Söldner: Secret Wars

Söldner: Secret Wars - often referred as Soldner, Soeldner, SSW or SMC - is a computer game, developed by Wings Simulations and published in May 2004 by JoWood Productions. The game can be played in first- or third-person. Players can control ground vehicles, planes, VTOLs and helicopters.

The game is made to be played online, with the single-player campaign used for training.

The game and the expansion set Marine Corps were re-released together in North America by Evolved Games (Take2 Interactive) in May 2006, renamed to Semper Fidelis: Marine Corps to avoid previous bad press about Söldner. Marketing text from the original Söldner release was re-cycled with no effort from JoWooD to promote the new release on its own merits.

Game types

 * Capture The Flag (CTF)
 * Capture The Vehicle (CTV): Similar to CTF, using a vehicle instead of a flag.
 * Conquest (CQ)
 * Super Conquest (SCQ): Similar to CQ, but capturing of enemy's headquarter is not possible unless controlling all other checkpoints
 * Deathmatch (DM)
 * Team-Deathmatch (TDM)
 * Frontline (FL)

All modes can be played on all maps. They can also be customized, for example you can capture a person or building or particular item instead of a flag.

Special Features

 * Advanced Gestures System (AGS) - Player can use gestures for pointing to dangers or swearing at enemies.
 * Advanced Destruction System (ADS) - Player can destroy nearly all buildings, terrain and vegetation.
 * Unit Customisation System (UCS) - Player can arrange the outfit choosing from different clothes, boots and caps.
 * All maps are embedded in a nearly endless one, player won't reach borders (6500 x 3500 km)
 * Commander mode - Players elect one commander who sees battlefield from top, gives orders and manages the team account for buying heavy tanks or other items.
 * Mobile Respawn Vehicles - Vehicles are converted into spawnpoints if parked.
 * Helicopter Lifting - Some helicopters (for example: Chinook, Blackhawk) can lift up vehicles.

Söldner: Marine Corps (Add-on/Expansion Set)
Marine Corps adds ships and vessels to the game and new maps for desert combat. It also added new vehicles.

All Marine Corps features are usable without the add-on, but new stuff (weapons, vehicles, vessels) is not accessible, but if a player drops weapon or leaves vehicle it can be used by all players.

Defective CD Keys (Marine Corp: Semper Fidelis)
All copies of this game sold as Marine Corp: Semper Fidelis in Target stores have defective CD keys. Initially, emails to techsupport@evolvedgames.com resulted in working keys being emailed to the customer, but this no longer seems to be the case. It's recommended that customers contact Target for a refund.

Bugs and errors
The first release came with major bugs causing some reviewers to delay their reviews until the worst bugs were fixed. Wings published many patches although none addressed the core issues plaguing the game.

Söldner was re-released as Söldner: Reloaded in November 2004, repackaged to include the first four patches, but the remaining bugs were still severe.

These problems led to low sales figures and it is rumoured that this was the reason JoWood Productions decided to close Wings Simulations in spring 2005. Game development has continued as a community effort under the name Project Zero.

According to earlier statements of Wings, cheating is impossible because of WACHE (German for guard, abbreviation of Wings Anticheat Protection), a system which compares local values of item files with the server's marking all players using modified files as cheaters. Unfortunately, multiple bugs could be exploited to cheat while in game.

Other aspects of gameplay were never realistically developed, such as the flight code.

Development by Project Zero
Project Zero provided their first patch (33668) in February 2006, changing the balance of weapons and trying to encourage more teamplay: some vehicles can only be used by two-players; one as driver, and one as gunner. The patch also adds a lot of objects (trees and houses) to the maps and expands the range of vision, and this reduced compatibility with older computers.

A week (or two) later, Project Zero reduced the range of vision in patch version 33669), and four weeks after that they announced a patch that corrected some errors occurring in some game modes by changing the spawnpoints (patch version 33670).

Unfortunately, other bugs remain. There are still some terrain glitches allowing players to hide inside item buy boxes or stones.

To match the re-released Semper Fidelis, Soldner was patched to version 33671, in which AGS was changed for North America: it is no longer possible to swear.

On 23 July 2006 version 33672 was released and caused a disaster: Many players were not able to connect to game servers. Some members of Project Zero state that this version had never been tested and was never authorized for release. Differences between team members led to a few members leaving, "Alex (Gagagu) and Albert (Kamikazepapa) left the team". Version 33672 was recalled some hours after release.

Development by gEasy
On 24 July 2006, JoWooD assigned further development to gEasy, those programmers that quit Project Zero. This is because JoWooD did not want to continue the cooperation with Matthijs Beelen, head of Project Zero, after the disastrous release of version 33672. gEasy released the correct version 33672 patch on 25 July 2006, but named it 33673 to prevent confusion, it fixed many issues from previous versions, including balance issues.

Patch version 33675, the final one to be made by gEasy, was released on January 7, 2007.

JoWooD announced on 29 December 2006 that Söldner 2 will be released in winter 2007, developed in cooperation with gEasy.

gEasy stopped the development on Söldner 2 in October 2007, because - according to gEasy - of missing payments from JoWood. gEasy didn't start proceedings against JoWood yet. JoWood itself is now looking for a new developer for the game, which has not officially been canceled.

Also, gEasy stopped the further development on Söldner 1 in October. Again, because of missing payments from JoWood, this time for the Online Portal, which wasn't available for some days after gEasy retreated. Since November, the Online Portal is online again. An unknown firm entered the hosting contract between gEasy and JoWood and made it possible to run the Online Portal.

Development by The Online Gaming Community
Development was taken over by The Online Gaming Community, an organisation mostly composed of active Soldner-gamers that will work on future updated and patches for the game. Under the development of togcom not only the Community Edition (see below), but also a new patch was announced and finally, on 27 June 2008, it was released. The new patch version 33724 features an over-worked physic-engine, a lot of bug fixing, a new weapon balancing and other adjustments in balancing. Also, some vehicles were removed because of licence problems, others were reworked. A full changelog can be found here

Community Edition
A Community Edition was announced on 4 June 2008. It will be downloadable for free "soon", however no exact release date has been announced. The Community Edition will contain all features of Secret Wars and Marine Corps and will fully compatible to these.