Hello everyone,

remember the guy who leaked the Wargaming translation process? He’s back! This time, with even more interesting info from Wargaming kitchen – having access to internal WG network including discussions is very useful for WG workers, not so useful when you have to deal with a disgruntled employee…

Here’s what he wrote:

The Weather

While the development of XboX WoT is relatively independent on the WoT PC version, there are some features that the developers want in both games. The idea of weather was set in motion some time ago with a test of the principle on PC version, with following test beds:

- snowstorms on city maps (Himmelsdorf, Severogorsk, Windstorm) – this was quite a long time ago, Windstorm was not implemented yet at that point and was still only a concept

- sandstorms od desert maps (tested on Sand River)

- night battles on Karelia, Westfield, Malinovka

The weather was basically set on a timer during the test, for example the sandstorm started 7,5 to 10 minutes into the match and would last till the end of the match. In other test rounds, the effect was there from the start. The test was done mostly for serverside calculations and lacked any good visuals. As a result, it looked like the tanks were disappearing on field of Malinovka 70 meters from you. As a result, the weather was put on ice and the tests will apparently be resumed once Havok is implemented on PC. On Xbox, the weather project was implemented successfully. The original formula was simply that the sandstorm/snowstorm/night time would decrease visibility by 50/65/40%, but these numbers were for testing purposes only and are completely arbitrary (won’t be used).

There was actually one specific result of this weather test – Winter Himmelsdorf, it was decided that instead of waiting for the snow weather effect, it would be implemented straight away and the feedback on that map was very positive.

Physics, Visuals and “Huge Migration”

Developers are preparing the client for something called “huge migration”, basically, if I understand it correctly, a massive physics update. This has not been released yet including visuals because there are currently issues with the way lighting works in the game. On some new models, lighting doesn’t display properly and the developers want to fix that first. One of the main issues is the fact that on some models (American T34) the lighting makes them look “plastic”, because the surfaces reflect the light incorrectly.

More HD models are being worked on, nothing too special there, but apparently there is an issue with the Soviet IS tank texture mapping on the “base of the turret”. The order HD models are being worked on is: Suspension – Tracks – Sides – Front – Rear – Hull – Turret- Bottom. Three or so developers work on every model and a fourth or fifth “assembles” the entire model, which creates some issues, when the collision and visual model did not match, gaps were left in the model etc.

There is even now a bug with something with the bottom of the textures of the tank, I haven’t really understood what it is about, but it will be fixed once the models are re-made into HD.

Flipping tanks

This part is problematic because without knowing the context, it’s hard to imagine what the developers had in minnd.

The issue above with the tank bottom is tied to the flipping of tanks. Developers stated that – and I quote: “weight baseline 1.8 times extended via kinetic force more than the target tank to actually make it “flip”, a high speed collision will NOT flip a tank unless it exceeds 5 times the kinetic force of the tank weight multiplied” (if a medium tank collides with ELC at full speed, the ELC will not be sent flying, but will be destroyed and will be sent back a couple of meters, not with salto or anything). To flip a tanks needs something called “lever point”, which is not found on tanks, but on their tracks (in order to “save server bandwidth” – not sure why would that help). That is why when you get bad lags, you can see the hull sinking into the ground, but the tracks stay on the ground – as it is now, the tracks and suspension “hold the kinetic force of the tank”, this is also the cause for some of the “tank jumping” you can sometimes see in funny videos. The tank weight must be surpassed by the kinetic force to make it flip (you simply need more weight and power to flip the enemy, you can actually combine forces with a friend to flip someone).

Bots

It takes 25 bot reports per day (within 24 hours) to make support staff check someone for botting. The response time of a mod however can be up to a week. Daily, WG RU recieves 17500 bot reports via “player is a bot” report function within the game, less than 3 percent of those however are confirmed as real bots and resetted and banned

The rest are interesting tidbits as well:

- the next minicampaign reward will likely be the Grosstraktor

- World of Tanks Xbox will apparently be selling a Super Pershing “Freedom bundle” with a very special skin for the Super Pershing (American flag, basically a pretty wild scheme), but the kicker is, the crew will be 100 percent trained with a 100 percent Brothers in Arms perk, tank with full equipment (rammer, stabilizer, gun laying drive?) and 20 cans of soda – once per account, the cost is apparently set at cca 50 USD – it’s possible that this was actually Microsoft’s idea, but this is not confirmed.

- icy terrain might be reworked a bit, still in primary testing phase, the idea is to somewhat reduce the handling and braking force, not like the War Thunder “skating”

- speaking of War Thunder, when Ground Forces were released, Storm and one other WG Minsk producer went to check it out, they noted the “sliding” of the tanks as not good (“tanks looks like are skidding on ice all the time”) and it is difficult to keep them going in one direction, but they did like the large maps

- developers want to make a new jungle map based on South America, but they don’t want “another Dragon Ridge”, still in concept phase now

- apparently, talking about Ukraine is banned at WG. There is a clan openly officially supporting the Ukraine separatists on RU server, WG doesn’t know what to do with them, they will apparently be banned if they start “politics” in the game

- apparently, currently it’s vacation time in Minsk, the development of WoWs was sped up a bit by transferring someone to the team

- it is considered to implement “fun modes” (Karl, football) into WoT permanently or as purchasable content