Some of the first people who knew about the Minsk map were the police.
We just had to be honest with them, obviously.
We've managed to get into the heart of Poland
and I am personally very proud that we've managed such a project.
People may assume that when it's time to think of a new map,
we take the globe, spin it to find a new place—and voila!
A new location! The idea for a new map is ready!
Well, it's not like that, of course.
Today, we are in Studzianki Pancérne.
A place that witnessed the biggest tank battle involving Polish tankers
during the Second World War.
We are near the monumental mausoleum.
This monument, on which a tank from the 1st Armored Brigade lays,
is a memorial to the fallen from the Battle of Studzianki.
The pedestal is in fact placed over the resting places of the tankers
who fought here in August 1944.
Why is the Battle of Studzianki so important?
This is where Polish tankers underwent their baptism of fire.
It shows how well prepared they were and how superbly they acted.
The Poles won this battle. Those few days were very tough
and they suffered heavy losses, including 18 tanks.
But despite the casualties,
this battle eventually became a success for Polish tank forces.
Our historians suggested Studzianki,
it was a landmark battle for Poland after all.
We also liked the natural terrain in terms of level design
because there are all the objects necessary for our map,
and the Polish countryside is well-represented, too.
We were looking for a national song,
which would be known to a wide range of Poles.
One of these was "W moim ogródeczku", a Polish folk song.
We really wanted it to be performed by a Polish band,
with traditional Polish instruments.
This is when we found the group "Żywiołak".
One of the members of this band is an active World of Tanks player,
so we instantly found common ground,
which had a positive impact on our communication.
They were interested in doing some kind of collaboration with us.
The map was originally conceived as a small experiment.
It was intended to be a very simple, easy-to-understand map,
so that anyone playing it in any vehicle class would know what to do right away.
We didn't seek to make Studzianki absolutely historically accurate,
because, as our previous experience shows,
making an exact copy makes for bad gameplay.
After all, you won't find a village or town
that was built precisely for tank battles.
The German troops were advancing from the south,
from the Głovachuva area, and it was here that they dug in first.
They broke through the Soviet line of defense
and reached the road leading from Studzianki
to the road between Rychivul and Magneshev.
After this, the German troops moved towards the Brick Factory,
occupied the area, and prepared for their offensive.
The Polish army, which was aiming to counter the German forces
from further advancing to the north, pushed from the Lenkovitsa area
and there in the Windy Altitude area, where a windmill originally stood,
attacked the German forces coming from the Brick Factory.
Unfortunately, this attack turned out to be a failure,
as the Polish tanks completely exposed their right flank,
and were taken out in less than ten minutes from the Studzianki side.
However, this allowed the remaining forces to regroup.
Of course, the Poles suffered heavy losses.
But, thanks to their bravery, they fortified their location,
slightly improving the positioning of troops in the area.
The map is quite deserted.
It looks like its citizens quickly packed up and left the village.
The only sounds it has are the caws of crows
and crackling from the burning houses and scorched earth in the center.
These sounds perfectly reflect the frightening sight of war
depicted in this location.
When we received the map from the artists, we immediately noticed
that it doesn't fall into the eras of which maps are normally set in.
Minsk is set in the end of the 60's or the beginning of the 70's.
Immediately we began to consider
what music was popular at the time in our country.
Strangely enough, there were very good performers,
including our great group—and I mean it, the legendary band, Pesniary.
One song in their repertoire we really took a liking to—
it was a hit at the very beginning of the 1970s, 1972 to be exact.
The song is "Kasiu Jas Kaniushinu".
When creating the map, we worked together with historians—
not just our internal historians staffed in the company, but with various museums,
and the national archive provided us with pictures of Minsk from that period…
However, don't forget that the Minsk we created
isn't 100% true to the documents.
That is, we have certain differences,
and those are made intentionally for the sake of gameplay.
As an example, we can say that at that time,
there was no engineering work in the Svisloch channel,
but we added two fords there.
Even though there were none in the 1970s,
we added it so that tanks can cross the river.
As you can guess, Minsk is the closest map geographically to our office,
but it was in fact the most difficult to produce.
About 95% of the objects are unique, made specially for this map.
Since the buildings had to be close to identical
to their real-life counterparts, we used the photogrammetry technology.
This means we went down to the location on a clear, sunny day
and photographed a monument, building, or any other object from several sides.
With this basis, a 3D model was formed.
You can thank this tech for the visual fidelity on the map.
When we were photographing these objects using the tech,
eagle-eyed Belarusian policemen approached us and asked
"What are you guys doing here?"
Well, who dares lie to a policeman, so we explained what we were doing
and that it would soon appear in World of Tanks.
They were probably the first people outside the office
to know about the project.
Since this map is so special and dear to us,
we also approached it as a special case.
We went to the parks of Minsk, some points of interest
and recorded the city's specific sound in different places.
As you can tell, there's a special connection to this map.
The map itself was in production for 10 months,
with more than 45 people working on it.
But Minsk also created some challenges.
We had to make sure the days we photographed the monuments
were sunny and clear, so the pictures weren't spoiled by bad lighting.
Trust us, it's harder than you think.
We encountered another problem when taking pictures of the Minsk sky.
We had to take them on the right day, with the right weather,
with good lighting and with just the right cloud coverage.
Not too many things to consider then!
Minsk is known for its temperamental weather,
one minute it's cloudy, then storms, then something worse.
In the end, we finally seized our moment, photographed the sky,
formed a Skybox from it,
but still we got a slightly overcast Minsk, due to the cloud coverage.
But I think this encapsulates Minsk's character perfectly.
Our main goal was to translate the cheerful folk music performed by Pesniary,
translate it, make it more dramatic, more military, strained in a way…
And this is a completely different mood.
It was necessary to save the melody, while changing its mood.
This is a rather difficult task.
According to our concept, the usual Soviet sunny morning starts on the map,
the radio is switched on, and the announcer says:
"And now, this composition will be conveyed
by the performance of that orchestra".
It's like, we all get up, we do exercises and all that.
And after a few seconds this music transforms and becomes dramatic,
revealing exactly the conflict that is happening here on the map.
The concept behind the map was an educational evacuation of the city.
That is, the city is not destroyed, there are a lot of vehicles—
police cars, buses parked up,
and the transport that arrived in Minsk to evacuate citizens.
This is why the city is quite deserted.
We had a key position— Minsk cannot be portrayed as ruined.
We wanted to make a city that can be seen by the whole world,
to all players in all regions and show how our hometown looks on any given day.
On the Minsk map, we also hid some Easter eggs,
but of course, they're surprises, so I can't tell you about them.
Have fun finding them for yourself!
Well, I can hint that we already have a good tradition
of putting stray cats on our maps.
Our colleagues from the Art department upheld the tradition,
but how many are there? You'll have to look for them.
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