Taking the Jeep for a Spin

At the beginning of this year we posted some renders of the Willys Jeep modeled by Fuad Abdi; Fuad recently posted a turntable of the model to his portfolio.  As we stated previously, we don’t know for sure that the Jeep will be used in 1944, but Fuad does create models for Frantic Games.

Composing For War

I happened upon the portfolio for Frantic Games Sound Designer Luke Hatton earlier this week.  Luke worked on the Matto_4 Far Cry project which was released earlier this year, and he also works on the Crysis Mod Obsidian Edge II. Obsidian Edge II is of course one of only two Crysis Mod teams to be given access to the Crysis Pre-SDK.

Lifting The World Upward & Onward

In response to a question about Beta testing, Lead Developer Ronan Hayes shared some information on Frantic Games’ current hiring plans.

What I can tell you:
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1. We will be hiring a fulltime lead programmer to ensure that the game is constantly developed.
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2. We have a new lead animator who is going to help, along with the other animators to develop all of our content.
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3. We are outsourcing most of our texturing work.
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This all helps move us forward, and we have addressed our major development issues.

Foliage for Cover and Tactical Use

It was over a year ago the Frantic Games announced that they’d acquired a license for Speedtree, but it was only recently that I stumbled across the official press release from Speedtree. The press release includes a few quotes from Frantic’s Lead Developer Ronan Hayes, you can see the full pdf Here.

Donations Page Opens

With 100+ weapons and 400+ vehicles left to texture, Indie developers Frantic Games have opened a Donations Page.   You can see exactly how to donate Here.

So what will you get for this?

Well firstly

We will tell you exactly what your contribution is going towards. Which texture, model, animation etc.

Secondly we will keep you updated on it’s progress and let you know.

Thirdly we will credit you ingame, and we will put your name beside the weapon in the credits.

eg: The Sherman Texture was sponsored by: INSERT SOME NAME

You will be listed on our site as a supporter and contributor to the 1944 Effort

Finally you will receive a copy of the playground, and every build that we make from here on out. Obviously this is subject to an NDA and will be feature limited but it will still be more than enough for you to play with.

When the game is ready for release you will be assigned the relevant account relating to your level of contribution.

Three Titles on Three Platforms?

Earlier this evening I stumbled across the resume of someone that worked for Frantic Games back in 2005, and it states that the plan is/was for Frantic Games to release three titles on three different video game platforms.  While it’s safe to say that the three titles are 1944, Last Days and Genoism, the three platforms are not as clear cut.  The PC is obviously one, and the Xbox 360 has been discussed previously, does that mean that the third platform is the PS3?  Obviously things may have changed since those plans were made, and the team may now be wholly focussed on releasing the game for the PC.

Hiding Behind the Bogeyman

Back in August of last year, Frantic Games announced a switch to the OGRE game engine, but that seems to have been a decoy. Ronan Hayes today posted their reasons behind the ruse:

Well I will let you in on this now, Ogre was a decoy so that we could get on with the job at hand.
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What we need to try and convey to people is just how little an engine can impact the visual quality of content and just how much it can impact it.
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People tend to mix things up alot. When a game has terrible art they comment on the engine, and when an engines lighting and performance disguises terrible art they comment on the art work… so it’s really a mixed bag. Not that anyone would listen to me anyway, they’d rather take those scrappings of information they find online, or second hand information they get from someone online. Sit down and start to write your own engine, chances are you will get somewhere but have to restart it over and over to get performance up. But on the flip side you will most likely have terrible art because no artist will lend their hand to you until you have something to show, it’s a vicious circle
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Good art is good art no matter what engine you use. Where an engine comes into play is by offering features, effects and performance. The engine we are working on now, has the ability to rival anything out on the market, infact I would even be as brave as to say it could tackle crysis with a little bit of work. Oddly enough it isn’t actually a game engine but was developed for medical simulations (MRI Rendering etc were some of it applications) As you can imagine such software needs to be exact and precise and incredibly efficient at what it does.
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Thus 1944 benefits from being on such a pure engine. There is no shit behind it where a game team or alternate company has come in and demanded fixes or changes. It simply does exactly what it says it would do and at blinding paces.
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Our latest tests with it saw around 4000 buildings, fully textured with parralax mapping, full scene HDR, full scene bloom and all the bells and whistles that you would expect from an engine and it did all of this at 400 fps on an 7800 card.
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A little tip for you, if you put shite in you get shite out. The reason some games look so bad is most likely the art work was terrible. Good lighting can safe a game, bad lighting can kill a game.
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We may release some shots soon in this section so everyone can see what we are talking about. But we will have to see how it goes. Most likely we will release shots of the graveyard as it should not allow too many peoples minds to wander…. it’s just a graveyard after all so allows people to focus on effects and performance not on other menial areas such as how each blade of grass does not cast a shadow….

I’m pretty sure I know which game engine Ronan refers to, but I’ll wait for definite confirmation before I post anything.

Making a Splash

I stumbled upon a post at CGTalk at the weekend that showed some really nice screenshots from a ‘personal’ level that Andrew Hamilton of Splash Damage is creating in Enemy Territory Quake Wars. Some of the really impressive screenshots are on this page.

So how exactly does this relate to 1944? Well I did the old right click to see what other pics I could find of his, and I realized the images were being hosted by a fellow Splash Damage artist, Stellan Johansson. So of course I dig around Stellan’s portfolio, and see a nice Panzer III and an Opel Blitz that look vaguely familiar. Being the inquisitive person I am, I read Stellan’s resume, and lo and behold his experience directly prior to being hired by Splash Damage was ’1944 D-Day – Operation Overlord – Environment texture artist’.

You can view Stellan’s portfolio Here and the work-in-progress thread for his Opel Blitz Here.

Low Poly Willys Jeep

Fuad Abdi posted some early WIPs of his Willys Jeep over at Game-Artist.net last year, while I don’t know for sure that they’re to be used in 1944 D-Day Operation Overlord, I know that Fuad does model for Frantic Games.

Frantic Games WIP Logo

Ronan Hayes of Frantic Games has released a Work-in-progress picture of their new logo design.