We’ve collected together a lot of commonly asked questions about Ham and Jam here in our F.A.Q. If you don’t find the answer you’re looking for here, feel free to contact us.

General Questions

Q: Where does the name “Ham and Jam” come from?

A: Cool name isn’t it? Truth is, we sat for ages to try and think of something that wasn’t something grandios such as “Valiant Victorious Freedom of Brothers in Togetherness”. We wanted something short, simple and memorable.

One of the first missions we decided to do for the mod was Operation Deadstick, the British gliderborne assault of the Orne and Caen canal bridges, more commonly known as “Pegasus Bridge”. During the real operation the Commander was issued with two code words to be radioed back to England to report the outcome. The capture of the Caen canal bridge (Pegasus) was codenamed “Ham” and the Orne canal bridge (Horsa) was codenamed “Jam”. When both bridges were captured the message was sent back to England - “Ham and Jam”.

Q: When will the game be available?

A: No bullshit - we missed our goal deadline for the end of Q1 this year but we’re pushing on. Gameplay is there and pretty solid, the big issue at the moment is replacing all the “borrowed” content with our own. This is stuff like v_models, sounds, textures and the odd player model. We are planning a public alpha soon - it won’t be pretty but it’ll play well.

Q: Can I be a tester?

A: Not at the moment. It’s internal testing with the team only at the moment. This is because we all know the goals for the public alpha and are focused. Too many outsiders could cause a distraction. Some of us have beta tested other commercial games and know how often large test groups focus on the wrong things.
Historical Issues

Q: Where are the Americans?

A: Not in this mod, Ham And Jam is all about the Commonwealth aspect of World War 2. This allows us to eventually incoporate many theatres of combat such as Western Europe (pre and post D-Day), North Africa, Norway, Italy and the Far East. Eventually the mod will include other Commonwealth countries such as Canada, New Zealand or Poland. Other types of Combatants will also appear in time such as the Airborne, Infantry and Fallschirmjäger. If you want to play as an American perhaps Day Of Defeat or Resistance and Liberation is for you.

Gameplay

Q: Will Ham and Jam have proning?

A: Yes. However your movement is restricted as much as it would be in real life. When prone your shots are more accurate, however your movement is severely impaired. You can’t turn quickly and sideways movement is limited to shuffling. Trying to crawl backwards is painfully slow.

Q: Will there be vehicles?

A: Maybe, we haven’t decided yet. Ever since Battlefield 2, everyone wants a tank or jeep to drive around it. We intend some of our maps to be quite big so being mobile would be of benefit. However our vehicles will be predominantly for transport only. Also they will be vulnerable to friendly fire and once destroyed, un-available until the next round.

Weapons and Ballistics

Q: How does the bullet damage system work?

A: We decided early on that we didn’t want to artificially handicap weapons to achieve balance in the gameplay. Huge cones of fire and massive recoil aren’t popular and limiting bullet damage doesn’t always work. Our solution was to give weapons a specific effective range, after which they damage inflicted by their bullets diminishes.

For example, a bolt action rifle is a formidable weapon for distance shooting. At 750yds it’s bullet will inflict 100% of it’s maximum damage. However over that distance the percentage fades. By 1000yds it’s only able to do 45% and at 1500yds almost none. Likewise, a SMG has a maximum effective range of say 250yds, by 500yds the bullets are just bouncing off the target. (These figures are just examples and not the real “in game” values).

By using this system we can give the player a better “where you aim is where you shoot” experience but mimic the effectiviness of the weapons real-world counterparts.

Q: How does the weighted cone-of-fire work?

A: As a way to simulate the slight variation in accuracy of each bullet fired from a gun, we project a “cone” from the tip of the weapons muzzle. The further away from the weapon the wider the cone becomes. Each bullet you fire randomly lands somewhere within this cone meaning that not all bullets will go exactly where you aim them. However, we’ve improved on this common system by using mathematical weighting to bias the randomness towards the centre of the cone. That means that the majority of your shots will be roughly on target with far fewer shots wandering wide.