The Battlegroup42 team is greeting you with another news update. Yes, we're aware of the fact that quite some time has passed since our last news, but our main news writer, Sarge Surfat, has been very busy with his job during the last few weeks and hasn't managed to prepare a news - despite the fact that he was busy with creating some new maps. So today here is our latest update about the ongoing development of BG42 and a preview of further release.



In our last news we promised to tell you something about the new maps which will be awaiting you in 1.8 - yes, 1.8, due to the fact that there's a whole lot of new content we have decided to not release a patch but a full version instead. This is more than justified, especially considering the amount of new maps alone. Many of you might have wondered why in our last version, in which we introduced the Chinese army, we had only one map featuring them and asked themselves "so much effort for only one map ?" In 1.7 they are actually fighting on only one map, Nanking, which encouraged our mapper Yamamoto to create four more maps for this army. The scenarios are the Battle for Shanghai in October 1937, the great flood at the Yellow River in summer of 1938, the Wannan incident of November 1940 and the Japanese campaign in the province of Jiangxi in summer of 1942.



Additionally, Yamamoto created two other maps for 1.8: "Operation Herkules" is a fictional scenario about the planned, but never executed invasion of Malta by Italian and German troops in August 1942. The "Battle of Attu" takes place in an almost forgotten theatre of war, the annihilation of the Japanese occupying forces on Attu, the westernmost and largest island in the Near Islands group of the Aleutian Islands of Alaska, by American troops in May 1943. An individual contribution to the map list comes from Afri Cola - "Serafimovic" depicts the successful attack of Italian forces on Sovjet emplacements at the Don river in July 1942, which lead to the establishment of a strategically important bridgehead.



On "Serefimovic" you will find another new and unique vehicle along with the already announced ZiS-30: It is the Autocarro Protetto AS37, an armored italian multi-purpose vehicle. It has been developed form the AS37 artillery tractor after the battle experiences of the italian troops in North Afrika. Goal was to give the infantry a protected transport and support vehicle, and so it comes in two flavours in BG42 as well: The armored personnel carrier is armed with a Breda machinegun and has gunshields on the sides of the fighting compartment. The fire support vehicle mounts a 20mm Solothurn gun. The model was created by Krätzer including two skins for different battlefields. Most of the new maps will also come with bot support for all our offline players.



We know that you expected to find out some more details about our new project that we recently announced. Despite we are still in the internal discussion and planning phase, and therefore have nothing to show off to the public, we can confirm the rumours the the team wants to switch to the Unreal-Engine, creating a free standalone game. Plan is to port the famous Battlegroup42 gameplay to a much more advanced development environment, better graphics and better physics. The new project is called Battlegroup3 and will start with the battles in the early days of World War 2, when Germany attacks the Netherlands, Belgium and France in spring 1940. We could need any help for this project, so if you're curious and want to involve yourself - talented modders, especially with UDK experiences are always welcome in the team!

(Quelle: battlegroup42.de)

Welcome to another news update from the Battlegroup42. We will continue to show off new content for version 1.8, and focus again on the new maps in the release. But there are also some new and quite spectacular models we are sure your would love to play around with. Saying that, you can expect the new release of BG42 soon - though we don´t have a release date yet. But now let´s have a look on our new stuff!

In our last news we presented you many new maps mainly done by our mapper Yamamoto. Some of you might have thought - hell, what about Sarge Surfat? Yes, he has been very busy with his job but that don´t mean that he has nothing to contribute to the 1.8 release! There are five new maps coming out of this workshop: "Myitkyina" is about the taking of the airfield of the same name in Burma in May 1944 by "Merril'S Marauders", an American long range penetration special operations unit. "Monte Battaglia" is a conversion of the map from zara5ustra's Road-to-Rome map pack, depicting the bloody battles on this mountain in October of 1944. "Snowy Park" is again a self created map, inspired by the legendary multiplayer-deathmatch map in Medal of Honor Allied Assault (MoHAA). Another conversion is well known, too: "Hellendoorn" was the map which EA/Dice once used to convince the community to buy the Secret Weapons addon for Bf 1942.

The last map is for you sea dogs out there: "Wolfpack" is about the lossy convoy battles in the North Atlantic. On 1000 nautical miles there's no land, only the cold, green sea where the enemy can lure behind the next fog bank. Submarine hunters on sea and in the air on one side, submarines and torpedo bombers on the other. As a special gimmick you'll find an american M-class blimp and a Wickes-class destroyer on that map! The blimp is a joint-venture by TerrorDuck (basic model), Bommel, Kraetzer and Senshi (cockpit, unwrap) and Sarge Surfat (texture), the destroyer was created by Cabrio. Again, most of the new maps have bot support, and "Hellendoorn" and "Wolfpack" also have an Objective Mode.

fresh picture material:


As always, we are looking for talented modders of all kinds to join our team, especially for our new standalone version. If you are interested, just visit our forum at http://www.battlegroup42.de.