Feb 11, 2022

New Pro Washer Skin & Map Mystery - Dev Log 44

PowerWash Simulator - Josh FuturLab

Hey everyone - welcome to dev log 44!

This week we'll take a look at the first skin for the Professional washer and mystery teasers of a new career job coming in Update 0.8 (4 are coming in total). We also hope to have more info on a time frame to share with you all soon and some progress on other areas coming with this update!

Last week we asked for feedback from those who have suffered from motion sickness in the game, the submissions so far have been incredibly helpful, thank you! We also looked at the different shades of gloves coming for those wanting more clothing control! Full dev log 43 here: https://steamcommunity.com/games/1290000/announcements/detail/3132818923050869740

Carbon Skin

People have been asking for customisation to the Pro washer since it was released and we're happy to announce a new skin in this upcoming update!

Behold!

We hope you like it and can't wait for you to switch things up!

There are more skins coming for the Pro in future updates seeing as it has become the de-facto default power washer for those further into the game and revisiting older levels.

What's That Level?

It's speculation time. Here are some close-up, and maybe slightly obscured shots of one of the four career jobs coming in the next update. Can you name what it is? Give us your best and worst guesses in the comments section below!

Seriously though... what is that?

Weekly PowerWash Sim Meme Template

We release a blank meme format for people to create their own memes on. These are created by our marketing artist Cristina and are based on popular memes with our player models.

This week's template is 'Sad PowerWashcobar,' feel free to use/caption this or edit as you'd like!

https://imgflip.com/memegenerator/369952465/Sad-PowerWashcobar

As always, these drop every Monday on Twitter at 2 PM GMT! (We also share them early in Discord)

That's all folks!

Thanks so much for tuning in this week! We'll have many more teasers next week and a time frame for the update soon!

Join our Discord to submit and vote on ideas for PowerWash Simulator, find other players, and more!

---> https://discord.com/invite/powerwashsimulator

Keep up with everything PowerWash Simulator by following our channels:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/PowerWashSim
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Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/powerwashsim
PWS Wiki: https://powerwash-simulator.fandom.com/wiki/PowerWash_Simulator_Wiki

Feb 11, 2022

SITREP: Gear Authenticity

Six Days in Fallujah - AmperCamper

“You're running with 100 lbs of gear on your back at full speed in a sprint, while you're taking machine gun fire. And the whole time, you're looking straight ahead, but you're also looking down to make sure your feet are still moving below you.” — LCpl James Maxey

Authenticity stands at the core of the experience we’re building in Six Days in Fallujah. More than 100 Marines, Soldiers, and Iraqi civilians who were present during the Second Battle of Fallujah entrusted their stories with us so we could have the opportunity to share them with the rest of the world. It’s an opportunity we intend to get right, and so it’s become our responsibility to develop a game that’s both rooted in realism and unlike anything that’s come before.

Of course, developing the most authentic military shooter to date requires countless amounts of reference material. For Six Days in Fallujah, we’ve gathered thousands of photographs and hundreds of videos to accurately portray the people, places, and objects from this period of history. Alongside our growing archive of media, we actively collaborate with consultants for verification checks. These consultants live around the world, from California to Cairo, Boston to Baghdad.

With reference photos and videos in our pocket and consultants on deck, we also purchase surplus military gear and clothing from the Middle East to use as tangible reference material for our artists. We achieve more accurate results with these references in-hand almost every single time. As a result, our gear is as close to real-world material as technology allows us to be.

However, some of the equipment featured in our earlier marketing assets were not exact. We want to take this opportunity to thank our community for highlighting these inaccuracies so we can showcase the improvements today and provide additional context. In some cases, you’ll find elements adjusted for gameplay. For example, baggier clothing causes for sloppy animations, and so a Marine’s gear may appear tighter fitting than in some of our reference material. This allows the team to tighten character animations for an improved player experience.

Please remember that all assets shown are currently a work-in-progress.

We know how passionate community feedback was on Marine headgear, and so we’ll start with helmets. In 2004, there were at least three different helmets being fielded by the USMC—the Cold War era PASGT, the newer and improved USMC Lightweight Helmet, and the even more streamlined Advanced Combat Helmet. What’s more, Special Operations units were fielding newer MICH helmets during this period as well. As you can imagine, all this variation caused for some confusion. We took a look at community feedback and sought after additional helmet models at the studio. From there, a complete remodel of Marine headgear was underway.

The model and remodel processes pose a few challenges. First, every piece of art is interconnected in a long chain. Any tweaks or adjustments made have a good chance of affecting other pieces of this puzzle. Assets are continuously passed back and forth between character artists, animators, and technical artists to meet authenticity goals both outside and inside of the game engine. There have been cases in which equipment models were identical to our reference material, until they were imported into Unreal. It’s a very dynamic process, and we want to commend our entire art team for the long hours dedicated to getting the details right. Now, our players can rest assured knowing our base Marine character wears a USMC LWH with a more accurate upward curve at the back.

Next up are our flak jackets, or plate carriers. As it turns out, one of our references was a bit too new. The USMC had made some subtle changes between the time of the battle and when we took photos of Marines at Camp Pendleton shortly afterward. Upon realizing we needed to “go back in time” to get closer to the real thing, we acquired the correct Interceptor Body Armor vest. From there, our artists went back to work in a similar fashion to our helmet rework. Now, our flak jackets are more authentic with fewer molle webbing rows.

Let’s talk about the variety of pouches featured in Six Days as we received some community feedback on coloring. After digging into more reference material (some of which was provided by the community), we’ve found different levels of color variation. In some cases, magazine pouches were colored coyote tan. In others, they were woodland. Instead of a “one size fits all” solution to coloring, we’re now including multiple variations to paint a more accurate picture as a whole.

DEVELOPER COMMENT:
Part of our design pipeline uses recolors on our models. We identified an issue in which colors tended to wash out, and we'd lose details from the base texture that was not making its way to the end with the recolor. Now, our new recolor tech is immensely more accurate in terms of color chroma to the actual colors used in factory camouflage patterns and fabric. Taking things one step further, we even aged them slightly as Marines were not typically wearing anything that was 100% fresh off the military quartermaster.

On the topic of hydration pouches, we appreciate the conversations regarding the standard issue versus the CamelBak. However, we decided to go with something similar to the CamelBak for a few reasons. While Marines were given standard issue hydration carriers and canteens, most found themselves wanting more to work with. They often brought their own CamelBaks (alongside personal goggles and sunglasses) into the field. Some Marines we spoke with even preferred the CamelBak to the standard issue! In fact, "CamelBak Products says its sales figures over the last decade indicate that 80 percent of military personnel in the gulf have the backpacks” (source, 2003).

We received some feedback on the shaping of dump pouches, and we want to provide more context on our design decisions. We intentionally designed these to be open-top for animation purposes, as emptied magazines will fall towards the dump pouch to be disregarded.

There has also been community interest in equipment durability, and we want to take this opportunity to tease our progress. Our artists have the ability to control the dirt intensity on faces and equipment as players complete operations. This “dirtiness” is tailored to support our very specific pieces of gear as players will even find dirt along folds, crevices, and straps. There’s more work to be done on this feature, but we hope this drives authenticity even farther for our players.

Authenticity in every aspect, including gear and equipment, is fundamental to the entire team working on Six Days in Fallujah. We are committed to getting the details right as we share the stories of those who were there In 2004. Another big thank you goes out to our community for sharing the feedback necessary to help make these visual changes to gear happen. As we continue development, we welcome this same feedback as we work to improve our game every step of the way.

Feb 11, 2022

SITREP: Global Dynamic Lighting

Six Days in Fallujah - AmperCamper

"When you’re going through these houses, it’s dark—there’s no electricity. And they know you’re coming. They’re hiding in the dark, waiting on you."—SSgt Paul Starner

Traditionally, most game engines “pre-bake” their lighting. While this approach can yield strong visual quality, it comes at the cost of a static game world—sunlight, shadows, lamps, and most other lights are all fixed from start to finish. Of course, in the real world, light and shadow can change constantly—and this often has a huge impact on combat.

Marines, Soldiers, and civilians didn’t have the luxury of memorization and trial and error when navigating Fallujah. In Six Days in Fallujah, players don’t either. And so, we sought a solution that would compete with baked lighting in visual fidelity but also offer the flexibility needed to match our gameplay goals. We arrived at Global Dynamic Lighting.

Even something as simple as clouds moving across the sky can change player visibility. As the clouds reposition across the sky, the intensity and distribution of light also changes across the game world. Ultimately, this affects how the player’s eyes adapt to this light.

Take the two screenshots above as an example. In the first, intense sunlight creates very specific and targeted areas of visibility. However, the increasing cloudiness in the second screen distributes light more evenly, exposing insurgents who would otherwise be hidden. In other conditions, clouds might hide these threats.

Global Dynamic Lighting combines with another Six Days innovation—Procedural Architecture. As we announced earlier this year, Six Days in Fallujah re-shapes the architecture inside and outside of buildings each time you play. With ever-changing lighting, and buildings that change shape every time you play, you can never predict what’s about to happen. Even if the same map is replayed over and over, you’re always going in blind—just like actual combat.

DEVELOPER COMMENT:
Let’s examine a case using Team Fortress 2's popular map, Badwater Basin. If you’ve never played TF2, you still probably recognize the map. If you were a regular, you likely played it with your eyes closed. A community member modded the map, leaving players very disoriented afterwards. Most were convinced the actual geometry of the map had changed, when in actuality, the modder simply rotated the angle of the sun by 180 degrees. Areas that used to be in shadow were now fully lit. Subconsciously, players were using lighting as a means for map memorization. There was little strategy involved—simply choose the light path versus the dark one after leaving spawn.

Global Dynamic Lighting peaks with outdoor environments in direct sunlight. With an open canvas during middle parts of the day, the scene isn’t overly complicated and approximating sunlight becomes less challenging. To achieve exterior authenticity, we found the exact position of sun during the first day of Operation Phantom Fury. Plotting this data to a curve with accurate height and angles, we mapped the complete arc of the sun for this entire period. With this, we possess the ability to dramatically change gameplay scenes by simply changing the angle of the sun. All on a realistic trajectory.

However, interior lighting poses more of a challenge. While other titles can completely separate interior and exterior levels, Six Days doesn’t have this luxury because players move seamlessly between houses. Marines were constantly moving between bright, wide-open outdoor spaces and dark, claustrophobic interior rooms throughout this battle. So, our interiors needed the lighting contrast and visual fidelity traditionally offered with baked lighting. But, just like our outdoor lighting, Procedural Architecture means our indoor lighting also had to be dynamic because the walls, furniture, windows, and other indoor components can change every time you play. So, we had to create our own unique dynamic lighting system.

With this Global Dynamic Lighting system, we have more creative control over Six Days. As shown in the video below, the transition from interiors to exteriors can be blinding and create various degrees of stress when being fired upon. This lack of visibility requires you to devise new tactics before entering many buildings. On the other side, moving from a bright afternoon into a dark basement can drive feelings of claustrophobia. On both accounts, the player walks into each scenario feeling unsettling emotions—uncertainty, hesitation, and fear.

Lighting, or lack thereof, is as much of a threat as enemy insurgents. You’re fighting the darkness as well as the boogieman, one just as relentless as the other. While the enemy is clearly discernible in other shooters, dark-clothed insurgents lurking in the shadows are entirely different entities. At its core, it’s a different fight with different strategies the player may employ. In one case, you may see muzzle flash firing from a doorway in the distance. In another, swinging ceiling lights may indicate enemy movement. Do you shoot blindly, expunging crucial ammo, toggle your flashlight for more clarity at the cost of your position, or simply hold and wait?

With Global Dynamic Lighting, time of day is no longer a development obstacle, as we are also featuring night operations in the game. Lighting plays a significant role here, with flares being deployed to light the area of operations. We have the ability to move these flares as needed as they fall, without any inconsistencies in world shadows. As you know, flares are not a consistent source of light, and the player returns to a dark night in Fallujah as the flares taper off. What’s more, enemy AI is tuned to better notice players when visible in light or when holding flashlights.

Working alongside Procedural Architecture, Global Dynamic Lighting is fundamental to giving our players a unique experience each and every time. Until recently, it was believed that Global Dynamic Lighting in high-end 3D shooters was only possible on the most recently released game consoles and high-end PC graphics cards. However, we are bringing this extraordinary technology to previous generation consoles and mid-range PC graphics cards, as well as the newest, next-generation systems, when Six Days ships in Q4-2022.

Feb 11, 2022

Introducing Procedural Architecture

Six Days in Fallujah - AmperCamper

“Marines told us they never knew what was waiting behind the next door,” says Six Days in Fallujah’s Creative Director, Jaime Griesemer. “But, in video games, we play the same maps over and over again. Just knowing the layout of a building in advance makes playing a combat encounter in a video game very different than actual combat.”

“Memorizing maps is fake. It’s that simple,” says Sgt. Adam Banotai, who led a squad of Marines block-by-block through Fallujah. “Clearing an unfamiliar building or neighborhood is terrifying. You have no idea what’s about to happen, and this is one of the reasons we experienced such high casualties.”

To simulate the uncertainty and danger of urban combat, Highwire Games and Victura invested more than three years building technologies that allow a modern game engine to assemble every room in every building procedurally, along with the dynamic AI and sound systems needed to support game environments that do not remain static.

In Six Days in Fallujah, every map is a new map, so players never know what to expect. While mission objectives and events are consistent with the true stories, every scenario becomes a unique experience each time players restart, ensuring no game ever plays the same way twice.

“With Procedural Architecture, even the game designer doesn’t know what’s about to happen in Six Days in Fallujah,” according to Victura CEO Peter Tamte. “And the best way to overcome this uncertainty is by deploying real military tactics, just like you would if you were really there.”

Watch the full video detailing Procedural Architecture: