In-game physics will receive a number of improvements that will greatly enhance gameplay

Mar 6, 2014 14:13 GMT  ·  By

The development team over at Wargaming has recently announced its plans for the evolution of the hit massively multiplayer online tank combat simulation World of Tanks during 2014, teasing that some pretty impressive changes are underway.

The developers start off by blaming Sigmund Freud for their players' natural urge to destroy stuff, which they plan to fully satisfy in the coming year.

The team is working on a new and improved physics engine that will allow them to implement crumbling buildings and never-before-seen displays of havoc, by using the appropriately named Havok engine, a software used in both the gaming and film industry to create state-of-the-art special effects.

The in-game destruction system will be brought to a whole new level, the culmination of more than a year of experimenting and refining. Consequently, in-game buildings will no longer simply change from one condition to another, but they'll do so in a much more detailed and beautiful way.

Players will see that when a building is destroyed, an entire wall might topple, hitting the ground and smashing itself into smaller and smaller fragments, which are able to interact with nearby vehicles and other structures, as well as be further destroyed in turn.

The development team has experimented with different combinations of big and small fragments, creating models of buildings that literally break apart into single bricks, depending on the type of material they are made out of as well as the type of shell that hits them.

Additionally, the team has decided to provide vehicles with physically accurate behavior, making all elements of tanks rock and dangle when the tanks are in motion, and making wheels and treads be more affected by the shape of the terrain, by making them individually animated and calculated, providing a much more realistic suspension.

Some of the calculations will be made server side as was the norm in the past, or in order to keep the game experience at level for players with lower end computers, but the introduction of client physics with multi thread support will make World Of Tanks utilize multiple processor cores, taking full advantage of the computing power of players' processors.

Furthermore, the new models used for tanks allow for turrets to become separate entities that can explode and fly off and damage buildings and even other nearby tanks.

Some buildings will still maintain their indestructibility, but most of the things you'll encounter are going to be fair game.