1944 D-Day: Operation Overlord

Phonesis

Phonesis

Phonesis

Associate
Joined
25 Jan 2009
Posts
1,909
Location
UK
Seeing as it's the 65th anniversary of D-Day, I thought I'd post about an indie game that has been in development now for 4+ years. I've not seen it mentioned before on this forum so here goes.

In 2006, I read all I could about the project but soon got bored of waiting. I then forgot about it for a year. In 2008, I remembered about it and checked up on it a few times. A year on and now all of a sudden I am thinking about it again. However, I'm now pretty convinced it will just never happen.

http://www.1944d-day.com/


The website design is pretty basic and hasn't been changed in years but the game sounds really good! It is a full scale fps simulation of d-day. Here's the gist:


Realistic Squad tactics based on actual military training guides.
100% Authentic
With over 50 WW2 weapons
With over 200 vehicles, planes, tanks, boats and artillery
All of Normandy recreated from photos, maps and drawings
Realistic controls and accurate simulation.
Every Unit, Every Nation.
Germany
UK
US
Canada
Australia
New Zealand
And many more
Realistic AI controlling every aspect of the game.
The AI controls the emotions and feelings of every unit
Coordinates realistic tactics and movements
Manages over 250,000 units real-time.
Large open dynamic maps, that live and breath alongside the combat.
Animals that react to the combat
Grass and trees that flow with the wind
Buildings and terrain that take realistic damage
24 Hour clock, watch the sun rise as the battles continue
Witness all areas of combat, from any number of perspectives.
Omaha Beach
Utah Beach
Sword Beach
Juno Beach
Gold Beach
Point Du Hoc
Bayeux region
Caen
Benouville
St Mere Eglise
Carentan
And many other areas full realised
Large Open Multiplayer and Co-Op system for 128+ players.
Click to expand...


With Arma2 almost out, I'm not so sure there is much hope for this game. Personally, I would love to see it though. I think it is a very commendable project and just wish these guys got picked up by a major studio. Has anyone else been following the progress of this game?
 
I'm not sure what to make of it really...

Theres not really much to show for all the years of work... a few incidental models of varying quality, mostly untextured - tho that in itself isn't such a problem, some larger areas that appear to have been put together in a manner suited to movie production but completely infeasible for video game implementation - they can't easily be efficently portalised, etc. either the CPU would be tied up trying to sort what areas to draw or not, or you'd have to dump the lot to GPU and watch it grind to a halt.
 
I can't find the pics myself but I can't imagine that being an issue, modern games have near unlimited draw distance.

ARMA , Crysis to name some.
 
Ah, yes I remember this. Was a nice idea, but frankly was way out of the league of the guy who was doing it. He used to advertise in posts on seemingly random game forums for devs, and the limited devs he did have were entirely outsourced. On top of that he was "running" it part time and working for Ericcsons to try and pay for it.

It never got past anything more than a half dozen renders or so, at least nothing more than that I ever saw. Its now been 4 years, and several of the domain names he had registered are now non-existant.

It was a very ambitious idea, ambitious even for a full game company. Impossible (I would say) for some guy with very limited funds, doing it part time.
 
I've just been reading their forums. They are planning on having the entire battle of normandy running at once in real time, beginning to end? Yeah, it sounds amazing but it's not happening. Hardware is too weak, and they are just a small team.
 
Strife212 said:
I've just been reading their forums. They are planning on having the entire battle of normandy running at once in real time, beginning to end? Yeah, it sounds amazing but it's not happening. Hardware is too weak, and they are just a small team.
Click to expand...

Its not impossible... you'd have to carve it up over a number of server instances - so there would have to be a number of transition points.

But they obviously don't have much idea of what they've bitten off - and as I said above the way they are going about modelling large scale playing areas wouldn't translate well to a game of this scale.

I know I could pull it off personally if I had more spare time and a decent concept artist and a couple of modellers to do animated/organic models.
 
Yep heard about this one a few years back but seeing as their site was never updated I though it was dead.
 
muttclugg said:
Isn't it a bit like WWIIO: Battleground Europe but on abit of a smaller scale?
Click to expand...


Only slightly in the sense that it strives to be a large scale ww2 sim. This would "potentially" be free and based on combat and one specific battle. As people have said though, I can't see it ever happening.

The Invasion44 team are already close to an Arma2 version of their mod so that would probably be very capable of portraying d-day style situations. I just find it fascinating how, even now, the forums for this game still seem pretty active.
 
Yeah heard about this yonks ago it sounds superb just a shame 4 years on we cant play it i do wonder if its ever going to be released.
 
I can't see how on earth these little guys will get this to work? The only game that resembles this which is playable at battalion level and below is the Combat Mission series and that isn't a fps. But that has taken years of development with a larger team and that still does not remotely feature the sort of scale we are talking about here.

Maybe they aim at making the game work on two levels - a strategic level map, which is representative of the entire campaign, with the historical units and OOB and then maybe a battle level, where you will get to play some of it out. But I honestly cant see it working as they say. I'd be well impressed if they manage it.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom