A new year has come and the war continues in the developer trenches and on the alpha-servers.
We’re currently preparing to leap into the next Alpha stage, where we’ll invite thousands of players to test the game on our new “live servers”, where the public game will take place.
If everything turns out as we planned, we’ll start the test next week, by inviting a smaller group of players to test the game, and then invite more and more players. The end goal with the test, which runs over a few weeks, is to have approx. 1000 users online playing the game at the same time.
We’ll set up some play session timeslots for the test and we want as many players as possible to help us test the game. We’ll shut down the servers outside the play session timeslots, so you need to be online at those play sessions if you want your Heroes & Generals fix the next couple of weeks.
We also wish to welcome our newest developer on the team; Reto.Vashu who is a Flash Programmer. Read more about what he and the rest of the team is working on below in the Team Debriefing!
Propaganda This Week
Gamasutra interview with Jesper Kyd about working on Heroes & Generals
Developer Blogs This Week
Featured Developer Hans-Henrik Grüner-Pedersen (Reto.hansg)
Each week we’ll feature one of the developers from the team and tell you a bit about who they are and what they are working on. This time it’s our IT Administrator and server-guru Hans-Henrik Grüner-Pedersen aka. Reto.hansg. Read More
Team Debriefing
Design
Reto.RedBjarne, Game Director
“-lots of bugfixes on background graphics
-flash GUI work
-awards screen on flash site”
Reto.Fleck, Level Designer
“MIA“
Reto.Robotron3000, Community Manager & Game Designer
“Designing statistics and rewards and hopefully getting them online soon.”
Artists
Reto.Hr.Wille, 3D Artist
“This week I have added the new in-game meshes for the Willys MB and the Flakvierling 38. Also been setting up dashboards with moving gauges for the jeeps.”
Reto.Mato, Lead Character Artist
“I’m doing German Pilot and Tank Uniforms.”
Reto.Owleater, Character Designer
“Made US Infantry Jacket and Boots with leggings – some minor adjustment on the Gear for pilots and tank crew.
Happy New Year to all!”
Reto.Colding, Lead Animator
“Recouping from christmas and new years eve 
… Worked on new reloads for MP40, Thompson and Karabiner…. gonna be great 
…also done some layouts on Landingpage together with animtools updates…”
Reto.Dave, Environment/Props/Concept Artist
“Been doing combat badges and misc models for the factory level”
Coders & QA
Reto.Goonstah, Programmer and Technical Lead
“Testing and bugfixing on the new release, which is a major step towards deploying the new servers
Got a cold!”
Reto.Chrestangen, Flash Programmer
“- Worked on the different screens (assault team, soldier, equipment)
- Lots of project organising, meeting, helping others out, bug fixing, e-mails asf.”
Reto.Placebo, Code connoisseur
“* Been fighting a cold – have been sick 3 days
* Getting up and running after the christmas vacation
* Getting strategy branch up and running after changes to deployment on head/trunk/dev”
Reto.Hal9k, Render Programmer
“- New version on stable
- General bugfixing”
Reto.Ogssan, Gameplay Programmer
“This week has almost entirely consisted of bug fixes, but besides that i also reworked the explosion damage model and worked a little on the assault team and player character overhaul.”
Reto.Leto, Gameplay Programmer
“MIA“
Reto.Murphy, Senior Programmer
“MIA“
Reto.Injection, Senior Programmer
“Been at the HQ, it’s been crawling with critters, loads of bugs has been squashed. 
”
Reto.Splixxen, Lead Tester
“- Test the new Factory map.
- Test new builds.
- Verify fixes.
- Crash logs.
- Handle feedback.
- Cleaned up my desk for empty Red Bull cans.”
Reto.Prakash, IT Architect
“* Integrate new changes regarding how database is handled to the strategy game.
* Functionality so that all equipment are can be equipped only to a particular character slot
* Fixing some bugs in the Database admin tool and the deployment/build tools
* bugs:
- functionality to create a new war (or resetting the existing war), not working correctly
- new user joining for the first time cannot login due to a character creation failure“
Reto.Vashu, Flash Programmer
“Chat revamp:
I have focused primarily on revamping the chat system in the strategy part, more specifically the following:
- Easier resizing of the entire chat area
- Improved design
- Preparation and implementation of Private messages
- Multiple channels
- Reorganized Socket class for Chat
Debugging:
I have also worked on using the Flash Builder Profiler tool and within a couple of hours closed a significant memory leak when using the Campaign map. Plans for improving the speed of the campaign map has been discussed and should implemented in the near future.
Playtests:
Playtesting of the new builds that hit the stable servers this week has also taken some of my time.“
Sound
Reto.Draebesmoelf, Lead Sound Designer
“Lately I have been adding and updating sounds for most of the vehicles (planes, jeeps and tanks), the Sherman Tank has received a whole new set of sounds. Some of the new vehicle sounds need new code in order to work so more on this later.”
Reto.Lord, Audio Programmer
“1st iteration of the automated asset download and quick launch functionality is completed.
Relevant buttons and states are updated on flash site when the game client (hng.exe) exits.
Game client will close if the user cancels a mission in the flash site.”
Management & IT
Reto.Topo, CEO
“MIA“
Reto.Hansg, IT Admin
“* Ordered new servers and are preparing them for next weeks test
* Fixed some Perforce issues
* Fixed time sync on all servers
* Replaced a HD and set up Reto.Vashu’s new workstation”
Reto.KenSolo, PR & Marketing Coordinator
“Continued my Google AdWords and Google Analytics experiments, prepared the 1000-player test and started looking at how our support-system should work in collaboration with Reto.Splixxen and Reto.Robotron3000.”
NOTICE
The Intelligence Bulletin is designed primarily for the use of the members of the Heroes & Generals community. It is a vehicle for the dissemination to them of the latest information received from Reto-Moto Intelligence sources about the development of Heroes & Generals. Readers are invited to comment on the use that they are making of the Intelligence Bulletin and to forward suggestions for future issues.
Reto-Moto Intelligence Division,
Developer Department
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