Battlefront.com has announced the release a multiplayer “Public Test” version of their forthcoming real time vehicle combat simulation DropTeam. The game is currently in development for Mac OS X, Windows and Linux operating systems.
Battlefront.com is best known for publishing detailed, realistic war games like Combat Mission and TacOps. DropTeam moves the company in a new direction — it’s a sci-fi themed real time game that puts players in control of armored vehicles.
The attention to detail hasn’t been lost, though — DropTeam features accurate physics and a detailed ballistic system, realistic unit and weaponry capabilities and more.
The game features an extensive backstory and detailed history; huge landscapes with map sizes up to 1,000 square kilometers, deformable terrain, dynamic environmental effects like buildings exploding, advanced shaders and High Dynamic Range (HDR) rendering, and multiplayer combat for up to 16 players.
Single player gaming is disabled in this version, which has been released to test the network gaming capability. The full version of the game will include single player game modes. The public test release is limited to two scenarios, while the full game will include 21 scenarios (and the developers plan to release more after the game ships, too).
System requirements call for Mac OS X v10.4.5 or later, G4/1.2GHz or faster. Intel-based Macs are not supported with this release.
MacGameFiles has posted a BitTorrent for the 400MB demo.