Enemy Territory: Quake Wars Q&A

With E3 fast approaching, the guys at Splash Damage are in crunch mode to make sure Enemy Territory: Quake Wars is in top form when it's playable at the show. I managed to get a few questions off to studio owner and lead designer Paul "Locki" Wedgwood, who answered at much greater length than I had expected given how busy they must be. Locki brings plenty of the experience to the table for Quake Wars, having previously served as lead designer on the popular Q3F mod and then of course serving as lead designer on the surprisingly free Enemy Territory: Return to Castle Wolfenstein. Here's what he had to say about my Quake Wars queries: Shack: Could you go into some detail about the workings of Carmack's "MegaTexture" technology used in the game? Paul Wedgwood: Sure! John Carmack at id Software devised the MegaTexture technology as a way to generate and exploit a single huge, unique, untiled texture to cover the entire landscape of a map. This represented the first of several significant advances for the Doom 3 engine; for example, the MegaTexture technology has a tool suite called MegaGen, which really helps our Level Designers generate the initial map layouts. MegaGen can automatically distribute materials such as grass, sand and rocks across the landscape, based on altitudes and the angles of incline. MegaGen makes moss grow up the steeper slopes and cling to rocks, grass grow in the flatter areas, and sand and snow gather appropriately in the crevices between rocks. Our Artists are then able to paint additional fine unique detail such as cracks in road surfaces, or they can texture modeled elements such as shell and plasma blast craters in the terrain. All of this is compiled into a five gigabyte source texture - hundreds of times larger than the average high-resolution desktop wallpaper. The really amazing thing about the MegaTexture technology is that only around ten megabytes of video memory and twenty megabytes of system memory are used to display it. What’s more, we ‘brute force render’ the terrain right to the horizon - there’s no artificial fogging hiding the view. Perhaps even more importantly than the visual benefits, we’re also able to derive gameplay-affecting properties from the texture itself rather than the underlying polygons. This feature accurately determines the implication of different surface types on gameplay. For example, appropriate footsteps are played on sand versus concrete, while driving off-road will result in gravel particles being kicked up when a vehicle loses traction and the appropriate sound effects being played. Even a vehicle’s traction itself is determined from this huge texture, giving a vehicle better road-handling on asphalt than on mud. Shack: What, if anything, has gone into adapting the DOOM 3 engine for such huge environments? It's definitely out of character with most of the games based on the technology. Paul Wedgwood: When we started working on the initial design with Kevin Cloud (Co-Owner of id Software), we knew that to evolve Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory’s game-play to the level we all wanted, we needed an engine that would support terrain rendering, multiplayer gaming and vehicle physics. It’s a great testament to id Software’s technology that Doom 3, which appears to be a single-player, indoor, first person shooter engine, could prove such a great foundation for this new genre. The big technological advances then have been in terrain rendering, physics and networking. We’ve evangelized the features of the MegaTexture so much that people must think that ETQW’s networking and physics are its poor inbred cousins, but in fact these are both areas that have witnessed similar advances. For the networking, we devised a system with id Software called ‘Area of Relevance’, which works somewhat like ‘Level of Detail’ for graphics – it only sends the data you really need to know about. For example, up-close you’ll see the entire inventory of a team-mate, but at a mile away you don’t need to know which way his head is facing or how many grenades he has, so we don’t transmit this information to you. For the game’s physics, we’ve extended the implementation of ‘rigid bodies’ so that suspension, propulsion and friction are better simulated. This lets us have great off-road vehicles that can climb rocks, boats that have buoyancy and flying vehicles that react the way you’d expect to lift, drag, thrust and friction. It has a great affect on gameplay, because players controlling vehicles in ETQW find that they handle the way they’d expect – for example, as their skill improves they can start to perform trick jumps, giving them access to more routes across the battlefield. Shack: How does Enemy Territory: QUAKE Wars stand out from games in similar genres, such as the Battlefield series? Paul Wedgwood: Both id Software and Splash Damage are fans of Battlefield (and both companies are known for running Battlefield game servers for their staff and friends), but ETQW should be thought of as a different kind of game with different development and gameplay goals. ETQW is fundamentally built with the goal of creating gameplay where teamwork makes a significant difference in whether or not you complete objectives. The game is also unique in pitting asymmetrical forces against one another; It’s no longer just a choice between two similar but differently-named machine guns: the choice of whether to play Strogg or GDF is significant, the strategies are different, and the experience is different. ETQW’s builds on Wolf ET’s successful team play approach that has won millions of fans the world over, but is set a century after those World War II battles. It pits the Allied troops of the Global Defence Force against their most horrific threat yet - the Strogg invasion of Earth, set in the epic QUAKE universe - a conventional human military force taking on the marauding Strogg with their alien technology. And while it’s true that ETQW can be played instantly - and there’s absolutely no reason not to jump right in, grab a weapon, drive a vehicle and have fun blowing up the enemy - ETQW’s game depth allows for previously unseen team play potential. The new ‘Solo Assignment System’ (due for completion after E3) ensures that regardless of whether you know which combat role you’re playing, what weapons you’re carrying, or what your team objectives are, you’ll know where to go, what to do when you get there, and what you reward will be for victory. This coordinated team-play system evolves as you use it and your character advances, to provide the infrastructure for a significant improvement in interface and communications for fire-teams. We are convinced that even someone new to the FPS MP genre will quickly move up from having independent shoot-and-run fun in a nice-looking online “sandbox” battlefield, to completing tactical missions as part of a crack combat unit, assaulting and securing combat objectives in pursuit of the strategic goals that mark the turning points in Earth’s war against the Strogg invaders. Shack: Rather than true single player, Enemy Territory: QUAKE Wars apparently has some kind of mission mode that is played online. Could you explain this (or correct my incorrect information)? Paul Wedgwood: Enemy Territory is a multiplayer game, and the core of Enemy Territory gameplay (whether that’s Wolf ET or ETQW) is team-play. So, when you’re relying on your team-mates to perform specific tasks or you’re covertly observing the enemy and trying to learn their tactics, it is far more satisfying and rewarding when the other players are human. As gamers we love multiplayer games, and as developers of a multiplayer game, our goal is to have people playing with other people. When a person would rather play with a computer controlled bot than a live opponent, the design has failed as a multiplayer game. id and Splash Damage feel strongly that our development time is better spent on improving team-play and ensuring that players are able to easily understand their role on the team and within the campaign. We’re focusing every effort on making a game that is not only deep and rewarding for veteran players, but is also a game that new players can jump into, know where to go, what to do when they get there, and what their reward will be for success. Naturally, ETQW is not the first game to do this - World of Warcraft is the most notable recent game to be multiplayer-only, but featuring in-mission training that takes part while playing online. Shack: Are there any features (or modes, or whatever) in the game you're particularly proud of that gamers might not know about yet? Paul Wedgwood: There are three areas that we’re most proud of: First, moving to the QUAKE Universe, and in doing so, evolving the Axis versus Allies battles of Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory. As a prequel in the story-line to the Quake series of games, set around 2060, you could think of ETQW as Quake Zero – a retelling of the initial Strogg invasion of Earth. Each battle is unique, at a different geographical location, with different tactical objectives and strategic goals. For example, one map witnesses the GDF fighting to secure intelligence about Strogg Slipgate Technology (which eventually leads to the retaliation against Stroggos in Quake II’s plot). In ETQW, players pick a side; fighting either as the human Global Defence Force, with conventional weapons, or as the biomechanical Strogg alien invaders, with their more advanced technology. Secondly, we developed the game as multiplayer from the very start, rather than adding multiplayer to an existing single-player game. This meant that we weren’t taking a single-player game and cutting back on features (because we wanted to send them across a network), but instead focusing on what features could be added or improved for pure multiplayer. This is also true for the physics engine, which now allows us to simulate vehicle forces and traction much more realistically than has been possible across a network in the past. Thirdly, and probably most importantly, the game focuses on team-play. Two asymmetric teams (with differing weaponry, vehicles, deployables and combat roles), fight it out to secure specific tactical objectives in pursuit of a strategic goal – you’re not simply death-matching or stealing flags. Instead you take on a specific combat role and work with your team to construct a bridge, escort and deploy a Mobile Command Post at an outpost, steal data, or destroy a Strogg Shield so you can launch a full attack on their base. Shack: Thanks for your time! Quake Wars will be on display in playable form at E3, and Shack will be there to check it out and give in-depth impressions. The game is expected to ship later in 2006.