Introduction

Welcome back soldier to #3 of our diaries (Developer Diary #1 and Developer Diary #2). As I write this Söldner is in internal multiplayer testing. This means that we are testing all the multiplayer modes and tweaking them. In case you missed our article about CMM (Customizable Multiplayer Modes) please read it on our webpage. Many people ask us about public beta multiplayer demo. We need to ask you for some more time as we really want to make the demo good enough that we rock the multiplayer world. Careful testing is one way of doing so and carefully weighting features against time as well.

Our internal testing is focusing on the default modes first. As soon as those are tweaked and balanced we will move on and test the custom modes as the editor to tune the MP parameters should be done by that time. Meanwhile many little details were finished in the game environment - let me walk you through them.

Particles

We finished both particle editors. One is editing the particles themselves with their physical properties. With those parameters we can either create particle effects like any other game, but we can also hook our physics system into it to create more realistic effects and collisions. The editor on top is editing the timing of the animations and effects. With this you can mix particle effects, 3D effects and animations to create the overall effect. So an explosion can be made up of 2-3 particle effects, some 3D particles with physical properties (bouncing debris) and a 3D animation (exploding sphere with alpha effects). The result looks more promising than plain particle effects. The screenshot shows our particle editor in action. Note the two windows: one is showing the parameters, the other is our game in a window. You can edit the particle effects real time inside our running game.

Parachutes

We finalized the parachutes now. Initially we planned to have fully automatic parachutes which open under a specific height and fly you to the ground. However the demand for manual release was high in the community so we implemented the manual release at any height. This was possible as falling damage now works correctly with our physics system on our soldier. The soldier, when jumping off an airplane or helicopter, now really flies like a parachutist. With non released chute he will stretch his arms to reduce speed or close his arms to increase speed. When the parachute is released you can steer it with your normal directional keys, gain speed or brake for landing. See attached shots for the two flight modes.