August has been a busy month. The Patrons have been trying out the playable demo of the Panzer IV interior with full interaction — but in this developer diary we'd like to touch on a topic we haven't covered much in-depth yet: infantry.
As the player controls a character — and as platoons of AI infantry make up a significant amount of the experience — the way they interact with the world is important. Two further guns have been added to our arsenal: the Kar 98K and the PPSh-41, both beautifully modelled and textured by Nat and Santiparp.
Further, we're happy to announce a new member of the development team — Rirumi — a dedicated animator, ready to make the interaction and reload animations for the weapons, vehicles, and so forth. Here's a demo of that with the PPSh-41.
The Opel Blitz
Our Opel Blitz, courtesy of Nat, is coming along very nicely — for those who really love logistics gameplay, driving to and from the frontline with much-needed troops, supplies, and ammunition for the war effort. What we see here is the Opel Blitz 3.6, an incredibly common truck in the Wehrmacht, used in every theatre of war, that formed a large part of the backbone of their supply lines. As with all our vehicles, the Blitz features a full interior with full fidelity — everything is interactable.
The Environment
On a final note — let's take a look at our environment designer's map. He's beginning to sculpt the world in which everything will take place. Grass, a fairly under-appreciated part of game development, is really very important. It sets the tone of the map, it's perpetually present, and so making it nice to look at is quite an area of focus. To give a small sneak peek, here is what Matt has got so far — some rather attractive, luscious grass blowing in the wind. One can hardly wait to run it over with a Panzer IV.
Thanks for reading this quick little developer diary. We're excited to share more in a full video devlog before too long — 'till next time.