Red Orchestra 2: Heroes of StalingradRelease Date: Q1 2011

I like the devs anyway, I've put a huge amount of time into Killing Floor so anything they release is an instant buy for me

i was playing KF today

that game has really been a sweet purchase. lasting longer than many games i paid many times over for

that game has really been a sweet purchase. lasting longer than many games i paid many times over for

We’re in Prague playing a sadly tankless level of Red Orchestra II against Tripwire, the developer on the other side of the world; I wrote about their origins here – Evan’s written an extremely comprehensive preview here. The game is, as Evan related, the World War II multiplayer game we always wanted to play; it’s totally PC-centric, as you can tell from the ridiculous range of postures available for a first person game; lying, crouching, leaning, hiding behind cover, blind-firing… it’s also supremely hardcore; you’d never find a game on a console where the first shot that hits you is normally the last. If you come under fire, your sight blurs to reflect suppression; the way you know how many shots you’ve got left in your magazine? You guess from the weight of the magazine

Minimum:
OS: Windows XP/Vista/7
Processor: Dual Core 2.3 GHz or better
RAM: 2 GB
Graphics card: 256 MB SM 3.0 DX9 Compliant NVIDIA® GeForce 7800 GTX or better ATI® Radeon® HD 2900 GT or better
Sound: Windows Supported Sound Card
DirectX: DirectX 9.0c
Hard Drive: 8 GB free hard drive space

Recommended:
OS: Windows XP/Vista/7
Processor: Quad Core 2.6 GHz or better
RAM: 3 GB
Graphics card: 512 MB SM 3.0 DX9 Compliant NVIDIA® GeForce GTX 260 or better ATI® Radeon® HD 5750 or better
Sound: Sound Blaster Audigy or better
DirectX: DirectX 9.0c
Hard Drive: 8 GB free hard drive space

The first shot shows off a WIP version of our WebAdmin tool running through the Steam overlay. Yep, day one server admin tools you can use while in-game




The second shot shows off a feature we have seen requested a lot on these forums and by server admins we have chatted with. This is the "Pre-Game Server Ad" which is set up by a server admin to advertise/promote their clan/gaming community, etc. Everything on that page is configurable by the server admin. You provide a link to the image at the top, the welcome text below, you fill in whatever message you want in the paragraph below that, and finally you put in a link at the bottom that when clicked on opens up the web page in the Steam overlay browser. So you can link people that join your server to your Clan/Community webpage. You can also modify the color of the text shown if you want to.

Anyway, not pretty gameplay pictures, but something I thought the people here would be interested in. Enjoy!

FPSGuru: You seem to be taking a very aggressive stance against cheating by employing VAC (Valve Anti-Cheat), PunkBuster and PBBans (streaming ban support). That seems to have been met with some mixed reactions on the forums. Why such a strong stance, when most games just employ one or the other?

Alan Wilson: Well, we use (and like) VAC, but we wanted to make it very clear to everyone that we are serious about dealing with cheating. We kept it down to a very low level on the first game, but RO2 has a broader appeal. We're very interested in the competitive gaming arena as well, so we decided to take the aggressive stance on it. And the Punkbuster team have stepped up to the mark - we've had one of their guys on site for a couple of weeks, specifically to deal with any compatibility issues.

FPSGuru: The primary complaint about PunkBuster appears to be the lack of automatic updates, leaving players never knowing if they need to update PB until they try to play a game. Will you be working with PB to roll out updates to it through steam simultaneously with updates to RO2?

Alan Wilson: It will be integrated with the game, which is heavily integrated with Steam - one of the key reasons being that we can ensure that everyone is up to date and doesn't have all the crap of hunting down and applying Patch 2.9.10.2.e (Europe only, except for Lichtenstein, unless you are Scottish living in Austria... blah blah). It is one of the key benefits to using Steam for us - always has been.

FPSGuru: Usually when a game takes this strong of a stance in protecting against cheating, it has to do with tournaments and other esports type of setups. Are you aiming or hoping to see RO2 end up in an esports setting?

Alan Wilson: Yes. Already working with a lot of the pro gamers. We've been through a lot of their lists of "must haves" - and surprised more than a few of them with the fact that those things are already planned in. Not to mention a full SDK for mod support at launch - and a developer who enjoys this stuff, so is listening.

we've had one of their guys on site for a couple of weeks, specifically to deal with any compatibility issues.

Owners of the original Red Orchestra: Ostfront 41-45 will receive the following:

• Pre-purchase now and receive 10% off or get 20% off if you already own the original Red Orchestra: Ostfront 41-45.
• Day 1 unlock of the Kar98 and Mosin rifle bayonets:
  
• Special in-game item - Russian Guards Badge and German Close Combat Badge:
  

Steam Digital Deluxe Edition
Steam Digital Deluxe Edition adds the following extras on top of the Standard Edition:

• Access to the final phase of closed beta before the August 30th launch
• Day 1 Unlock of the Elite Assault Weapons (MKb 42(H) and AVT-40) and Semi Auto Sniper Weapons (SVT-40 and G 41(W):
  
• Team Fortress 2 German and Russian hats ("vintage" if bought during pre-purchase):
• Two new characters for Killing Floor - Russian and German Soldier Re-enactors:
  

We knew people would be unhappy about the delay – and we agonized over whether we should do it or not. Someone has already drawn the parallel on the forums: our earlier games have only really hit a real volume of users after launch. We know it is bad timing, after starting the pre-purchase last week. But the response brought home that the pre-purchase beta phase isn't going to have 100s of people in it, with a few servers – it is going to have potentially 10s of 1000s of people in it. Which is obviously great news. But it IS a Beta (it isn't some "marketing/PR Beta" with the game finished 2 months ago) – and the large volume of people WILL throw up odd and weird little bugs that only come to light in bulk testing. Code and QA want the chance to fix that stuff before we actually release the finished product. So people understand, internally no dates are being pushed back. Everything will still be finished to the same dates as for the original release date. What we are doing is buying ourselves 2 extra weeks of QA and bug-fix time.

We haven't released dates of the next phases of the Beta testing, but they aren't far away. We already have the first of the press in the Beta, with a "preview" phase for the press scheduled to run over the next couple of weeks or so. After that, we'll be ready for the final phase of the beta, with the pre-purchasers getting their hands on the game.

We haven't taken this decision lightly: moving a release date late in the day is a nightmare. We've done it because we feel it will make a difference to the product on launch day – for the better, obviously. Moving a schedule that involves a large (for us) marketing budget, physical production and distribution to the retailers across the glove, as well as disappointing the fans who have waited a long time for this game, isn't easy. But in this case, we feel it will be worth the pain.