Another week, another dev blog. I was so busy last Friday, that I didn’t get the chance to do my weekly blog.

At this point, we’re really just down to the minor stuff, tweaks etc. As I said in a previous dev blog, it is the content work that is going to hold us back for a bit. And short of throwing more [new] people at it, it is going to be a close call if we can actually get it all in by the end of March. But, we’re hopeful. We’ve had a few setbacks in the content resources dept. but nothing too disruptive at this point.

As of this writing, we still have quite a few 3D cockpits to complete and drop in the game. I just released some shots showing a new one on the Raven super fighter. There are twelve fighters and six gunships in the game. All of them will have a unique 3D cockpit. At the moment, any that is missing a cockpit, automatically uses a pre-existing one from another model. All remaining ones are on track to be finished in early March, so I’m not freaking out just yet.

The new character animations are currently being tweaked so that the new character animation engine we have can take advantage of this. Currently we’re still using legacy character animations as placeholder.

After wrapping up the detail texturing in the base confines, we’ve also started adding peripheral props to the base scenes. Things like fences, walls, concrete slabs (for taking cover etc). Just misc stuff so they don’t look too barren. We had previously tightened things a bit in the bases, so they are a bit better laid out. With 400sq. km and eight bases (in ten mission zone areas), it is quite a feat. But all eight have different layouts on which the models will be placed. In the shots I released today, you get to see some different base layouts. These bases all cover about 20km. So yah, they’re huge. This is good because thats the open world game that I set out to develop. Until each one has been laid out, most use a generic layout for now – and thus the models are all in the same position/layout – making them all look the same. They won’t be the same in the final game once all eight templates are done.

The good thing about the game engine is that all these assets are drop in so this means no code changes, no level vis work or anything like that. A new model comes in, it gets checked out, tagged, dropped into the assets dB and tested in the game. If its OK, it stays and its done. If not, when minor revisions/tweaks are done, the new rev just replaces the current one.

First person weapons are also coming along at a fair pace, though it is highly unlikely that they will all be done and dropped in before the end of March. But we’re going to try. The game has twenty-two unique weapons and they’re all being done from scratch, while legacy models serve as placeholders in the interim.

This past week was a source code biggie because the 3D audio was also finished. Since we use FMOD exclusively here, most of the work was in ripping out our legacy wrapper and doing it from scratch for this game and doing things we didn’t do in previous games. It makes a world of difference when shots are flying left and right, gunships and fighters speeding past above and you hear the whining of the turbines as they approach, shoot past etc. If nothing else, you’ll hear them coming.

A bunch of personnel NPC AI tweaks were also done. These include how escorting NPCs react when under attack themselves, what they do etc. Though we expect multiplayer to be a big draw in the game, that does not mean that we’re just going to throw dumb NPCs in the single player experience.

The game docs are also 99% completed and I got around to doing a media preview package of the game, including some scenarios and such. There should be some previews popping up soon, once they get their hands on it and actually get to actually writing something.

I also did a 24 min narrated video tutorial of an air combat mission. Once the mirrors go up, I’ll post links to the video. It is quite a bit of fun and clearly shows our PC roots. None of that dumbed down console nonsense here. No siree Bob.

A bunch of other gameplay related tweaks, bug fixes and such also marked the wrap of the 1.13.14 build. Next up are character animation engine, physics and multiplayer tweaks and revisions -and we’re done! At which point we can start planning on where to go from here with the XB360 version.

Until next time, go and spread the word!

ps: I wanted to point out that from the blog poll, a whopping 64% (of 143 voters) of you who voted are interested in all aspects of the game. While 17%, 11% and 8% are solely interested in the fps, air combat and vehicular combat. Interesting stuff that.

This is going to be a pretty short dev update because I’m totally wiped out after Sergio and I – as well as some of the content guys (Alexis, Joerg et al) – have been pulling some sixteen hour days for what seems like days on end.

As we start putting in the finishing touches to our game, a plethora of content that went in this past two weeks have helped to put the final pictures together. We’ve started replacing the remainder of the legacy 3D content placeholders with the newly completed versions. These include the new weapon models, 3D cockpits, scenery elements etc.

Populating an open world game, even one in which there are only eight bases (about 20km sq. each) in a 400 sq. km world, is no easy task. Its not like we’re building a real-world city the likes of the excellent GTA-IV -and which I’m sure took an army of content providers three or four years to do and several million. My goal has always been to ensure that the “areas of interest” (i.e. the bases) are populated enough such that they are interesting, worthy of the time spent and don’t bring the target machine to its knees. I think we’ve accomplished this to the extent that unlike other flight capable games (where you fly up high and see a blurry mess down low), the game looks quite good at any altitude and plays well. Given that multiplayer takes place in the same game world, performance is a big concern of mine.

The game world was built with expansion in mind. So depending on how popular the game is, the plan is to release new vehicles, aircrafts, weapons, inventory deployables, new bases etc. We also plan new career modes which also feature new scenarios focused around another (what? surely you didn’t think only these four survived the crash did you?) team of survivors (lol! I kill me) stranded elsewhere (think new massive maps!) on the planet.

The new Frontend GUI was basically completed about a week ago, but since then a few tweaks and other interfaces (comms, orders stats etc) have been finalized and cleaned up.

Martin has also almost finished with our integrated server browser/chat lobby, stats and leaderboard backend etc. This enables those who want to track their multiplayer stats to register a unique gamerID. From that point on, any server they play on with that gamerID, their stats will be saved and restored. With this, any registered user can view their profile or leaderboard (which will also track the Gammulans vs Terrans kills) stats. Quite a bit of stats are tracked, so those pages are just work-in-progress atm and populated with minimal test data for now. The whole thing should be live and ready within the next two weeks or so. The good thing about rolling our own tech is that we get to control our servers, nobody can close them down, change the TOS on a whim, tell us what we can and cannot do on them etc. I think I also mentioned in a previous update that with ours, gamers in the lobby can chat with others in the game, and vice versa. We are also planning on integrating voice chat, but have to make some final decisions in the coming weeks about that. I know there are many third party solutions our there, but having an integrated solution is probably better. We’ll see how that goes in the coming weeks. If we can’t get it in by release, we’ll definitely do something post release.

Also this week I also finished with an important (at least to those stranded on the ground) feature which enables all careers (with the pre-requisite XP) to jump into and use Surface-To-Air Missile and Surface-To-Air Laser (aka artillery) units to shoot down airborne targets. Since there are fixed and mobile versions of these units, I can’t wait to see how far some poor sap thinks he can get with a mobile unit when there’s someone airborne with one shot one kill Air-To-Surface missiles. At the very least, the burned out crater on the terrain, showing his previous existence, should be worth some Youtube videos. Some of the shots I released today show my character entering an MK1P SAL unit, manning the auto-targeting guns and driving it around for a bit etc

I HAVE to talk about this: Sergio (my trusty XO), also did the graphics preset and handling for the R.A.N.D.O.M thermo-nuclear device earlier this week. I’m not even going to do shots or movies showing what happens when it goes boom because that would just spoil the whole thing. It is freaking awesome!!. Heck, no matter how good you are at the game, you should try and fail that last mission just to see what happens when you fail to locate and/or disarm this devastating weapon.

The race to end of March is in full throttle. Until next time, enjoy today’s batch of awesomeness.

Development Status

Development on the game is coming along quite nicely and Sergio is almost done with the new Frontend GUI which looks – and feels – radically different from the version used in our previous games. This one is a total re-write and which we will at least get some mileage from in our next game (KnightBlade) as well as our last game (the Galactic Command Online MMO due out sometime in 2011).

We looked around for middleware GUI for games, but most were either rubbish or too expensive. There’s one that costs about $20K!!. Yes, you read that right. Crazy stuff that. So in the end, we just decided to do our own – and it has been well worth the investment.

Anyway, our new GUI engine also supports minimal skinning, so you can change the coloring scheme by editing an INI file. We’re of course not going to support this officially, but PC tweakers are welcome to go nuts. The shots above show a L4D (my recent favorite fps game!) type color skin. No conspiracy theories please.

The content guys are still a bit behind on the creation because it is a LOT of art and 3D content in the game. But we’re about 98% there. The new push is on wrapping up the remaining 3D cockpits (each of the 12 fighters and 6 gunships has its own unique cockpit since the game is played primarily in first person view mode), the new character animations set, as well as finishing up the fps weapons which will replace the legacy ones currently used as placeholders in the game. With twenty-two weapons, it is a lot of work.

The good thing about our game engine is that at this stage in development, no content is holding up the game dev itself. Any new content that comes in, just gets checked out, approved and dropped into the game. From that point on, it just works. This is due – largely in part – to the game engine design as well as the fact that earlier on, I decided that we would use legacy (from previous games) art assets in the game so as not to impact the development side. My guess is that we’ll be dropping content into the game right up to the last week before we go Gold on the PC version of the gamel.

Inbound Media

The next game movie, due out in March, will be an all fps movie in co-op mode. That movie will also, for the first time, reveal one of the Gammulan character classes: the Vanguard Assaut Marine. A total badass if I ever did see one. There are three unique Gammulan character classes – and this is their first showing in any of our games even though they are an integral part of the game world’s mythos. Even though the VAM are the pre-requisite “cannon fodder” (think Red Shirt), they are total badasses when encountered in numbers. Since the game is team based, there is no way in hell any gamer is going to survive an encounter on his own when faced with more than two of these guys. Its going to be awesome.

On Gameplay & Game Mechanics

So I was on this week’s Episode 18 of the Avault podcast (great bunch of guys!) where I talked quite about the game, how it plays, the direction etc. I also talked a bit about my reasoning behind the choices and sacrifices made with the game’s graphics direction and such. Of course, no Derek Smart interview is complete without the usual industry rant. My segment starts around the 09:00 mark. Go listen!

There is also a post=podcast Q&A session over here.

A lot of gamers just don’t understand what exactly goes into developing a game. Especially a large open world game. Done by a small indie studio with a budget that is just South of the $3m border. With a small environment, you can do all sorts of crazy things and go nuts in the graphics dept. But then, who is your audience exactly?

There are games out there with upwards of $50m budgets and kick-ass graphics, failing at retail. So it is not just about graphics. Sure cutting edge graphics are good to have because gamers are mostly visual types, but at the same time, a game with excellent graphics and so-so gameplay mechanics, is not going to attract – or retain – the attention of gamers who want more. It is those gamers who “want more” from their games, that we have catered to and attracted over the years. Sure with our low overhead and dev costs, we can afford to do that. But with larger publishers – who have all these crazy expenses, massive teams etc, the difference between a 50K unit seller and a 500K unit seller is – more often than not – how the game plays and feels. And sometimes, neither. So when these games fail, you see all these layoffs, studio closures and such.

Another thing about doing a massive open world game is that you can always extend and expand it. We’ve done this for many years over the life of our popular Battlecruiser and Universal Combat series – which we retired from active duty last year. This new game has a 400 sq. km game world (aka “map”). With only eight (heavily populated) bases that each cover about 20 sq. km. So just with the original world, we can keep adding bases, assets, new characters, careers etc. And thats before we even think of adding another map to the game world. Yes, our tech actually allows us to do that – seamlessly. We can keep stitching the game world until we get old and Grey. The world will just get that much bigger, more populated and more interesting. This is exactly the model that MMO games use – and with increasing popularity. So no, we don’t have to jam everything in this game all at once. Thats what DLC is for.

We have a specific goal and vision for our game and we’re going to stick with that vision – no matter how it plays out. We believe in the game, the mechanics and the premise. The graphics are very good and top notch for what they do and for a game of this size and scope. Once the tech demo is out (sometime in early March) the interested gamers can draw their own conclusions since that tech demo will be based on near final game code but still be subject to various tweaks and such derived from playtesting feedback.

Until next time, keep rooting for us! Unless you’d rather be playing, oh I dunno, the upcoming Battlefield 1943 – a game you played back when it was called Battlefield 1942? Yikes!