Frost Giant has dropped one final dev update before the holiday season, and it’s six-odd minute runtime is packed with enough to make even the most jaded RTS fan get a twinkle in their eye. They split up their revelations into two parts - Snowplay and more art. Let’s get into it!
Snowplay
Snowplay is Frost Giant’s proprietary engine built on top of Unreal Engine 5. To quote Tim Morten, “UE 5 provides the graphics, sound, input, and the pathways for all of the art to be put into the game.” Snowplay is the special sauce that will make Stormgate the most responsive RTS in the industry, and it does this in several extremely exciting ways.
If you are a fan of tactical shooters, you may be aware of the general complaints that surround Counter Strike: Global Offensive’s default servers - that they operate on 64 tick, which means they simulate the game loop 64 times per second. In contrast, Riot’s Valorant servers (and FACEIT CSGO servers) simulate the game loop at 128 tick, which allows inputs to be read at twice the speed.
Many people would argue that Starcraft II is the high-water mark for RTS games, and it’s servers update on 22.4 tick (16 tick on game seconds). In this video, James Anhalt (Stormgate's Chief Architect) promises 60 tick - a RTS simulation that would be 3 times as responsive as Starcraft 2 and almost 8 times as responsive as AOE IV’s reported 8 tick.
While 60 tick is revolutionary in RTS games, thats arguably the least exciting announcement that James provides. We are also told that Snowplay will include rollback netcode, which will dramatically reduce the amount of lag perceived by players in the game. Essentially, rollback netcode predicts what each player will do next in the game, and then adjusts for what players actually do.
Rollback netcode is already being implemented in the fighting game community (often to rapturous applause), but the number of potential interactions in an RTS game makes this a much more difficult task - but one that should massively improve the cross-server experience.
The other big announcement is that Snowplay will enable the mass spectating of games. This is something that the RTS community has been clamoring for for a long time, and the hiring of W3Champions’ fluxxu (creator of WC3’s version of DotaTV) had many people optimistic. Now that is confirmed, as well as the ability to jump into the middle of a replay and scan around (rather than the full simulation required to explore a replay in Starcraft II).
Finally, for those of you excited about the modding scene, Snowplay will allow modders to make changes to their creations on the fly and have them take effect - no need to quit and remake game modes to test them!
Art
As exciting as the snowplay revelations are (and they are exciting), the art drop we got in this update is also exciting. Frost Giant concept artists spent 6 weeks each exploring the visual design of Resistance and Infernal Host units and structures. While the art is gorgeous, Jesse Brophy does caution us that none of these units and structures are guaranteed to be in any version of the game - they are just exploring art language at this point.
Resistance Concept Art
The first bit of art we got was the flying mech, taking pages from things like Buzz Lightyear and the F14 Tomcat. In this (and really every Resistance unit) we can see the spherical accents that will characterize the Resistance visual language. This spherical language is much more evident in the next two designs - an exploration of what a Resistance flying unit might look like, and a massive, game ending “Gigamech.”.
The last bit of resistance art we got was Assistant Art Director John Ryder’s concept of a Gigamech, an “end game unit so massive that one side would have to win over the other.” And it is massive - we can see the shadows of a light mech from the gameplay footage in the announcement trailer in comparison. It dwarfs them!
Infernal Concept Art
Not to be outdone, we also get a couple of pieces of art from the Infernal Host as well. The key thing to remember here is that, while the Resistance derives its combat power from advanced mechs and science, the Infernal Host uses magic instead. It just so happens that the Earth is absolutely full of the “Life Force” or “Anima” that the infernals use to power their magic.
For the Infernal Host concept art, we get one combat unit, one structure, and one worker. The first unit we get is what they are calling the “Mist Reaper.” We don’t get much more information about it other than the team loves it, but it does give us a better idea of the design direction the team is going in - lots of sharp, curved edges, a red/black color palette, echoes of mysticism with body parts as smoke or on fire, that kind of thing.
We also get our first look at what a faction-specific structure might be, with the floating orb thing below. Again, we don’t have much information about what it might do, but it did give the team the opportunity to further explore the Infernal Host shape language and what types of materials they might use both on and off the battlefield.
The final tidbit we get is of an infernal worker. Not only is it cute, but it gives the team an opportunity for the team to explore more “comedy and levity” within the dark and brooding infernal host.
I don’t know about you, but if my workers don’t have a teddy bear with them, I’m going to be seriously sad. Look how cute it is!
Final Thoughts
Tim closes the video out by promising that they will “share gameplay footage next year before the closed beta starts,” and we get some excellent footage of resident mascot Cinnamon before the video cuts. Happy Holidays!
Getting Involved
As always, if you want to engage with the Frost Giant developers and get information from them as they post it, you should sign up for their newsletter, head on over to /r/Stormgate on reddit, and sign up for the beta and wishlist the game on steam!