The official Vth_F_Smith blog

.....granted in reality (yep, something like that still exists) this would definitely be a rather „unfortunate“ event („Nobody hates war more than a soldier!“) but I'm curious to see Michael De Platter's version since the first moment I've heard / seen of it. The game has much potencial and with Michael in charge, the right man is at the right place, I think. I never played any of the Total War games (Rome is not really part of my area of interest) but I've seen / read various previews and judging on the gameplay, it definitely has a veeeeeery nice strategic depth. So, if you take this strategic depth, and recall that former GR veterans, SC veterans and even R6 veterans are part of the developer team, chances that this game will definitely rock are pretty high, right?

I guess that was one of my reasons why I spend wednesday's evening with Photoshop doing an artwork based on End War (it's either that or my Lemon-Ice-Tea-&-Latte-Macchiatto poisened brain had a short moment of which it believed it could be cleverness). So I made some screenshots from the first trailer and used them for the artwork. After that I did some corrections on the general (face, skin color etc.) and it was ready. I think it turned out pretty nicely. Oh, by the way, I noticed something while making the artwork: The general who is sacrificing himself at the end of the End War trailer, (Insert a random patriotic phrase here!) is named Smith! Well, if that isn't a good omen....! I mean, the creators of the video (Quebec anyone?) seemed not to have the best day when they worked on the face (eyes are veeery small and the folds around the mouth are....strange....but I think you can overlook that, if you focus on the rest of the very impressive trailer.

I'll most likely use the artwork on the WNM Online teaser website, which slowly but steady evolves to what I always wanted it to be. There are already lots of news available, so if you like (and you're capable of reading German) pay it a visit, I'm sure my team (and of course myself as well) will welcome you! ;)

Oh, btw: We're also working on an english version of WNM-Online, so if you're interested to help spread the word, do some translations etc. and show your support to the (platform independant) Tom Clancy gamers out there, feel free to get in contact with W[N]M Jackie, using our contact form on the site.

"Stay stealthy!" :)

...........WNM Online.

"Worldwide news (about Tom Clancy powered games) on your finger tips!"

The latest news, downloads, reviews, previews, lists to all sites that could interesst you, podcast and more about the Tom Clancy Video- & Computergames.

Stay tuned (for more informations) and stay stealthy! ;)

Wait kids, don't fight I'm both and I still can't believe it.

8 hours....maybe even more....no I think it really took 8 hours to get to the offices of Ubisoft Germany and back, but it was worth the way - oh geez it was soooo damn worth the way. I mean think about it, you get more than just a glimpse of what happends behind the scenes. You get to know a lot more about the games. You learn more about the company and all the teams and productive employees but most of all you're able to move something because you're finally in a position which enables you, to have more direct contact to those, who make a lot of important decisions and you can do a lot of good things for the community that way - well I guess that's why they call it community management! :)

I still can't believe it and I'd like to thank all those beautiful people, who made that possible or who gave me the support (or shall I say the "kick in a specific body part") which I needed. Thank you all and I'll try my best to make sure you won't regret it. However all you out there, don't worry, even this temporary job won't change a thing - I'll still stay who I am and won't forget my roots as a gamer and as a fan! :)

A wise man once said:

"Never forget where you came from, because if you never do that then there is literally no way you can't go!"

Stay stealthy guys & girls! :)

Ok here's a bit of new info & constructive critic:

As I previously said, I can't share the entire video (yes, I know that sucks), but I can give you a few screenshots and also some other kind of info. In the latest screenshot which I posted yesterday you can see how the hacking in the new versus mode is going to look like. Because of the fact that I know, that such a screenshot only gives a limited amount of info, I decided to use a bit of my flash skills and reproduce the new spy HUD for you. At the top of this blog you see the upper part of the spy HUD, which seems to display data like "Players and objective status" while at the link section of this blog you see a flash movie that is an as exact as possible, reproduction of the animation you're going to see as soon as you try to hack something inside the SvM mode. Looks pretty cool, huh? ;)

A few IMO important things about a multiplayer

Well let's have a look at other multiplayer games like for example CS, UT, PK, Doom3, CoD, GR or BF in order to see what is needed to make a multiplayer as successful as possible.

1. A damn good, balanced, fluid gameplay - preferably innovative. Ok SC always had this so "Check".

2. Interesting & cool looking characters. Check.

3. Cool graphics. The hell of a check.

4. A Dedicated mapping / modding community. Check (but it's still underestimated and not as well supported as it should / could be).

5. A short as possible learning curve which makes it easier for newbies to learn the game's mechanics but doesn't take the complexity out of the game. Check (at least since SCDA seems to offer that).

6. A newcomer (newbie) friendly community

Well, we definitely gotta work on this point I guess, but SCDA's gameplay seems to encourage a newbie friendly behaviour (which is a good thing). We need to take newbies by the hand and PATIENTLY explain to them the mechanics of the game and answer their questions instead of vaporizing them whenever it's possible (happens far too often and unfortunately often are game "veterans" or so called "pro's" involved which is so "non-pro"). In order to become more newbie friendly we should also try to get rid of the "Damn, I lost the merc round, now I'll close the server before the spy round starts" or "Yeah, I won the spy round, now I'll close the server, before his / her spy round" aka "STFU N00b" mentality because that's also scaring potential new gamers away and that's nothing Ubi can work on, but something WE as the community have to work on. If we manage to do this and get finally a real kind of sportsmanship into the community then we'll see how fast the community will grow (other games proved that).

To sum it up:

So far almost everything seems to be there (or at least is on it's way) what a good multiplayer game needs, BUT there are some factors of which I hope Ubi will pay more attention to before (or at least shortly after) the release of SCDA and which - according to my experiences and talks with gamers from all around the world and all kind of games - are considered by the majority as extremely important for a game's success when it comes to multiplayer games or games in general:

1. A dedicated standalone server that requires no videocard to run (doesn't have to be there on release if the schedule is tight but should be delivered as fast as possible after release).

2. A really good support (means bugfixes / exploit fixes of things which really have an influence to the gameplay).

3. Optional anti cheat / anti exploit measures - I can't stress this enough anti cheat / exploit measures are a very important part of the life line of a game. The best way would be (at least in my opinion):

The game's AC system checks all config files / texture files for filesize or changes and if the files of the client don't match the files of the server then he / she can't join the game. This way it's fair for everyone. Grin's Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter (PC) clearly demonstrates that.

4. A SDK (Self Development Kit) or at least a fully functional editor for all the modders / mappers out there because they belong to the people who really keep the game alive (besides the regular multiplayer and casual multiplayer gamers of course) and expand the community size (Ubi's Ghost Recon 1 and GRAW on the PC as well as all the other games I mentioned above proved that).

5. A demo recorder (also often refered to as "replay") which records all the online matches, saves them to the player's hard drive so these can then easily be shared with others who also have the game (something like the BF2 Battle Recorder or the demo record function of CS). Such a function is possible with the SCX engine, Ubi Montreal proved it with the fact, that you were able to record "rolling demos" of the Chaos Theory's single player and then view them via a simple batch file. If it is possible in the single player then it should also be possible in the multiplayer because it's the same working principle. The only thing that would be necessary to change, would be to make it work in the multiplayer and create a userfriendly version of it. For example, the player could toggle it on or off with a click of a button inside the main menue (something like "auto. record each match") or at least via console command (CS like) but looking at the versus mode in SCDA, I'm more than confident that this shouldn't be a problem for Annecy to pull off. I do understand that they have a very tight schedule, but if that function isn't already part of the game because of a tight schedule, then it should come with one of the first two patches / downloadable content since demo replays are often used as anti cheat protection, to simply study the tactics of a "combatant" in order to develop counter tactics, to show off the game mechanics or for clan training purposes ("Why didn't the tactic work? Who made what kind of mistake and what needs to be improved in order to make the tactic more efficient")?.

I hope that the devs will be working on these few points because I believe the SC franchise and it's fans are worth it (they're very dedicated to this game, as you know). I also believe that there's a great amount of potential inside the community, the game, it's developers and it's players, now let's activate this potential and turn this into the best & most successful game / community ever (in order to reach that, every side will have to work on it - gamers AND developers / publishers, but I believe we are able to pull it off and that it'll be profitable for both sides)!

Stay stealthy & live long and prosper! :)

Well, I can't say I didn't know something like that was going to happen, but everywhere I am - doesn't matter if in the official forums or in an IM, I get messages like this "SMITH, PLEASE POST THE VIDEO". I understand how much you guys (and girls) are waiting for new infos / screenshots & movies but please listen closely:

If I would be able to give you the entire video file, I would do that without a nano second of hesitation, however things are a bit more complex than you might think. Since the entire video file is part of the content of a German pc game magazine's DVD (which is going to officially come out either this or next week) it won't be possible - unless I want risk getting sued by it's publisher (and I certainly don't want to) since they would loose sales if I'd do so. MAYBE I will be able to get a green light for a small part of the stuff, but I won't rip the entire video from the DVD and put myself in legal harm. I know that you won't be happy about this, but please accept it.

My intention was to give you all something you can talk about and since most of you can't get legal access to the video, I wanted to give you at least some screenshots from it - I know it's not much but it's all I can do at the moment.

About the short video:

I created the short video which some of you might have seen, as some kind of teaser in order to inform the people about the exclusive content, the magazine will have to offer and to show you that it's still possible in SCDA to sneak up on mercs and grab them since some people had their doubts about that as well as to demonstrate how detailed the new models are since my wish is to keep you all informed as good as possible. You can see an example of my efforts here - I always keep this thread up to date.

So please stop asking for the entire video and instead enjoy the latest funny clip from Ubisoft Shanghai ("Don't try this at home, kids")! :)

EDIT: Speaking of green light - I can at least give you this video.

Don't forget: Stay stealthy! ;)