The coders and the artists are working full steam on getting an engine update ready. This is what you guys know as Unity II.

The primary goals for Unity II are updating to a modern graphics render solution (ours was originally built for VooDoo3!) that will allow us to improve both the look of the game and performance and to reengineer the code base to be more sustainable in the future. Today we got hit sounds working, so progress marches ahead! Actually, it is looking very nice.

With new specular and normal map technologies coming on line the artists have gone into a content revamp. They've started by remaking the buildings in game including a redo of all of the bridges and the urban buildings. City fighting is going to be a lot more interesting. We are also planning to redo the vehicles in order to give the while game a face list. It is a HUGE task for our team and while we don't expect that it will be near complete for 1.29, we're giving it all we have. Sorry I don't have screen shots today, I don't know what I was thinking.

We've built a new scripting language that is allowing us to create tutorials. These a part of a requirement for the Chinese Project and frankly, something new players in the game have needed for a long time.

We'll have tutorials that walk you through the different parts of the UI as well as in game tutorials.

This shot shown a UI tutorial. These will be available for all UI screens and once you've seen them they will go away unless you choose to see them again by pressing the "?" icon.

In these shots you can see the basic layout of what we call a Basic Training tutorial. These will focus on you as a single player in an instance of the game world. You'll access this from a tutorial button while in game. Basic Training will include everything you need to know to get into combat. Topics cover moving and shooting as well as using the in game HUD and how to interact with your map and you group.

Basic Training will be required of all new recruits to the game. It will be relatively short but informative enough to ready you for your first encounter with the enemy. This brings us to Combat Training!

All recruits will have to pass Combat Training once they complete Basic Training. Combat Training will be an instanced fight in a small town focusing on close quarters infantry combat. Each recruit will have several objectives to complete in areas such as communication, using the map and getting a kill. Once you've passed Combat Training you will get a promotion, graduate Basic and have access to all of your personas.

"That sounds great for the n00bs Goph", I hear you say, "but what about the rest of us?"

Well, not a lot right off the bat to be honest but we do have plans for the system beyond adding Basic Training for non infantry such as planes and boats. We can also add advanced training for all kinds of things, oh, and you might remember that word instancing.

Combat Training you will recall is an instanced fight between players. We're going to offer Combat Training as well for players after they have graduated. They won't be fighting n00bs but they will be able to have quick action fights between each other. And we can run multiple instances, on the same territory, at any time. Hopefully. This is still in development you know. But, we can see a lot of potential uses for this technology outside of just fast combat. Training, events, tournaments and all kinds of things might benefit from this technology in the future. Only time will tell.

This will be boring for a lot of you but we have finally upgraded our translation tools to a web based system that should be much easier for our translation team to manage and if you play in a non English language that you realize just how much of the game isn't translated. Hopefully this will help to fix that up. If you're part of our Community Translation Team report to the beta at your earliest opportunity.

The rest of the China Project revolves around a lot of documentation, getting some anti-addiction support going and various other things that we'll cover later as we get more dev work done on them. For now though the project seems to be on track, if taking longer than we would like, but producing benefits that we can use at home as well. But China Project isn't all we've been working on.

We've actually got a lot of features in development and several in test. I'll go more into those in my next Production Update. Today I want to focus on some game play changes we are investigating. These aren't perfectly set in stone but they are being designed and implemented and I want to use this as a foundation for the Rat Chat coming up.

We've been a long time without a terrain update and Doc and BLOO are working one up for inclusion in a future release, probably 1.29. In the mean time we're discussing changing the start line on the map to give the Axis a few more CPs. This is still in discussion and the permanency of the change is being debated but we'd like to hear your thoughts as we know you've been around the topic as well. Up until now we really haven't needed more Axis back space but we always knew we would one day and that day is looking to be here. In addition, we have plans to modify victory conditions in the future and a map update needs to happen before we can begin finalizing that design.

We've noticed some issues in play testing and watching the maps and we're going to make some adjustments to fallback and auto-fallback. First we're going to fix a few odd situations that can happen when a brigade should fallback over a contested link but sometimes is routed instead. Routing is really only supposed to happen when a unit is surrounded and cut off, not just when it has a contested link to a town where it's divisional units are holding up. We'll be prioritizing the fallback choices a little better as well.

We are also looking at allowing Divisions to fallback. Initially we wanted to stress that Division should never be placed on the front and that if you do so you run a huge risk. In practice, this is a lot to manage so we'll probably tackle that wish from another angle. In the mean time, we think it best if these units fallback. They should never have been on the front anyway.

We have some changes gone live to ToEs and that is something we will likely continually adjust. We're also reviewing the Tier-0 equipment. We haven't made any decisions yet but we are mulling over a few things. We've been reading your posts as well so we just thought you should know. Oh, we did a tail gun audit and a concussive damage audit as well. Just thought I'd throw that in. No new vehicles on the horizon with the artists locked in a content upgrade but at 100 vehicles, we're probably ok...for now.

Love 'em or hate 'em, TOEs have brought a whole new level of strategic and tactical gameplay to WWIIOL. In addition, they've also brought some new concerns that we need to address. We love strategic and tactical gameplay so you probably know which camp we're in!

We're planning on increasing all 2 brigade divisions to 3 brigades. This will help fill holes in the front as well as allow more depth. It will also make the divisions more equal. We are doing this in part because long term we really want to see units in a division acting in a coordinated fashion on their targets.

We're thinking about adding infantry and armor TOEs. Our current thoughts are to do this fairly universally by having each division have 2 armor brigades and one infantry brigade. Our goal is that we have to get these different types of brigades to have a balance while being diverse. We'll also look to make the DivHQ have a unique spawn list that will tailor it more to being a resupply depot.

To make these changes work, we need to rename all of the units on the OrBat. Units will be able to keep their colorful long names that appear on the right side Brigade information panel but the short names are going to have to become more unified and informative. Players, especially new ones, will need to know if they should expect an infantry, armor or paratrooper focused brigade at first glance.

We'll be trying this out in an upcoming intermission along with any start line changes that get decided upon.

Simply put we think it should be easier to move through non hostile territory than moving through the enemy. If a unit moves to a non frontline town it will have a reduced time until it can move again. This will allow for more fluid reactions to threats on the battle front.

We're ready to start talking a little bit about ways in which we can better utilize the OIC position by allowing more non HC players to have the opportunity to move up and take tactical command when these positions are open. This, along with diverse TOEs is one of the last remaining pieces to implement in the Brigade Plan.

Our goals here start with the need of the game to have a group of players performing in a leadership role. We call these dedicated players the High Command. These players work to form long range strategic battle plans for a campaign while at the same time the make the day to day, hour to hour decisions that need to be made to see those plans come to fruition.

We want to start exposing other players to what it means to be in command by sharing the risks and rewards of leadership. We also want players who have been recognized as potential leaders and those who want to experience the strategic as well as tactical game to have access to the mechanisms that make command so integral to the experience of WWIIOL.

With this plan we want to bridge the gap between tactical play and strategic play. We want to bring the strengths of all of our players together in order to improve the gameplay for all. And we want to hear your thoughts on this and all the other things we've talked about today.

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