t forget about such an important detail as water.
We don’t have a lot of water on our maps, but it’s there,
vehicles interact with it, and you can even drown on some maps.
To make the water more realistic, we fully reworked all water textures.
We created a unified system that allows for rendering
all types of water surfaces.
Water course is rendered for rivers, and you will be able to notice
waves on the ocean surfaces, big waves the size of a tank.
An essential condition for water surfaces was their interaction with the vehicle.
What happens when a tank submerges into water?
Foam and waves appear around it. Also, there’s a special
underwater effect that makes the whole picture more volumetric.
Waves will also appear when a tank
fires a shot standing in the water or shoots at the water itself.
To fill our terrain with life, we had to rework flora completely.
We created more than 100 different types of trees from scratch.
Now the trees are rendered correctly in the spring, fall, or winter settings.
The flora system is, perhaps, one of the most complex.
We paid special attention to it, but we also remembered about
such fundamental things as interaction with the flora system.
Now when a vehicle rolls over grass or shoots, it interacts with the grass.
Shock waves will affect the flora behavior;
the grass will bend because of the shots.
All these effects won’t affect the gameplay in any way and won’t be
rendered for other players if your tank is not spotted at the moment.
The flora system also interacts with the lighting more correctly now.
It permits light through itself, through thin surfaces like leaves.
This allows for rendering the highlighting effect when we watch against the sun.
The game will also have a new sky. What is it?
It’s a “true” HDR created from a photograph of a real sky.
The picture becomes very realistic thanks to it.
Before the improved graphics, we had already implemented
the SkyBox technology. It’s a dome over the map that simulates the sky.
Now we have improved the perception of this element by adding cloud movement.
The clouds started moving!
Among the most important changes are the improved lighting
and introduction of global illumination.
Global illumination allows us to shade the parts of the map without sunlight
even more, and also add the so called
light re-reflection effect from bright walls, and so on.
When a tank is between two walls and the sun shines on one of them,
the light will re-reflect from this wall to the tank.
We also have the material shadows technology.
These are shadows that are calculated right in the material;
this allows for rendering shadows from small objects, like bricks.
For example, there’s a flat building wall,
but the brickwork will be correctly rendered with shading.
Many players know the technology called Havok Destruction
that is responsible for the realistic destruction of objects.
Currently, this technology is being actively refined at the moment.
Players may see some funny things on the Sandbox.
For example, logs stuck in the vehicle or incorrect behavior of stones.
We will certainly improve this behavior in the future.
We use Havok Destruction only to render destruction.
The entire graphics component is fully implemented
on our proprietary Core engine.
Our goal was to keep the performance in the game as it is.
And we managed to do so!
We are very passionate about what we’ve done, and we sincerely hope
that players will like both the improved graphics and improved gameplay.
Players will be able to see all this in just a few days on our Sandbox server.
Submit you applications, leave your comments on the forum!
See you in the Sandbox!
A-a-and… And that’s it!