The last days have been rich in different news related to the expected game Stormgate. The developers told new details about the race of infernals, talked with Digital Foundry about the technological side of the project, announced the Matchi show on Dreamhack Atlanta and presented the first hero for the joint regime. In the end, on December 5, a new wave of testing starts.

Infernals

An article dedicated to the race of infernals (officially it is called Infernal Host) has reached IGN.

Infernals have a unique mechanic called Shroud. This "cloud", which spreads around the main building and protective towers. When the units of the infernals are in Shraud, they are gaining a second strip of health (now the developers call it "White health"). Когда юнит выходит из шрауда, то второй хелсбар начинает постепенно обнуляться. Schraud is not needed to build buildings – the building can be built anywhere.

Units of infernals are built instantly, but each building has a limited number "larvae", who are accumulating over time (they are not so called, but just so that it is clear that it is about like the larvae of grains in Starcraft 2). Thus, if you do not build anyone for a long time, then you can instantly build a lot of units at once.

The infernals also have a unique unit called Animus, which they receive for the death of the units (it seems that the death of their own units also go counting). Animus is spent on unique rituals, one of them is the call of a powerful flying dragon.

There are units with posthumous mechanics. Brute, with death (or even on the player’s team), can emerge on two fireds. At its core, Brute is a thick unit for absorption of damage, and fireds are fast and nimble, such as-gorgling. Fields feature is that after the spaun, their health counter begins to automatically zero.

Another basic unit of infranals is called Gaunt. This is a small demon with glefs; Glefs bounce and cause damage to several goals, like chakrums in hunters in Warcraft 3 and how resonating, in fact, glef at adherents in Starcraft 2. Gaunt can sacrifice part of his health in order to impose an Infest temporary effect on the Glaff – enemy units under this effect during death produce one fired.

The previously mentioned mega-Dragon can inhale the effect of Infest from infected enemy units and thereby inflict damage to them, while restoring additional Helsbar to the player’s units.

Unit called Weaver knows how to attract enemy units to itself Aki Viper from Starcraft 2 or Aki Scorpio from Mortal Kombat. Weaver also has high growth and can see on highgound – just like a colossus made of, again, Starcraft 2.

Magmadon looks like a code from Warcraft 3. This powerful and massive unit can make a sprout forward, while scattering enemy units that are in his way. Such a maneuver allows you to quickly overcome the first line with all sorts of dense guys and get to the clergy of casters hiding behind them and other not very dense comrades.

Doombinger is an air transport that can be decomposed on the ground – then a scar appears around it. In a sense, it looks like a prism of Starcraft 2, but only you can’t call on the Duminger Unit, and also "In the layout" He can attack ground units.

Technical side

The guys from Digital Foundry talked with one of the developers named Andrew Sabri, who works on the technical side of the game. We already knew one of the told in the conversation; Something is new information.

As you know, in Stormgate there is a symbiosis of two engines. Everything that the player sees is graphics, animations, and so on, is Unreal Engine 5. All "filling" In the form of all calculations and processing the incoming data lies on the own Snowplay engine.

From the very beginning of Stormgate development, the developers had 4 main components: campaign, joint mode, competitive multiplayer and custom games. None of the engines available on the market was suitable for Stormgate development. For example, there was no engine that would pull hundreds or even thousands of units on the screen. Then it became clear that you need to make your own engine, and so Snowplay appeared.

Starcraft 2 is known that when there are too many units on the screen, the game begins to slow down noticeably. In Stormgate, the developers tried to solve this problem and make a game simulation of a more optimized. The ultimate goal is to make the simulation speed about three times higher than in Starcraft 2. All decisions in terms of the engine are aimed at achieving this goal. The team tries to achieve the most responsive gameplay even with a large number of units on the screen.

In terms of the path of searching for the track, the task was "make at least no worse than in Starcraft 2". In this regard, Stormgate still has something to work on, but the game is now much more productive than SC2.

Developers are experimenting with the latest Unreal technologies and watch if they find a place in the game. At the moment, work with Niagara technology is actively underway, which allows you to achieve an impressive level of visual effects. In the next few months, it is planned to work with Nanite technology and see what can be done with its help. Lumen technology, which allows you to make cool lighting effects, did not work out-it is designed for games from the 1st or 3rd person, but in RTS it is not realized with a view from above.

FGS carefully ensures that PC performance does not affect the honesty of the competitive component of the game and all testing is carried out on relatively weak computers.

The fact that developers have a lot of experience helps a lot. They initially know what functionality they want to have in various game components, and create their own code taking into account these purposes.

Stormgate is the first RTS with support for Rollback technology, which was first applied in the games in the game in playing. Rollback allows you to predict what teams the game will receive from the player in the next seconds right during the game. Thus, if the teams for some reason come with a delay, then the game does not need to slow down. If the resulting team differs from the predicted one, then the game is very, very quickly rolling back the simulation.

Two problems with the introduction of Rollback technology compared to fighting fights: RTS has more units and, accordingly, you need to process more information. At the moment, the operation of the Rollback in games is practically not noticeable. Nevertheless, sometimes situations arise in which small artifacts or errors occur on the screen on the screen. For example, unit seems to die, but instantly appears back – this happens very quickly, but you can notice it. Another example is when the animation of the spotlight is triggered, but the projectile itself then almost instantly disappears. But in general, this happens much less often than the developers feared, and in the vast majority of cases, the artifacts of the work of Rollback are almost invisible.

The main plus of Rollback – the game becomes much more responsive. One of the players testing Stormgate once played from a hotel with a bad Internet and said that everything was very cool and smooth. The notorious Parting said that Rollback is generally great, the game speaks noticeably better at the player’s teams. But not everything is perfect, some players just have difficulties because of the Rollback.

Developed FGS Rollback for RTS can work with any engine. Perhaps in the future the studio will provide this technology for other developers. If it comes to the second part of Stormgate or some other game from FGS, then they will already have a ready-made rollback in their hands, which, again, can be used with any engine.

In terms of system requirements – the development is not yet completed, so there is no way to say for sure. But it will definitely need Windows 10, but preferably higher. The processor is preferably more powerful, in particular for the Rollback – the more powerful the processor, the more frames you can translate in a unit of time. It would be good for a six -core processor: one core for Snowplay, the remaining five for Unreal Engine. Clock frequency in 2.3 GHz gives fairly good performance. At least 16 GB of RAM – with all its advantages, UE5 greedy before memory. Judging by what is observed on testing, the video card will require a minimum of the level of GTX 1060 or like that.

Andrew Sabri separately noted that it is very cool that Frost Giant can optimize in parallel with the development of the game – in many other projects on optimization they begin to work last.

Snowplay works on one stream. It is already very fast, plus if the flow is only one, then it is much easier to observe determinism.

Frost Giant introduced DLSS support in the game. "This is just magic – of course, if your video card supports this technology". Perhaps support will also appear in the game for other technologies for scaling an image like FSR.

The developers do not use the Landscape tools available in Unreal Engine 5, since there is a goal to make different types of surfaces available in the game editor. Therefore, I had to make my own landscape editor and its own trigger editor.

All gaming synemats – on the engine.

The in -game editor will allow players to make their own games "inside" Stormgate.

Dreamhack Atlanta December 17

On the tournament in America on December 17, the first stormgate show-matches will be held. Ivent visitors will be able to play the game right there. Plus there will be discussion meetings with developers and distribution of keys for beta, which starts on December 5.

Also:

• December 7 at The Game Awards will show a new trailer.
• The third game faction is promised to show in early 2024.

More developers showed the first hero for a joint regime. Recall that there will be no heroes in the competitive multiplayer, but in the coop – please.

Actually, comrade is the name of Blockade, and he is a kind of high -tech paladin. He knows how to break into the thick of the battle from the jump, spin and apply to all others the damage, treat allies and teleport. Light gives him strength, all things.

Also on December 5, the Stormgate page will appear on Kickstarter. Those who support the game will be able to get the keys to Bete (the number limited) and other buns in the form of the Collector’s Edition publication and the Founder’s Pack recruitment. The developers separately note that Kickstarter is needed only to encourage the additional content of the players who want to support the game; Stormgate financing does not experience problems.