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

Zen Davis · 2018-02-06T21:06:21

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. 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. 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. - 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. - 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. - 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. 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!

Your Announcements Community

Started by pixelperfectpolygons May 16, 2016 10:54 PM

73 comments, last by JumpCheck Community Mgt 6 years, 5 months ago

pixelperfectpolygons

198

Author

August 04, 2016 02:29 AM

Finished Character!

Twitter: [twitter]ourghostsofwar[/twitter]

pixelperfectpolygons

198

Author

August 04, 2016 02:43 AM

Really enjoying seeing the development of this game.

How long till something playable comes along?

Great work so far! :)

I figured it was about time I started responding to you. Sorry I've been very busy overlooking everything about the project. I think we'll have gameplay ready to show in the next month or two. We had a couple of coders quit recently which has slowed things down. The individuals we've hired to replace them start in September. We've also brought on another few coders to help but they're not experienced enough to handle things like netcode at the moment. Instead they're working on the birds, vehicles, and character customization.

Here's the plan right now:

01. Get multiplayer running on a test map.

02. Do a wildlife pass including the birds you've seen posted already.

03. Work on our gunplay.

04. Add crafting elements.

05. Create additional rendering tools for UE4 to increase graphical fidelity (aka create SMAA for UE)

06. Apply for an Unreal Development Grant.

Twitter: [twitter]ourghostsofwar[/twitter]

Brain

19,059

August 05, 2016 10:01 AM

06. Apply for an Unreal Development Grant.

Good plan, but is there any reason you can't start the process of applying for this right now?

So long as you have a strong foundation it might pay to begin sooner rather than later so that if you do get the funds you can put them into developers and art. Also have you started your social media and greenlight etc campaigns yet? All these things are best started near the start of the project rather than near the end to gain momentum.

Hope this is good advice! I've been working on my own UE4 games for quite some time, and promoting heavily on twitter for almost a year now...

Games/Projects Currently In Development:
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pixelperfectpolygons

198

Author

August 05, 2016 08:02 PM

We've setup a twitter here: https://twitter.com/ourghostsofwar - We're also in the process of creating our website and will create a facebook and IndieDB page at the same time.

I guess my general concern is that I feel like we don't deserve the grant yet and that we need to have gameplay ready before we will deserve it. There's a lot of projects that do really good art but end up falling off. Allison's Road is one such example. And to be quite frank we're promising the world and we haven't really proved that we can deliver the whole package yet.

We've proven that we've got the art side in the bag. There is no doubt that when this game gets released Our Ghosts of War will offer AAA graphics to the community. But the gameplay is still questionable and I'd prefer for people to get into our Alpha and our Beta and play the thing and post their impressions publicly regarding their experiences. It's then that we'll prove that not only are we capable of making a game with AAA graphics but a game that's good in its own right.

But until then I sadly feel like a beggar asking for a handout rather than a developer asking for a grant. :unsure:

Twitter: [twitter]ourghostsofwar[/twitter]

pixelperfectpolygons

198

Author

August 06, 2016 07:10 PM

Bazooka WIP

Twitter: [twitter]ourghostsofwar[/twitter]

pixelperfectpolygons

198

Author

August 08, 2016 06:11 PM

[COLOR="#FF0000"]It's happening! Bird poop!

Twitter: [twitter]ourghostsofwar[/twitter]

pixelperfectpolygons

198

Author

August 10, 2016 05:20 PM

This our first attempt at an Our Ghosts of War title screen. The music will definitely be replaced. We are experimenting with the kind of ambiance we want to set when players first start up the game. Additional rain and water VFX are being worked on.

Twitter: [twitter]ourghostsofwar[/twitter]

pixelperfectpolygons

198

Author

August 13, 2016 02:57 AM

Twitter: [twitter]ourghostsofwar[/twitter]

pixelperfectpolygons

198

Author

August 14, 2016 08:58 PM

Florian and I review his progress with the German Tiger I tank. We're at the moment going for the most realistic depiction of tank combat we can manage. If this however ends up not being as much fun for players we'll end up toning the simulation aspect down for playability. And as always we would be ever grateful if you could help us get the word out about the game. Thanks for checking us out.