Greetings, Commanders!
The new Update is coming and so is the brand-new event—“Rogue Wave”—
bringing us into a post-apocalyptic future.
Our goal is to bring new gameplay to our players.
Let’s ask Danila Lychkin about the event’s mechanics.
Any ship starts with a keel, and a game—with a game designer.
Yep, that's me!
That's why you're going to tell me about the things to come.
The main event of Update 0.8.5 is set in a post-apocalyptic world.
Tell me how did this event start—with what idea?
It all started with the idea
of introducing more than two teams into a battle.
Ok. And how did you approach it?
We approached it in an unconventional way,
and decided to forgo the two usual teams
in favor of four small teams of three players each.
Why so small?
First of all, we wanted to make the team size equal to the Division size.
Secondly, there are some technical limitations.
The more teams we have,
the higher the load on the visibility system, for example.
Let's dig deeper. Why do players need more teams?
When we introduce multiple teams, players' objectives shift a little.
Here's a simple example: figuratively speaking,
in a typical battle, you would happily sacrifice your ship for two enemy ships.
Now, imagine that you… you have four teams,
and you do that and sacrifice your ship for two ships from another team.
Suddenly, there is much more fear for your own life,
there's an understanding that the most important thing is to preserve your ship.
That's a fundamentally new feeling
in comparison to playing with only two teams.
Wouldn't it lead to everyone to just staying still
and waiting for other players to fight and destroy one another?
Partially, yes. But we have two mechanics
that contribute to encouraging more active gameplay.
The first is the power-ups that might be familiar from the Arms Race.
Accordingly, the more power-up charges you collect,
the more effective you'll be in the final stage of a battle.
The second mechanic will be familiar to players from Twilight Battles—
a shrinking game zone.
So, at the beginning of a battle you can play on almost the entire map.
You gather power-ups and the gameplay is quite calm,
but by the end of battle, the game zone narrows to such a degree
that even the most convinced of pacifists
will have to either go down or destroy their adversaries.
Ok, good. What about the battle mechanics?
Will it be like a Random Battle?
The battle mechanics are closer to Torpedo Beat.
The gameplay of this mode during the April 1 event was appraised quite well.
Players thought it was a rather fresh idea.
We've slowed it down a little
and added standard consumables for different destroyers.
So, we've improved the Torpedo Beat gameplay a little.
But what if I'm more of an artillery enthusiast?
Now we have destroyers that can fire their main batteries.
Did you have the idea of the post- apocalyptic setting from the beginning,
or did it appear after you came up
with the concept of multiple teams and everything else?
When we understood that we would have multiple teams
and some power-ups, fighting for key areas.
Yes, fighting for areas that furnish you with consumables.
Right? And then, at once you have this picture that normal ships,
they usually load everything they need for a victorious battle in Port—
everything from the required supplies to armaments—and sail out.
It means that something happened, some kind of catastrophe,
and now they have to fight for resources, for even the smallest things
in different parts of the map.
So, all those mechanics align very well with the post-apocalyptic setting.
That's why we implemented this idea.
How to highlight the fight for resources on the new map?
Vladimir Mironov knows the answers!
Our new event gives players more than just new gameplay,
it gives them a whole new world. And it's a post-apocalyptic world.
An anthropogenic catastrophe happened there some 50 years ago.
We still have some skyscrapers that can even collapse from time to time.
People have abandoned these cold and horrible places
and moved to warmer homes made out of rusty metal sheets.
Tell me, what does the post-apocalyptic Port look like?
It's a temporary Port, but it's the first time that we’re giving players
the ability to sail by the Port, just like on a regular map.
Yes, that's true. Because the Port is in fact a part of the map.
Your task was to build this city—
which has never existed, practically speaking—from scratch.
Without any references except for the entire post-apocalyptic culture.
What did you use to create all of this?
Initially, the concept began
when we decided to place partially- submerged skyscrapers in the water,
so that people could sail between them on their ships.
And after that…
Skyscrapers alone are not enough, right? And it won't be very pretty.
So, we decided to add some more stuff:
faults, communications, sewage, and drain pipes.
I don't know, even some bridges (girders out, sparks).
Yes, girders out, sparks— everything to create an atmosphere…
Tell us more about effects that we can see on the map.
There's something burning constantly, some weather changes.
What else is there?
You can say that we included as many effects as possible.
Because we wanted to pack both the map and Port
with as many nice small things as possible,
so players can really feel the atmosphere of the location.
Ok, name three or four of your favorite features.
Tornado, smoke, and the lights of skyscrapers.
Let's talk more about the skyscrapers. You said they can collapse.
They're somewhat similar to icebergs. The only issue is that
we haven't presupposed any gameplay interactivity with the skyscrapers, so…
How does it work? The feature adds more visuals to the game.
I mean, while moving through the map on a ship,
you'll see skyscrapers falling apart, both close to you and far away.
For those who love classic battles we’ve prepared a new activity.
More info from Aleksandr Lapitsky!
Good day everybody! I'm Z1ooo.
Excellent! Let's talk about Clans now. Let's talk about Clans now. Ok, fine.
We’ve prepared a small activity for players.
It's like a tournament, but not a tournament per se.
It's more similar to a Clan Sprint.
In other words, it's like Clan battles, but this activity is very short.
It only lasts for a day.
So you don't need to win every battle for a month to…
Right, everything is resolved in a day.
If you can gather your Clanmates on this day,
you'll surely have a good time playing the game.
It's a new experience, we're trying out new formats,
quite bold ones, which can be later used in large Clan battles.
The kind that can engage players
and entice them to play for two months in the same format.
You mean, these are usual Clan battles, but with new mechanics?
So you still need a Clan? Yes, you do.
The format might be 3 vs 3, or 12 vs 12. We don't know yet?—No.
And it will be fast, just for a day…
We’ve made it easier to gather a team, play, and collect rewards.
Let's talk about rewards and efficiency.
Here we’ve borrowed some elements from Clan battles.
Players have individual SSE missions (Server Side Event),
which will reward them with some kind of bonuses, like Steel, etc.
Players complete them in Divisions in Clan battles.
You play battles and win them,
and if your Clan achieves a high enough spot in the overall ranking list,
a reward will be added to your Clan Treasury.
Tell us about the technical component.
I mean, previously you needed to own the game for an entire month.
And then the ladder was formed in a different way.
So what's happening now in this single day?
We changed the matchmaker in the previous season.
It now works much faster, and it’s simpler and more accurate.
That was made on the basis of Clan Battles.
You do the same: gather a Division, join it, click the "Battle" button,
and the matchmaker finds opponents for you.
Here it happens the same way, and the matchmaker uses win rates.
I have quite a provocative question for you.
Before filming this episode, we were thinking hard:
will that become a part of this Developer Diaries or not.
Why are you so hesitant? (Mmmmm.)
Ask the audience? Phone a friend?
(Well, pam-pam-pam, pam-pam-pam).
What’s needed to make Clan Sprints happen?
First of all, you need to like the idea? —Yes, you need to like it.
So that the design can click into place.
Then, test and emulate how it might work.
As I understand it, you only set beginning and ending dates,
like from the first to the first of something,
and then hold Clan Battles on that day. Isn't it that easy?
Mmm, we could do it like that,
but in our case, we have the data on Clan Battles:
how players play, for example, on the first day of Clan Battles.
Then we use the data from these battles,
emulate them with new matchmaker rules,
with new rules for victory progress, etc. And then…
So we see another structure, and that's why we fix the input data?
Right, and we can emulate battles several times,
slightly changing the rules each time.
How many emulated runs have been made? In other words,
how many times have virtual players played in these Clan activities?
More than a hundred for sure. —Tournaments?—Of course.
How many virtual players take part?—It depends.
Earlier we thought that if these were tournaments,
then they were exclusively for guys from the Hurricane League.
Then we thought:
If the Hurricane League is there, let's take guys from the Typhoon League.
And then we thought,
what's Typhoon without Storm (you could already take all of them)?
And then, why only Storm? Let's take all of them.
Everyone who plays Clan battles,
and we made runs on the first day the same way.
How to adapt Khabarovsk and Shimakaze to the new world?
Let’s hear the story from Sergei Mizintsev.
We've prepared nine ships for the post-apocalyptic event.
How did you manage to do that in good time?
First of all, this is the technology that was initially implemented
for our space-themed, April 1st event.
We take objects, so-called “miscs”, and place them where needed.
We have miscs for the aft, bow, sides, places along the waterline,
superstructures, and smokestacks;
and thus we have a specific set of miscs for our ships.
Let's suppose that we have 20 miscs
that we plan to replace with other objects later.
The newly placed objects will be located in the same places,
and thus we have a completely different ship.
So we have Khabarovsk with some camouflage applied.
How can this camouflage be carried over to Shimakaze?
A set of miscs can be almost the same. But their locations can differ.
I mean, they’ll be similar in style, but they’ll differ in minor aspects.
Well, yes. They will account for the geometry and dimensions of a ship,
location of smokestacks, etc.
Let's take a specific example.
With what four things would you be able to make
a post-apocalyptic Khabarovsk out of the standard ship?
Khabarovsk has nothing on the bow.
We added a metal welded cow's head with blinking lights there.
It's like traffic lights.
Then we planted circular saws on the bow. They’ll be animated in battle.
We placed corroded mustangs in place of the boats. They are also custom-made.
They have a welded bottom and they are like small boats.
Like small boats. Perfect…
So, map, ships, game mechanics— all set. Let’s move on to the sound!
Vladimir Gorbunov will tell us all about the sound magic.
What sounds can we expect in the Port?
First of all, sounds in Ports are narrative elements.
We always use the visuals as a starting point,
and then try to connect players to the game's atmosphere.
This helps them get immersed into the gameplay even more.
Speaking of the technology,
when we look at the Port, we determine the major sounds to introduce,
and then we allocate our sound emitters.
In this Port, you’ll see falling stones, the effect looks very cool.
Respectively, we accentuate the sounds of the falling stones.
When the stones start falling, you'll be able to hear something like this.
Sounds like these are very atmospheric, they somehow drive our players,
and help us immerse them into the game even more.
For example, sparkling wires in a vacuum only generates sparks,
without any sound, and that won’t make a creepy spectacle.
I don't believe that will work.
You're right, there will always be a Stanislavski among our players
who will tell us: "I don't believe it!"
We also introduced the sounds of a tornado
and some objects flying inside of it.
If the tornado doesn't make a sound, it would be an epic fail.
Tell us more about the zeppelin.
What is it exactly, what beats can be heard there, is it some kind of party?
Actually, the zeppelin is very cool.
Many thanks to our Level Art team for their work on that.
From the outset, we, and the game designers, were thinking
about some cool sounds or effects to introduce for the zeppelin.
So we decided to make a party there, soaring high above all the terror below,
and all one can hear are the bass sounds coming from it.
An elite party. Yes, totally.
It seems that the Port is well-equipped, so to speak.
Tell us what happens in battle.
We introduced a specific battle mode called Battle Royale.
There will be a large wall of flames
that pushes down toward the center of the map.
Our task was to show how terrifying this wall of flames is,
and just how much it can damage ships.
From the very beginning, you start to hear sounds similar to a forest fire,
and flames start spreading all around.
When you enter the fire, you can hear your ship creaking.
A siren can also be heard, designed specifically for that purpose.
So, how does a ship creak? That's a good question.
Or is it your chair?
But that's not all.
When a ship sails by a building, the building may suddenly collapse.
The building is huge, and it collapses and breaks into large pieces.
We needed a supercool sound for that too,
a sound that would shatter into pieces as well.
So that’s it! We’ve told you all about the new game event “Rough Wave”:
from concept to release.
Participate in Public Test, subscribe to our channel.
More fun videos to come!