A: I am Teut Weidemann, Chief of Staff and Operations Officer (Managing Director and Game Designer). I am faced with hundreds of little things daily for each crew member. Imagine 8 Programmers and 6 Artists and 4 others people asking you what to do, in detail. Additionally you need to coordinate those people as some of them can't work until another is finished with his work. Of course there are hundreds of requests coming in from other sources too, starting with marketing, magazines, fans and business partners.

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Q: With games like Counter-Strike and America’s Army, gamers have the chance to play either a fast pace action game, or more of a realistic and strategic game. Which type of game is Soldner and why did the team move in this direction?.

A: When we started Söldner we were certain not to be as fast as Counter Strike, we wanted to balance action with thinking, with tactics. So see us on the Americas Army side, but slightly faster, slightly less "Simulation".

We moved in this direction for personal preference, and simply because we "old" man can't move as fast as we used to ;) No, really, we always hated when good tactics were totally useless in many games simply because god like reflexes were simply superior. Don't get me wrong, thats part of the fun, but should be balanced with other gameplay elements.

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Q: At E3 I had the chance to see Soldner at it’s earlier stages. Though impressive, it seemed to have some funny bugs (little gravity implemented, some sound issues) and some work was still needed. How does Soldner look now, and when can gamers expect a full fledged demo in both Europe and the States?.

A: Remember that the E3 version was pulled out of Development without specially preparing for E3 simply because we don't have the time. Söldner is enhanced on a weekly basis with better looks, gameplay, features and stability as we approach 100% feature complete. We did improve some graphical issues since E3 like shadows, grass, and weather, along with lights and shading, plus some extra texture work. The physics were upgraded and lost some of its "funny" side effects like bouncy weapons or wiggling units. That’s all gone now. Sound was in its early stages on E3 and now has progressed a lot towards finishing it, and we just had music coming in which sounds awesome.

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Q: Soldner offers gamers a plethora of vehicles (tanks, planes, choppers etc…) to take over. With so many vehicles in the game, things might tend to get confusing. How has the team been able to create all of these vehicles and still keep the frustration level to a low?.

A: Well, first realize that a mission or multiplayer game never has all of them at once. Of course we look forward to battles with all unit TYPES in it, thats what Söldner is all about. But we balanced those unit types so that the Soldier still has its place. A Jet in typical computer games is an awesome powerful weapon from a soldiers point of view. But do Jets really do one on one combat with single soldiers? No they don't, simply because due to their speed they don't or rarely see individual soldiers on the field. They need targets being assigned by ground spotters or commanders to fight efficiently, and usually targets are buildings or locations, not ground units. Thats exactly what we did in Söldner. You need ground spotters to paint your targets with lasers or electronic means to fight effieciently. Fighting Helicopters and other jets of course doesn't need that. See the whole thing as this: Soldier fights everyone, Vehicles fight Soldiers, Helicopters fight Vehicles, Jets fight Helicopters and Vehicles.

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Q: With so many people anxious to get into a vehicle. How are the programmers combating the lag the might ensue during a game?.

A: A single vehicle doesn't cause much more lag than a single soldier. Issues only come up when more than one soldier is inside a vehicle, like a driver, gunner and machine gunner. But three soldiers is doable, as they are all moving in the same direction the only data being updated is the tanks actions. It’s really a question of implementation. Also remember that most vehicles need to be bought in the game, they are not standing around or spawning "from the sky" like in other games.

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Q: One thing that Soldner boasts that other games don’t is the new destruction system. How detailed is the system? Will it be realistic? Will we be able to shoot through doors, create ditches to fight in, and take cover under broken down houses, or will the land “magically” restore itself after awhile?.

A: Whoa, one thing at a time :) We do allow destruction of everything and tried to go a balanced way between realism and network traffic/game speed. We differ three different destruction types:

Terrain: craters are the only thing which changes terrain. Craters are only caused by big weapons like bombs or large explosions, otherwise network traffic would be too severe.
Trees/Poles (Flags, Streetlamps): they simply fall over when hit by a vehicle or near an explosion and further get destroyed totally when another explosion effects them
Houses: this is the key system which makes Söldner special. Houses can be destroyed section by section. When you shoot a house it will really get destroyed at that hit location. Of course there are limits, as each section which can be destroyed has a minimum size of roughly 2x2 meters. I'll explain the system in more detail in the next developer diary.

All three together will change the landscape during a battle, which changes the cover for you. This means you need to adapt tactics constantly. No 100% secure places for camping in maps, no hideouts which are 100% secure, everything can be shot to hell. After some rounds of a MP game the terrain is so destroyed and blackened that team gameplay has to adapt to the new tactical situations all the time.

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Q: Something else gamers will find out in Soldner is that they finally have the ability to customize their own outfits. This seems like a great feature for clans to get into. How does it work and what, if any, are the limitations?.

A: The system we call UCS (Unit Customization System) was born when we saw the limitations of skins and modifications of them. I simply looked like some other guy in those games. I don't want that, especially if I am member of a clan. We looked at MMO (Massive Online Games) like Ultima Online how cool it is to customize your outfits in detail. We simply took a system like this and implemented it for tactical shooters.

It works in parts: each soldier 3d model is divided into head, upper torso, lower torso with legs, hands and feet. This way you can pick your trousers individually from your jacket, face, hands and boots. Of course that meant that each jacket has to fit each lower body, but that compromise was ok but a lot of work. That’s the reason why we delay the female UCS to a later time, it would have tripled our work on that single feature.

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Q: Explain the mapping system a bit. Since there is only one map in Soldner what is being done to keep the game and action fresh? Will we see things like snow, rain, and fog effects?.

A: The huge map has variations of course. Northern areas are constantly covered in snow, southern areas are more summer like. We have open tundra, hilly regions, mountains and coastal areas, each different in population and village/city sizes. This combined creates a lot of different combat areas alone. Now add our weather system which creates different visibility levels by fog, cloud layers, rain, and snow and you triple that number.

For Multiplayer we will offer some areas prepared for multiplayer modes by default. But as a server op you can mark ANY area of the huge map to be your game area for that multiplayer mode you want to play. This means that we ourselves will be surprised sometimes by the cool areas people find on the map. Imagine that: we create the game but do not know each area of the huge map, it’s simply too big!

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Q: Every online game seems to suffer from wall hacks, cheats, and invisibility codes. Is there anything being done to keep Soldner from becoming one of those games?.

A: Söldner will at some point suffer from hackers and cheaters, that cannot be prevented. However what we can prevent is that those cheats last long and destroy the online game. We have implemented various methods to detect cheats which I will not reveal simply because that would guide hackers directly to them. We also update the game once or twice a month with our auto patch system. The updates will add new weapons, goodies and gameplay stuff, but will also make sure that cheats are eliminated and new protection methods against hackers are being activated or built in.

For official clan-war servers or ladder servers we also think of a verification system, where we will verify the consistency of the server code and clients connecting to it. But that’s something we discuss with the various e-sports organizations out there after release.

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Q: Finally, from your own personal experience, what’s the best part you’ve witnessed in Soldner?.

A: When we played a huge map (conquest) including all types of vehicles I saw far away a helicopter fighting a series of vehicles with guided missiles. That alone looked cool enough, but as the landscape deteriorated around that battle and some big houses collapsed I knew our ADS system worked like a charm. The helicopter was blown out of the sky seconds later and dropped to earth, and when I saw people cheering on the chat I knew they were having fun, lots of fun :)

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