Our first Faces of War Expansion developers chat!

All you need is an IRC client, for example:
http://www.mirc.com

and choose a quakenet server:

afterwards join following channels:
#facesofwar (for questions)
#devchat (for reading only)

Date

Developers chat log:

[18:08] Q: How many new vehicles are planned ?
[18:10] Instinct: We have no straight plans which tell us to do 15 new vehicles or something like that. We try to provide our fans with as much new stuff as possible during development. But we already mentioned that the game period will expand from 1944-45 to 1941-1945 this will make it necessary to have a couple of new vehicles, which we are choosing carefully. First at all they must fit into our gameplay and on the other hand they must fit into the battles and periods we are showing off. Especially as we want to create an authentic experience for the gamers.

[18:11] Q: How realistic game will be ? slow bullets ?
[18:13] Instinct: Our main goal is to create a game which makes fun, but fun doesn't mean we are going to make the game unrealistic. We want to optimize the gameplay and make it more realistic in addition, therefore we were overworking all sounds and are going to overwork the armorsystem. But I give this question further to Skael, he can tell you more about it.
[18:16] Skael: Well, we take some steps forward to realism. Speed up bullets, fixed penetration system problems and so on. Our work is still going on.

[18:17] Q: Will Bestway plans on adding more gore for addon, decapitation or such other horrible implementations ?
[18:18] Instinct: So far as I know, blood and gore was reduced to achieve a lower ESRB rating. Well it didn't work, so yes, there will be more "horrible implementations" :D

[18:18] Q: How many new buildings are planned? :) Russian's modders say that they can't create normal Russian villages?
[18:20] Skael: Since we make a Russian campaign in Russia and Ukraine, we were required to make Russian/Ukrainian buildings anyway :)

[18:21] Q: New sounds - is in this included new speech sounds as well ?
[18:22] Instinct: Speech sounds are not planned yet, we created over 800 new sounds for the game, mainly weapons and ambient sounds. Although speech sounds may have significant improvements due to soundengine changes.

[18:22] Q: In relations to multiplayer stability - did Bestway decided to improve multiplayer performance, networkcode in Addon - do you planning on returning back server features from SHOWW2 such max FPS, max QPS and max item numbers?
[18:26] Skael: We want to have better stability/performance for our netcode. The game currently is tested in various modes by our QA team. And I hope our players will help us in improving multiplayer gaming experience via open multiplayer beta testing.

[18:26] Q: Are there going to be larger maps, for sea battles and plane fighting?
[18:27] Instinct: No, we are not looking forward for such maps. The gameplay is not designed for it and it will require many changes to enjoy battles like that on a high level of quality. We know modders did experiments with it, which we support but we won't implement such battles ourselves.

[18:28] Q: I read at forum that for addon you will need new version of editor. Will it be on a disk with the game?
[18:32] Skael: Yes, it will.

[18:32] Q: Will there be a sort of skirmisher, or mission generator that allows you to create random maps and missions?
[18:33] Instinct: No, it would require too much changes and a new feature is only really good if it is done carefully and not rushed. But and I really want to point this out, many missions have the reinforcements system included and this feature makes the missions really random as the player can decided his reinforcements. A bit like skirmish but with storybased mission, which I prefer to be honest.

[18:34] Q: Question on regards to future Addon's protection - which protection system will be used for western release ? Securom or Starforce ? Will there be cd-key system ?
[18:36] Skael: Protection system of western release depends heavily on publisher. Cd-key will be used to protect multiplayer games.

[18:38] Q: Could you mention some new vehicles?, tanks, trucks, planes etc?
[18:39] Instinct: Sure I can... :) ...ok I will tell you about a few of them like the KV-2 series, SU100, T-26. But don't worry there will be enough for all sides :)

[18:40] Q: What will the future bring for dial up players? Will connection speed directly depend on frames per second rate?
[18:47] Skael: To be honest, we are more concentrated on players with better connection speeds. Dial up players will be able to participate in small battles - 1x1 or 2x2, but don't expect to have a good game with 4x4. FPS are not linked to connection speed anymore, it depends on CPU and RAM.

[18:47] Q: Will the accuracy or range of weapons increase?
[18:49] Instinct: Ranges will be tweaked to fit into the Singleplayer missions. SMG accuracy will be slightly improved. But I can't talk about Multiplayer right now.

[18:50] Q: Are you ready with the system of global multiplayer statistics?
[18:52] Skael: Global statistics system is complete, but requires a lot of testing. Currently we are testing it to make it work flawless.

[18:52] Q: You talked about multiplayer public demo. I have a small question: WHEN?
[18:53] Instinct: It's done when it’s done ;), to be honest we want to have the demo flawless and in its best condition but we are pretty close to it.

[18:53] Q: Do you plan dedicated server for linux?
[18:56] Skael: We are not planning to make any dedicated servers. We believe our current network technology will satisfy almost all players, whatever they have external IP address or not.

[18:56] Q: Will there be any plans for North african battles?
[18:57] Instinct: Well I see, I won't come around this question. ;) Is no answer, an answer aswell? Sorry but it’s too early to talk about it. ;)

[18:57] Q: Any deadlines or any contracts with publisher groups that possibly could rush Bestway to release unpolished product ?
[18:58] Instinct: Deadlines are necessary, but we won't bring out an unpolished product for sure.

[18:59] Q: Can you build easier (click and drag) and new objects with the engineer e.g. sandbags ?
[19:01] Skael: We are working on game interface and will change all things that are critical for game success. :)

[19:02] Q: What kind of modders support do you plan?
[19:04] Instinct: We will write an additional Tutorial to make it easier for the community to learn about the power of GEM. Also we have planned to create a dummy mission, which can be edited easily to make your own simple map and of course we give support in our forums to questions and mod releases.

[19:04] Q: Bestway plans for May 9th? Any upcoming teaser/tech video/info for fan base on 62th anniversary ?
[19:07] Skael: We planned to release single player demo on 8 May. But later we decided to delay it, since we want our game and demo to be perfect, not just good enough.
[19:09] Instinct: I also want to add that a few bonus materials can be anticipated the next weeks. So you all will survive curiousness until demo comes out :)

[19:10] Q: First of all, Will MP Interface be updated and have more options available in the addon?
[19:14] Skael: If you carefully watched our devupdates on our forums, you should already know about the improved minimap. In later devupdates we will show the rest of the changes - our main idea is "small configurable game interface".

[19:14] Q: Do you like you fans?
[19:14] Skael: We love them :))
[19:16] Instinct: Even if there was quite some anger around the first days after release and we had to hear some rude questions, we fully understand what was going on with the fans especially the hardcore fans. We learned from our mistakes and we always take the chance to develop our skills to please our consumers. On any accounts we are growing together with the fans and are really happy with all that great people out there enjoying the game and hopefully soon our Expansion!

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