WWIIEC
CAEN 1944 Project
Introduction
The Caen 1944 project is the main focus of our team. This will be released as a full modification. The city of Caen was an important allied objecting after the landings in Normandy. The british kept attacking toward it since the 7th of june 1944, but the city didnt fall until mid summer. Here is a little summary: One of the key objectives of British forces on D-Day was the capture of the strategically vital city of Caen. General Montgomery saw Caen as the key to Normandy and the springboard for the Allied breakout, but so did the Germans and the city did not fall. It took three major offensives and more than 30 bloody days of struggle to finally take Caen. In the process the city was controversially devastated and its civilian population decimated. The Allies paid a high price for Caen but the horrific German casualties bled their forces in Normandy white and helped open the way for the American breakout in Operation Cobra.". Most of the battles took part in the western part of the city, opposing canadians and british against the lightly equiped 21st Panzer division, and elite units like the Panzer Lher and 12th SS "hitler youth", supported by various other units such as static infantry divisions and luftwaffe ground units.
Campaign
Our campaign will be based around a few characters, some being real (for example Michael wittman at Viller bocage, west of caen), but most of them will be fictional characters. the story will be based on real, accurate events (at battle level), but fictional at squad level leaving the outcome to the player. The main side being played will be british and canadians, but we might include a few extra missions playing on the axis side.
Island
The "new" island will be covered in really fast vegetation, ranging from grass, fields, normandy hedgerows to new trees and bushes. we have been putting a particular emphasis on the hardware recquirements and they will be pretty low. As for the objects, we have several addon makers working on objects as you can see from the screenshots (mainly battling bitch, Dante, red devil, jagy, Fab and other members), but we will also have destroyed houses to show at some stage. The hedgerows will be used as firing positions along with sandbags and camouflaged positions used by the germans and the AI will be comfortable using them. I have conducted several tests to make sure it will work as expected. I say "new" island because in fact the Caen island and project is not new at all. It has been a WWIIEC objective for quite some time and the island was started a long time ago, but with the "new technology" (such as new vegetation, infantry models etc..) available at our disposal, we decided to upgrade it rather than release an half finished project. Darknova is the author of the island, which is as accurate as it can be.
Release
Caen will be released as a mod pack, units will be canadians, british, germans wehrmacht and waffen SS. we will not really try to balance with other addons because as a mod pack, we try to create a really accurate experience rather than trying to match what is already released. old ww2ec addons will be upgraded. As for the number and types of units released on each side, we will not particularly try to released a 1 against 1 type of released (1 allied APC for 1 german APC etc...), but produce what we need for the campaign after carefuly researching what units and equipment are relevant to the area.
Game Improvements
Besides the importance we put on the environment with the new vegetation, you will see that all our anims are new. we will not use any BIS anims because they deform our new models. Our animator Sengir has created hundreds of brand new animation, and combined with a brand new config, I (Fab) created new stances and states to offer a complete new freedom of movement ingame. To give you a rough idea, we have about 3 times more animations than OFP resistance. This also includes new cargo animations for all our vehicles. You will find also find a lot of gameplay improvements related to script and config in our mod release, including working bayonets, maybe lifebars, definitly new weapons stats and particularly advanced AI but we prefer to be quiet about it for now, until everything has been properly tested and is in its final stage.
ArmA, the future
Our first release will definitly be for OFP. Once the mod is out, and if the official tools for ArmA are released by then, we will start looking into porting this first release to ArmA. After that we might keep working in both OFP and ArmA for a while, depending on the team's motivation and public interest, but there is no final decision regarding this matter, all we can confirm for now is we will not quit OFP editing until our first release, and that we will definitly move on to ArmA when the time is right.
Screenshots
About WWIIEC
Intro
In June 2002, a website was created in the Operation Flashpoint Community. This site, titled The World War II Engineer Corps, was designed as a HUB for all the WW2 addons floating around the community. WWIIEC has grown a lot and has since become a large hobbiest group, which produces many historically accurate addons for the Operation Flashpoint Community.
The site
The site originally started a general news site for the whole wwII community. Unfortunately, as we got busier with our projects, we started to have less time to post news regularly, but we do hope to provide regular updates in the future. The forum on the contrary is much more active. we have separate sections for different mods and we welcome independant addon makers and other wwII mods to discuss wwII addons/mods/missions in our forum.
The team
The administration of the team is handled by three democratically elected administrators. When someone expresses interest in joining the mod, the team is consulted first, and the final aproval is given by the three admins. We originally started as a group of addon makers working on various project, but as time passed we got more organised and have been working toward a single project, the Caen 1944 mod. Many of our mission makers work together on campaigns from time to time when a new significant addon pack or mod has been released, either by wwIIec or another independant addon maker or mod, which is the best example of how we try to be opened to the wwII community in general. The team members can decide to release their work independantly or not as they own their work, are fully credited in our readme's release and can decide to post screenshots of their work to the public without having to seek for an admin's aproval. Even though we have become in effect, a mod team, we still put our team members' decisions regarding their own work above everything else.
Internal work
The team has changed a lot over the past few years, we got more organised and this is particularly true in the team work area. Since all our members also have a life outside OFP, we have installed a system of internal job advert to help complete the existing work. They are mostly small jobs that reflect the free time of our addon makers, and promotes team work as a whole, enabling us to better keep track of the work going on and provide better guidance and support. Our addon makers are free to pick which job they like/feel best suited to do, complete one stage of the work and post it back for the next person to pick up. This has been working very well so far and we have been able to complete a lot of unfinished work thanks to this system.
Joining
We are always on the look for new members, partically people who work well in team. We usually ask them to complete some small work before we let them join in. As described above, most people have a life outside OFP and since we got a job board where we split the overall work into smaller tasks, we also welcome people cant spend a huge amount of time on OFP editing.
Ethics
Most WWIIEC addons are completely original. However, it is not always efficient to "re-invent the wheel." In the event that a WWIIEC member decides to modify someone else's work, permission is always requested from the original authors, even if they happen to be WWIIEC members. Only with the authorization of the original author will a modified addon be released. WWIIEC also asks the same be applied to us. If you wish to modify our work in anyway, please contact the original author of the addon. If the author is unavailable you should contact one of the WWIIEC admins who will relay the request to the original author.