Development Notes

S! Everyone, and Happy Labor day to you all! As promised we have an update for you regarding WWII Online: Chokepoint. We remain in the trenches of transitioning the game from Unreal Engine 4 to Unreal Engine 5 and we are making good progress in this endeavor. Unreal 5 opens up a lot of amazing technologies, nanite rendering being among one of the most powerful. Our team remains committed to the development of Chokepoint as the infantry system being developed here will result into WWII Online 2.0's infantry system, ranging from new assets, rigs, animations and most importantly making it feel right in terms of smoothness. Keep reading as we've got some before and after screenshots from the conversion and will discuss a couple of important decisions we'll be making and setting expectations.

A LOT HAS HAPPENED SINCE OUR LAST UPDATE

First let me say thank you to everyone in the community who have been patiently waiting for an update here on Chokepoint. It is our preference to come to you with solutions and productive information and sometimes that takes time. We have more contributors working on Chokepoint than we have had since the beginning of acquiring the IP, ranging from programmers to producers to artists. We have completely changed our way of how we collaborate on the project moving from SVN to Git and utilizing brand new tools to help us do that job.

Under my leadership I have always aimed to be transparent because you deserve that and it is the right thing to do. So let me say upfront that the original team who were working on this project decided to part ways and it created a bit of a stall in progress as we picked up the pieces, rebuilt the ability to work together and brought on new talent. This wasn't our choosing or desire, nor was it foreseen, but it has been resolved and we are continuing the mission as all roads inevitably lead to the building of WWII Online 2.0 and this is an integral component to delivering on that.

Let me reiterate our commitment to Chokepoint remains because it is acting as:

• The training ground for our producers and artists to work in Unreal.
• Helping us understand how to setup the projects success for WWII Online 2.0.
• Creating a brand new functional infantry system.
• A deployable product designed to reach the market and bring more folks into our WWII Online Franchise.
• A source of revenue to fuel development efforts on all of our fronts.

With all of that said we have real work taking place in the form of fixing post-conversion cleanup. This includes:

• Cleaning up blueprints / compile errors.
• Creating an all-new Animation Blueprint / event graph.
• Fixing up the three main levels of: Carentan, La Fiere and Eglise.
• Replacing old animations with better versions.
• UI / HUD functional fixes.

INFANTRY AIMING SYSTEM

Historically there was a two-stage aiming system which allowed for a quick snap and look around feature, followed by a hold-to-aim to look down sights for longer shots. We have found that while this system was unique it has created a lot of confusion for new people testing it out and it also creates an unfair advantage for those who are accustomed to it vs those who are not. To make sure the game isn't offsetting to the majority of FPS players we're going to be nixing that two-stage aiming system all together so it's a simple hold-to-aim across the board. 

MOTION SICKNESS FIXES

In an effort to help alleviate motion sickness concerns we're exploring with increasing the FOV (Field of View) and making that a setting players can actually interact with on their own behalf to get things "right" for them. This also means removing head-bob and anything else that would be impacting them. There's a lot plans to help with the overall camera feel, particularly during vaulting as well to make that a smoother transition.

NEW LOW CRAWL ANIMATIONS (WIP)

These are raw captures of upcoming low crawling animations that are currently in progress, only intended to show the intended direction of things, not a final result.

CARENTAN LEVEL CLEANUP (BEFORE & AFTER)

We have multiple artists and developers combing over each planned release level to cleanup obvious issues and these help showcase some of those fixes. They do not represent a final result and we have plans to add/modify/enhance other assets within. Our first priority has been to get the most popular map squared away which is Carentan. Please enjoy these before and after shots below.

SUBSCRIBE TO SUPPORT DEVELOPMENT OF ALL EFFORTS

We cannot encourage you enough to step up and help these efforts by subscribing to WWII Online at http://account.wwiionline.com which will not only get you access to our flagship product of WWII Online, but also a Steam key to access WWII Online: Chokepoint. 

We're continuing the efforts here and things are starting to take off. Stick around for more updates, we'll try to get you some more as we go forward.

WISHLIST THE GAME ON STEAM

If you haven't yet, please wishlist Chokepoint on Steam and encourage others to do so here --> https://store.steampowered.com/app/1576780/WWII_Online_Chokepoint/