How the Kharkov Map was created…

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Hello everyone,

an interesting video appeared on Russian server. Since I don’t know whether the EU office will prepare the English version (since, you know, they are apparently too busy spamming FTR comments), here is the Russian one, along with what is said in it. I will make it in points that roughly follow the video timeline.

 

 

- Kharkov was the first capital of the Ukraine SSR, it was a huge city, an industrial and railway central
- there were practically 4 battles for the city of Kharkov
- the ingame map represents the battle of February-March 1943 (the “first liberation of Kharkov”)
- the center of the map is the Dzherzhinsky Square (SS: named after the “Iron Felix” Dzerzhinsky, the infamous founder of Cheka, now renamed to “Liberty square”) and the Gosprom building (built before the war in the center of Kharkov)
- apart from that there are some residential areas around the Gosprom building

- Kharkov is an interesting city and map with the industrial atmosphere
- the task of making a historical city map was unusual, developers were looking forward to it
- work took several months
- a precious source of info were German made aerial photos from right before the city was captured by the Germans in 1941
- it was very difficult to combine the historical building setup and the gameplay
- the developers tried to place the buildings historically, as it was when the city was being fought over
- some elements are not historical (gameplay reasons), but there are as few as possible
- the designers first placed the big buildings that need to be there because of historical and gameplay reasons, then another developer (SS: the woman) placed smaller decorations and destructable objects
- creating the skybox was difficult because the “god rays” were implemented directly into the skybox and the issue was to make them look realistic
- the developer also mentioned that the village part of the map might not be the most active place on the map, but he likes it, it feels romantic (SS: he literally said “romantic”, I guess I have a pretty different idea as to what is romantic than he has)
- the map also popularizes the WW2 history: “We won’t allow our players to forget what happened in the most difficult years in our country’s history.” – the player “re-lives” the fights that happened at that time
- the upcoming map Stalingrad, mentioned in the end of the video: “we will use more new additional technologies, it will be even more interesting”

22 thoughts on “How the Kharkov Map was created…”

  1. So far I actually find it balanced gameplay wise. Im looking forward for more historical maps.

  2. I was actually well surprised by the kharkov map. Initially I thought its gonna be too messy and chaotic, and in fact it kinda is, but that chaotic feeling adds something more into the game, for me it feels like you actually are on the real battlefield (well at least more than on for example on maps like Arctic region). And the size of the map isnt that much of a problem either, as I thought first time i saw the map.

    Too bad that cause people only are starting to know that map, all the games I had on it ended with a massive brawlfest on the northern side of the map and the city actually remained kinda empty :D

    btw 1v1 endgame situations will be quite funny on that map :D

  3. It looks great, but the couple of times I’ve had it, it’ve had stutters and microfreezes so bad as to make it near unplayable. All the other maps seem fine … Better than 9.0 anyway. I don’t know if it’s a size and complexity thing. Anyone else?

    • That’s weird, actually Kharkov is one of the best performing for me. I get almost double fps on it than I get on bloody Windstorm.

      • Same here – Kharkow got me some FPS records :)
        Maybe they actually managed to design the map “right”, so it uses more VGA resources instead of CPU..

  4. It looks great, but the couple of times I’ve had it, I’ve had stutters and microfreezes so bad as to make it near unplayable. All the other maps seem fine … Better than 9.0 anyway. I don’t know if it’s a size and complexity thing. Anyone else?

  5. jeez… They made map for the game which looks like it should look 5 years ago and they are jerking off, ” omg, this map is so brilliant we will make a documentary!”.

  6. “- creating the skybox was difficult because the “god rays” were implemented directly into the skybox and the issue was to make them look realistic”

    skybox? god rays? what are these?

  8. - the designers first placed the big buildings that need to be there because of historical and gameplay reasons, then another developer (SS: the woman) placed smaller decorations and destructable objects

    KNOW YOUR PLACE! :)

    - the developer also mentioned that the village part of the map might not be the most active place on the map, but he likes it, it feels romantic

    As a diesel-punk i agree.

    - Kharkov was the first capital of the Ukraine SSR, it was a huge city, an industrial and railway central

    “So Putin is right to claim it back.” :)

    - there were practically 4 battles for the city of Kharkov
    - the ingame map represents the battle of February-March 1943 (the “first liberation of Kharkov”)

    Please implement the other ones too in HB thus we can “feel” how a war is “evolving”.

  9. “he likes it, it feels romantic (SS: he literally said “romantic”, I guess I have a pretty different idea as to what is romantic than he has)”

    - Word “romantic” can be used to describe scenery with familiar atmosphere and significant meaning to person. Maybe developer grew up in village like that.

  10. TBH this is the first map when you may feel real tank fight in the modern city and buildings have “proper” height and are “the thing”, not just another small pile of bricks. I don’t mind to have Kharkov appearling much often than other maps.

  12. you can turn on the English subtitles and there you have it… sounds prety close to normal