With several major updates already delivered to the growing number of virtual battlefield recruits, Playnet and Cornered Rat Software are ready to introduce another round of major gameplay enhancements to their MMOG, "World War II Online".

Bringing the fight into cities and towns

The upcoming release of v1.9 (now in open Beta testing) allows players to establish a foothold in enemy held cities as well as use non-military facilities for troop spawning. These facilities are the depots that connect all the cities in the gameworld. Every road that connects two chokepoints has a pair of supply depots. Now these can be used by ground troops as combat staging facilities. Spawning at these depots puts inftantry in critical positions with tactical advantages. Depots are now more important than ever and create fast-paced infantry firefights like never before.

Capturing a depot gains a critical foothold at the beginning of an attack

Soldiers can now employ both offensive and defensive tactics at the depots. Every intact depot in a town or city can be used by defenders to spawn infantry forces. Any side of town that comes under enemy attack can be quickly defended. There is a cost to the defensive forces though as spawning infantry at the depots drains that town's Army Base of its supply of troops. Attackers can capture a depot in a city or town and gain a foothold from which to attack with infantry. Supported by armor supplied from the nearest friendly Army Base and with aircraft from nearby airfields, ground troops now have the means to more quickly take the battle to the enemy. As with defending forces, infantry spawning from depots draw from a limited supply from their own Army Bases.

Depot spawning brings faster, action-packed fights to the virtual battlefield

Infantry have always needed to rely on trucks, military transport, or good old boots to get into the action in "World War II Online". Defending from one side of town while attacking forces came from the opposite side was a frustrating, time consuming and often an unbalanced effort. With depot spawning, infantry are all over town creating fast-paced street fights as troops move from building to building. Snipers become more deadly and more vunerable and choke point sieges are now tougher with troops flanking enemy units much more quickly and posing a threat to armor in towns at every corner.

More on v1.9

v1.9 has a lot more than the depot spawing feature. In addition to porting the Unity 3D graphics engine to OpenGL, this new version adds another 40 cities/towns/ports to what is already the largest online world available in an MMOG. The additions to the terrain fill out much of southeast England as well as new strategic-targets such as destroyable factory installations.

v1.9 also adds a large number of special effects to the game with additions such as debris from shell hits on aircraft, shell ejections in first and third person and more battlefield explosions.

Infantry play has also received a lot of attention with the addition of a knife to the standard troop loadout, new animations including combat and non-combat emotes and additional sounds. More vehicles are being added including low-level bombers and new french armor.

There's also been the addition of a new RPG feature tagged as "Research, Development and Production" (RDP) which puts control of vehicle and weapons introduction and battlefield availability into the hands of player/commanders. Watch for a follow-up to this briefing which will detail the new RDP features.

V 1.9.0 Feature List :

The v1.9.0 feature list is complete and we are looking forward to going into Open Beta. The features listed below are the features we expect to see in v1.9.0. This feature list is subject to change and does not include things that are in dev and expected as part of the releases in the v1.9.x series.

The reasons for us to do an open beta for v1.9 are a change to OpenGl from DirectX, a new depot spawning ability and the need to test our factory based research facilities.

The majority of the cards that our user base currently uses supports OpenGL and we do not expect that anyone able to play under the current DX8.1 requirement will be unable to play using OpenGl. OpenGL is also the basis for many of the upcoming features of the Unity II graphics engine. That development is slated to happen after v1.9 has gone live. The requirements for OpenGL in v1.9 are that it provide the functionality that we currently have with our DirectX version and our current testing shows that it does that very well.

Depot spawning will undoubtedly affect the infantry game in a manner that will require us to adjust the variables associated with it. The number of troops available at a depot and their refresh rate will need testing and adjusting as will the number of troops available in-game overall. We will also be monitoring the effects of having these depots and the FBs receiving all of their supply from parent army bases, and the effects on the game that result.

Research facilities will also need testing to ensure that research points are acbody fluidulating properly and that the automation we are adding is fully functional.

The open beta will be running during office hours only for the majority of testing though we will open it up as it nears completion. We would like the impact on the live server to be as little as possible while still giving us enough testing resources to make the adjustments necessary. We will also have an open beta forum running so that players can post their test findings but we will be heavily moderating this forum and expect it to be used for testing and feedback, not for discussion of features, as was often the case in our previous open betas.

• Unity 3d II
  • OpenGL implementation (current functionality replicated)
• Data Audits
  • Aircraft ground handling (brakes/suspension/roll)
  • Fuel audit for all vehicles
• Terrain
  • Köln Düsseldorf linked/filled-in
  • RCE Map towns completed
  • Channel islands filled-out
  • England enhancement
  • Factories for each country
• Effects
  • Debris generated by aircraft hits
  • Improved muzzle flash
  • Improved Trooper Hits
  • Explosion fire (fire ball and residual fire)
  • Spent sheck ejections (first and third person)
  • Fix smoke trail spawning underground from planes
  • Screen shake tied to target mass
  • Gear/Flap/Canopy damage-feedback (precursor for visible damage)
• RPG
  • Initial implementation of Production/Development/Research
  • Destroyable strategic factories
  • AI AA Objects and support (1.9.x)
  • EWS support for factories
  • UI Icons for depots open for spawn and new factory icons
  • Production-side delivery design (points, schedules, vehicle lists etc)
  • Web based vehicle dependency tree for current and future vehicles (not comprehensive)
  • Web feedback and support for factory research project status
  • Web feedback for production status reports
• Initial set of deployment features
  • Brigade Signup (In conjunction with planned Division Tournament Event)
  • FB Pull AB
  • Depot Spawning
• Vehicles
  • H39 light tank(France)
  • DB7 medium bomber (Britain)
  • Havoc I medium bomber (Britain)
  • DDEs (1.9.x)
• Trooper enhancements
  • Knife
  • Third Person Shooter sounds (generic)
  • Basic emotes
  • Backwards animation
  • Sheck ejections (FPS/TPS)
  • TPS Binoculars
  • TPS weapon switch
  • FPS lowered weapon animation

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