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Vlad Dotsenko - Evolution of Gem2
Recently there has been an increased activity in game development of “Men of War” series and many people ask which engine is used within the different games. The question is not simple to answer, and requires a brief summary of it’s history.
In 2006, the world saw a new game “Face of War”. This can be considered as a first appearance of Gem2, version 2.0. There is a certain conventionality in the version number, because classification of engine versions, as the very same name Gem2, came many years later.
In 2008 a new game, called “Men of War” was released. This game is based on Gem2 engine version 2.1. The main changes from the previous
version included:
- Game interface improvements.
- Improved AI.
- A number of new game features (such as the setting barbed wire and sandbags, carrying corpses and so on).
Then came a long pause. Which lasted for 6 years. A lot of things happened. The most dreadful - Gamespy service, which was used for hosting multiplayer games, ceased to exist.
In autumn 2014 Best Way decided to resume the development of Gem2. The indie project “Battle of Empires 1914-1918” triggered it’s next iteration. The release of this game took place in May 2015, the game at this time used a Gem2 version 2.2.
This version contains a number of significant differences from the previous version (2.1 from 2008):
- Full integration of Steam-services: matchmaking, transport, achievements, cloud, trading cards, workshop, clan chat, vac.
- Autojoin and rankings for multiplayer games.
- Use a free sound library OpenAL Soft instead of commercial Miles Sound System (MSS).
- Powerful package system with automatic adjustment, full localization support, dependencies, integrity checking, built-in hash versions.
- Support for Unicode UTF-8 format.
- Support for partial localization.
- Tools for creating scenario multiplayer games.
- Tools for creating games against AI bots, both single and multiplayer.
- Optimized work with large maps and lots of units.
- Full support for the working folder, important for those who make mods.
- New sky technology.
- Selective game content privacy protection.
- Ceased support for multiplayer games via LAN, which greatly saddened hamachi pirates.
- Steam DRM and some of our own invention, which complicate the life of torrent pirates.
In addition, the “Battle of the Empires 1914-1918” received a number of their own features: horses, field telephone, gas masks, gas and shrapnel ammunition, cutting barbed wire…
And worth noting that this is only a part of the major changes that can be considered remarkable. But that’s not all. For 8 months Gem2 2.2 has received a lot of useful modifications and improvements from its descendant - Gem3.
But the story does not end here. Since the summer of 2015 Best Way is working on a new version Gem2 2.3. This version will be the base platform for upcoming games, such as Gates of Hell.
The work is far from complete, but some features are ready and they are worth mentioning:
- HDR, LUT, gamma-correction.
- Scene depth, which is the basis for the implementation of various post-processes: depth of field, contours, glow, screen space ambient occlusion.
- Composite materials (such as bump-specular) supported in stamps and decals.
- New material bump-specular-lightmap.
- The new game interface.
We’re also working on porting Gem2 to Linux and OSX, and possibly a more extensive list of platforms, which will be featured in the previously stated, version 2.3.