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Our Ghosts of War - A 400km2 World War 2 Sandbox Survival Game Developed in UE4

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73 comments, last by JumpCheck Community Mgt 6 years, 4 months ago
Hi Guys,
We're developing Our Ghosts of War, an open-world survival game in the vein of projects like Ark: Survival Evolved, Rust, and DayZ, but with a World War 2 spin on the genre. As a heads up there is no crowd funding campaign, or a storefront yet, as all we're looking to do at the moment is get the word out about our game and get your feedback on what exactly you would like for this game to be. We've already received permission from the moderation staff about being able to post about our game as long as we add no referral links.
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Our Ghosts of War is being developed by Pixel Perfect Polygons. We're a 3D artdev company that has primarily operated out of the Unreal Engine 4 forums for the better part of the last 2 years doing freelance and contract work for a number of indie and AAA companies. Eventually we finally got it in our minds to begin work on our game and after laying down the groundwork for what we wanted to dedicate our time towards, production began on Our Ghosts of War.
Currently there are 20 individuals involved and working on a host of development assets consisting of art and code. We'll have more about each of these individuals shortly just so you have a clear idea of who exactly is doing what on the project. We'll also be posting regular progress reports from each of these individuals so there is a transparent display of what exactly the development team is up to.
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Our plan right now is to apply to Steam Greenlight later this year. When it comes to Early Access games some are some are definitely more complete than others. Others are never completed at all. For Our Ghosts of War we have decided to focus on creating a little of everything when it comes to weapons, vehicles, and characters, and put most of our efforts on creating our the most authentic depiction of Normandy, France in the history of video games heading into release.
What does this mean for the average player? Well it means that due to having a relatively low starting budget we are forced to make some very hard choices about the content that we intend to launch Our Ghosts of War with. Trust me when we say we're proud of how far we've managed to stretch every single last dollar but even so there are limits to what we can achieve with our current budget. The money we make from our sales will then be invested back into the game to create weapons, vehicles, and other props that we unfortunately didn't have the budget to create at the moment.
That said this is what we do intend to launch with:
- The most authentic depiction of Normandy, France in the history of video games. We've already incorporated Satellite DEM data to launch the game with 78km2 worth of authentic Normandy terrain. It looks good. It feels real. As we move further into development we will work to increase our map size to an eventual 400km2 replica of Normandy, France. There's never been anything done on this level of scale in videogames.
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- The most authentic placement of Normandy homes, farms, and roads in the history of video games. We've done a lot of homework already and have managed to track down aerial spy photographs that cover a large portion of the Normandy hills and roads. Using these spy pictures and cross referencing them against Google Maps we can accurately place homes and roads precisely where they were in 1944. The same goes for the roads as will make them 100% accurate to where they would have been during the war. There is no other game that seeks to achieve this level of authenticity.
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- The most authentic depiction of the Omaha Beach D-Day invasion ever. So this was hard but we've managed to secure official documents of the Germans with the blueprints of every single one of their defensive fortifications and measurements. This means that every anti-tank wall, anti-tank ditch, trench, concertina wire, and more will be created to the official specs of the German army. Furthermore we've painstakingly tracked down the blueprints of every single last bunker that was built on Omaha Beach and are working to create and place them exactly where they would have been in 1944 as the Allied forces invaded France in the largest invasion in history. Research matters.
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- Twenty launch weapons consisting of handguns, rifles, machine guns, and shotguns. As we earn more from the release of the game we will work to create additional weapons. The currently completed weapons are:
01. 1911
02. Luger
03. Thompson
04. MP40
05. K98
06. M1 Garand
07. Colt Official Police
08. Colt Commando
09. Springfield
10. Mauser C96
11. MG-08
The current weapons being modeled are:
12. MG42
13. Winchester M12 Trench Gun
14. FG42
We should have renders for all these weapons added to this thread sometime this week but this should do as a start.
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That's all for now. We should have daily updates for you guys starting tomorrow. We're ecstatic about the work we're doing and feel that's among the best of our lives. If you have any questions or feedback please don't hesitate to post and we'll get back to you as soon as we can. Thanks for reading!

Twitter: [twitter]ourghostsofwar[/twitter]

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Nice!

I'm not a big fan of military shooters but this looks good and i'm liking the historical accuracy.

How realistic will the combat be, e.g. will you be taken out of the game by being shot in the leg, and have to select a different soldier at a different position in the combat zone who isn't out for the count? Or are you going for the less realistic 'run and gun' design?

Also, how far through is the game right now, when do you hope to have a playable beta?

Good luck, can' wait to see this released!

Nice!

I'm not a big fan of military shooters but this looks good and i'm liking the historical accuracy.

How realistic will the combat be, e.g. will you be taken out of the game by being shot in the leg, and have to select a different soldier at a different position in the combat zone who isn't out for the count? Or are you going for the less realistic 'run and gun' design?

Also, how far through is the game right now, when do you hope to have a playable beta?

Good luck, can' wait to see this released!

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Hi Braindigitalis,

We're planning a mode that will that allow you to traverse Normandy without any combat or survival genre caveats like hunting down food or water. This way if you don't want to deal with the military shooter / survival genre stuff you can ignore it outright. We're emphasizing a very democratized game design philosophy on this project.

Combat will be relatively realistic. Being shot in one leg would have a chance of players losing the ability to run. Being shot in both legs would have a chance of players losing the ability to walk. Then they would only be able to crawl. The more a player is shot in either leg, the higher their chances of losing the ability to run and walk.

We're still in pre-alpha at the moment. We're about a month away away from having our vertical slice setup and then its a matter of iterating. We'll have more to show as we get it ready. :)

Twitter: [twitter]ourghostsofwar[/twitter]

I like where this is going based on what you said.

Are you planning to have realistic survival then, for example lighting a fire to cook food might alert nearby enemies to your location?

There's lots of things you could do that I've never seen in any other survival game...

Looks pretty realistic! But I don't get it is it about zombies or what?

Sounds great. Looking forward to seeing pictures of the terrain :)

The Arma games routinely have about 20km2 to 200km2 terrains, which are stupidly massive. I'd love to hear about the workflow that you end up with in order to create such a big game environment.

I like where this is going based on what you said.

Are you planning to have realistic survival then, for example lighting a fire to cook food might alert nearby enemies to your location?

There's lots of things you could do that I've never seen in any other survival game...

The way we are approaching this is that once we launch in Early Access we intend to develop the game for a period of three years after which we will come out of Early Access. During that time we intend to try out a variety of things including cooking food (we've already got campfires in our prototype). We hadn't thought about smoke alerting nearby enemies however though the idea is tremendous and we're definitely going to try implementing it.

Looks pretty realistic! But I don't get it is it about zombies or what?

No zombies. We just liked the visuals. We'll be testing a bunch of concept art for our eventual marketing and branding campaign. Something that would differentiate ourselves from other military shooter projects. We'll be trying out a bunch of things.

Sounds great. Looking forward to seeing pictures of the terrain :)

The Arma games routinely have about 20km2 to 200km2 terrains, which are stupidly massive. I'd love to hear about the workflow that you end up with in order to create such a big game environment.

If we were just doing a random environment we would have been done a long time ago. Because this project is all about accuracy we needed to do a ton of research. Technically it still isn't done yet. Started stitching together aerial spy shot references for the roads and buildings inside Unreal Engine 4. This is 3km. This is also going to take some time to finish. :(
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Twitter: [twitter]ourghostsofwar[/twitter]

Pluskat Bunker WN60 - #2 Finished
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Twitter: [twitter]ourghostsofwar[/twitter]

M12 Trench Gun WIP

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Twitter: [twitter]ourghostsofwar[/twitter]

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Twitter: [twitter]ourghostsofwar[/twitter]

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