blog: developer blog #3

Jan 21, 2009 Derek Smart

First of all, welcome to the new site and home of all AAW dev blogs going forward.

We’ve come a very long way since Alpha and are now firmly in early Beta territory. Pretty much all the tech is nailed down and complete, with the exception of some revisions and tweaks to physics and such.

We have recently been mostly focused on the fps gameplay elements since all other elements (e.g. air combat, dynamics, AI and such) are already implemented, nailed and done with.

Doing a LARGE open world game for air combat purposes, is bad enough as it is. Then you go and add vehicular and fps combat to further add to the complexity. A lot of games which have features like vehicles and fighters, tend to be more focused on the fps aspects while the air and ground combat areas tend to be lacking. A lot of time you find that gamers get very frustrated with the handling of such assets because quite frankly the engines used weren’t designed for those purposes. Writing a vehicle let alone fighter controller in an fps game engine is not for the feint at heart and can lead to all kinds of problems.

From day one, I had designed this game to be more than just another cookie cutter fps game. The genre is just too crowded and without unique features, technology and advanced gameplay elements, everything becomes a wasted effort.

In our case, our seamlessly integrated engines (all developed in-house) specialize in every aspect that the game features. So while flying a jet going at mach 2, you don’t get the feeling that its just an fps game moving you through the game world and with little or no flight dynamics to speak of. In our game, when you’re in such a fighter and traversing the game world and dogfighting at such speeds, you know that you’re not on the ground anymore and any mistake means a quick and fiery death.

When I designed the game as an open world fps with emphasis on craft combat, I did so knowing that there are those who would very well want to dust off their joystick and take to the clear Blue skies. Of course the game supports gamepad controllers (including the XB360 Controller for Windows) – so don’t freak out if you don’t know what a joystick (that relic!) is. :)

The game has been designed specifically to cater to gamers from various disciplines and my guess is that a team of really good air combat gamers is going to wreak havoc on a multiplayer server. Assuming of course that the ladies running around on the ground with weapons of mass destruction, don’t have a clue what they’re doing. Thats what Surface To Air rocket launchers are for!

On the fps side, the final interface tweaks are in, including all the weapon handling and such. We had to deviate a bit from the fps norm in some areas due to the game requirements. e.g. we randomize ammo boxes (there are various types) to contain various weapons, items, ammo etc. This way, they can be re-used and allow players to select what they want from a box. Most games just allow the player to loot the box and then destroy it. Since we wanted to do it differently, we had to add a menu. So when you interact with a box containing something, you can pick and choose what items you want. So the next gamer who comes along and looks in the box, can also find items (which you may have left behind). Just like a box in real life does. Yah. ;) These boxes then work like our supply station (where you can rearm, repair your armor, health etc) in some regard because you can find all manner of items and kits in them.

Also on the fps side, if you have it, you can drop it. That means everything. These range from weapons to special inventory items such as jetpacks, gun turrets, shield and cloaking devices etc. When you die, they are dropped as well and someone can come along and loot your dead body before it is removed from the game world.

In addition to all the weapons (pistols, rifles, launchers, grenades etc), there are various standard and deployable inventory items. These include things like night vision image enhancers, deployable gun and rocket turrets, jetpacks etc. We even have crazy things like shield devices which protect you momentarily from gunfire, cloaking devices that make you invisible, sensor jammers etc.

And in a nod to Tribes (and Tribes 2), one of my all time favorite fps games, you can also create various units such as vehicles, gunships, fighters etc using a supply station. These are of course Experience Points based for game balancing reasons. So for e.g. someone with a very high EP can build a super fighter and have it instantly created in the game world for use, while someone else can only create vehicles.

Given the size (approx. 400 sq. km) of the game world, we also went ahead and did minimal in-door areas for some of the fifty or so building units. At one point I had decided not to do this due to the tremendous amount of work involved. But due to the massive size of the game world, leaving fps gamers out in the open 100% of the time would have had some seriously negative consequences. So I decided that we would build internal levels for some of the larger buildings. Nothing major or over the top in terms of quality, but just good enough to make it worth the hassle. The shots I released today show the inside (indoor lighting not done yet) area of a barracks (a structure that is about 200x200m in size). It has some nice corridors, nooks and cranies – which should make for some interesting firefights I think. Of course since EVERYTHING in the game world can be destroyed, taking cover inside a building doesn’t offer much protection from guys flying around outside with Air To Ground ordnance.

All in all, we’re doing indoor areas (aka “levels”) for twelve of the structures, including the starbases and such.

On the content side, the game dB has over two hundred unique items. All of which have had to be created from scratch. In fact, where we are right now, the game is going to be finished (in March) before some of the content is finalized and tested. It is a LOT of content. And thats the trouble with large open world games. You need content. And lots of it.

On the multiplayer side, things are pretty much stable with nothing major to do. We ended up developing our own lobby and server browser using ReplicaNet’s tools. This allows the game to have a unified server lobby and chat area. Gamers in the lobby can chat with gamers currently in any game instance, and vice versa. So if a server you are looking to join is full and you have friends on it, as long as you are in the lobby, you guys can chat back and forth. It also supports persistent stats saving – hence the reason you will be required to register in order to use this lobby. Once registered, your stats such as Experience Points, medals earned, kills etc are all tracked and can be publicly viewed from a browser page where the data is sent. Its like Windows Live! but better – and without the crap. And it tracks a lot more than just “achievements”.

Anyway, that pretty much tells you where we are. Plans to do a public demo are still up in the air given that we’re focused on finishing the game first. But even if we don’t have a demo before game launch, there will be one shortly after we go Gold (around the end of March it seems).

I also did some new combat movies but haven’t had time to process them. I’ll try and do that sometime this week and post them.

Until next time!

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5 Comments »

  1. Mark A. Flacy says:

    Interior of buildings? Maybe the GLE22 will be of some use after all!

    Posted on January 22, 2009 @ 6:38 pm

  2. camr says:

    Sounds like some very nice progress(especially on fun fps content / possibilities), though also a lot of work! But it’s looking very nice.

    Interior spaces should be fun. Though if the building is still destructible as usual (great feature) that might make a firefight inside a building a very delicate situation?

    Posted on January 24, 2009 @ 2:12 am

  3. Derek Smart says:

    Yes, firefights inside buildings will boil down to a case of “chicken”. Given the devastating fps weaponry (e.g. the aforementioned GLE22 grenade launcher), it could get hairy. However, it takes a lot of damage to bring down buildings, so I don’t expect it too happen as often as one might expect. At least not from first person weapons. The real threat is from fighters and gunships which are armed with Air To Surface ordinance.

    In designing the game, I wanted to ensure that gamers maintained the co-op spirit with which it was created. So any gamer going off and doing his own thing, is going to have a very frustrating gameplay experience in both single and multiplayer.

    e.g. Just last night I was running a test scenario in which I had picked up and equipped a PCU (Portable Cloaking Unit) and a PSU (Portable Shield Unit). After running around being shot at in non-debug mode, I decided to test the PCU in the middle of a firefight. After arming it and being completely cloaked, neither the hostile marines nor my team (of three) could see me on radar or with the naked eye (in this case line of site for AI). So I went around capping everybody. It wasn’t until a bullet tore through my armor and killed me instantly, that I realized that I had run out of energy shells for the PCU and thus was no longer cloaked. Since my team mates were other wise engaged and hadn’t “seen” me when I decloaked, they couldn’t help. I didn’t even get the chance to arm the PSU. And even if I did, it wouldn’t have helped since I didn’t have any energy cells to power it anyway.

    When I restarted, I play the same scenario but this time, once the PCU ran out, I ran out of range to a supply station and tried to build a vehicle since it would be quicker than me running around looking for one without getting killed. It so happens that I didn’t have enough Experience Points to build the darn thing. And since NPC units have vastly advanced pathfinding (we completely re-wrote it for this game) skills, they found me in short order. I was dead. Again. My team mates were too far from me to help.

    So, its kinda like that.

    Posted on January 24, 2009 @ 11:47 am

  4. Tobias says:

    Just looked at the interior shots.

    They all look great!

    Yet another hit that the talking heads who think HALO is the greatest thing to hit gaming since the Joystick will ignore.

    Will we be able to play as the non-human races?

    Posted on January 28, 2009 @ 12:06 am

  5. Derek Smart says:

    Yes, you will be able to play as any of the three hostile Gammulans. They are going to be unveiled in the next movie which features ground combat action.

    Posted on January 28, 2009 @ 11:11 am

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