MASSIVE TALKING: CHAPTER TWO, LEVELDESIGN'''
Massive Entertainment Reveals
26, April, 2006
With lead level designer Carl "Ludde" Lundgren
During the development of World In Conflict we will offer fans of the game a chance to ask team-members direct questions that we will reply to in interviews, such as this one. Due to the fact that many facts about WIC are not revealed yet, our team-members may be forced to answer evasively at times. Please have patience – we will tell you everything in the end!
Now, without further ado, here is what Ludde has to say on the matter.
INTERVIEW
1. Could you tell us briefly about who you are and what the level design team looks like?
Hey, my name is Carl and I'm a gamedevelopment-aholic. I've been in the industry for 9 years, working as an artist, level designer and project manager. With Massive since April 2003. The level design team for World in Conflict (WiC), besides myself, is made up of two texture artists (who create terrain and environments), two level designers (who work with architecture and object placement), and two more level designers (who do mostly game-flow and scripting). We also work very closely with a tools programmer to maintain an optimal workflow, but he is not an official member of my team.
2. On what Scale will the levels be? Also, will the levels be 'busy' meaning that there will be lots going on like animals running around birds flying etc.
The terrains are larger - and the view distance enormous - compared to Ground Control II. This means you can make out buildings, terrain and units miles away which is a pretty awesome experience. As for playfield size, WiC game-play is a lot more intense and aggressive than GCII so in general the actual playfield is smaller. There will be a lot of "life" going on in the maps. You will see birds taking flight as your tank gets close to the forest and there are other things going on in the maps too. The kind of stuff that we don’t talk about just yet ;-)
3. In GC1 and 2 a Height map system was used for making maps, which limited the use of bridges and tunnels because of the static system. Will units be able to go under bridges as well as over, or through tunnels this time?
The new terrain method is a hybrid between height map editing and full mesh modeling. Height maps are excellent for rapid prototyping and making continuous adjustments over time as the map evolves. They're not that great for highway tunnels or overhanging rocks though... So the new editor has features to cut holes through the height map and export selections of terrain to mesh (for external remodeling and then re-import.
4. Did you go back to the drawing board to rethink how you want to the missions to play out in WiC from what you learned from GC2?
Yes. WiC is fundamentally a different type of game so the action is a lot more direct.
5. Are you trying anything new when it come to level design in WiC compared to other RTT or RTS that are out there?
Oh yes. This time around everything can be demolished and you will have to adapt to a constantly changing battlefield. For example; a bridge can be blown up presenting you with a number of alternatives: take another route, have your support guy provide a bridge layer unit, parachute infantry behind enemy lines, or use amphibious APCs to transport large amounts of infantry across. Enemy infantry hiding in a forest? Napalm bomb it with the nice side effect of creating a path through the forest for your tanks. Infantry negotiates urban areas better now. Your squad automatically moves around inside a house to get to the optimal firing angles. Then again, everything is destructible so the squad will have to keep moving between buildings once enemy artillery has been alerted to their presence. The tactical considerations and variations are countless…
6. How much time on average does it take from start to finish in pure work hours (for you) to make a multiplayer map? (I mean, we all know how much it takes for us, but for someone that spend his whole days doing it...)
Since we are working with evolving technology - meaning lots of research and development - it probably takes a whole lot longer for us right now (even if we spend our whole days doing it =). With the final toolset, one guy should be able to create a decent multiplayer map in days and a graphically feature complete map in a couple of weeks. Keep in mind that WiC is a next gen RTS and the environment is as complex as any FPS. It's quite a bit more work than in the tile editing days, but hey, it's a lot more rewarding too ...
7. What is the most annoying thing about the job?
The mid-project death-march. Really hard work. No light in the tunnel and months until the announcement. That's hard. But it's over now. The game rocks, things are starting to come together and people are walking into each other's offices drooling at new cool stuff every day!
8. What is the best part of the job?
I enjoy the friendly atmosphere at Massive a lot. It's a small and a big company at the same time! That's quite rare in the games industry.
9. Are you allowed to sneak in easter eggs in the maps?
Just you wait and see ...
10. How challenging is it to create maps, thinking about the strategic importance of destroyable and buildable bridges, as compared to gc2, or other level design jobs?
As designers we constantly have to keep in mind that once a bridge blows, the map essentially morphs into a completely different map in terms of game-flow. It presents us with a number of interesting dilemmas but it's actually a lot of fun and adds depth to the game-play for sure.
11. How many different tools do you have to work with, and what are they for? How many different external programs do you use, ie. do you use 3dsmax or Maya, or as previously in the GC series: Lightwave only?
At present, we have two internal tools: one editor for creating terrain textures, roads, lighting and environment settings. Another editor for modeling the actual terrain, placing objects and scripting the game-play. As for external tools: Photoshop or an equivalent bitmap editor is highly recommended. We also use Modo and/or Lightwave extensively for fine tuning roads, extending parts of the terrain and modeling the surrounding landscape. Modo uses the same format as - and is very similar to - Lightwave. Finally, we have been using the excellent (free) Worldmachine terrain generator for many of the landscapes. Keep in mind that the tools we are using are not the same as those that are intended for release to consumers. The Map & Mod tools we are planning to release have much better support for tools and formats than anything we have done in our previous titles.
12. Does scripting differ from GC2? and if it does in what way?
We have completely separated single- and multiplayer scripting. The WiC editor allows you to setup a multiplayer map using only a few clicks. For single-player, the game uses Python scripts. Python is a simple programming language that runs in a sandbox environment so you can essentially create your own little programs running inside World in Conflict. Events, triggers and unit behaviors are all controllable from within the scripts.
13. How does the level designer work on maps.. do they create some of their own models, or do they place placeholders, which then is created by the art team?
We've been using an iterative development process, starting out with a very rough playable draft of every map in the game. As soon as we feel that these draft maps are fun to play, we give each map a solid game-play and graphical overhaul. And then again and again, over and over. For each iteration we receive new feedback from testers, new features from the code and tool teams, plus we typically have fresh new inspiration and ideas when returning to a map weeks later. So the maps grow progressively more fun, better looking and more feature complete as the months pass.
For WiC, we've been working a lot with photo reference. After deciding on a gallery of nice houses, we model quick and dirty "dummy" models for every house and object in the map. These models are very simple: 50-250 polygons (depending on the complexity of the structure). The textures are lo-res and in many cases planar mapped onto the face of the houses. This gives us the ability to prototype a map extremely fast (and in fact it's amazing how effective these lo-res dummy props are in setting the mood and atmosphere of a scene!) Once a map is populated with dummy props we create a real quick draft terrain texture and game-play test it.
After playing some maps, we may realize that we really don't need some of the houses, or that we need completely different ones... But this is the whole idea! By putting minimal development time into the dummy houses, we avoid throwing out houses which have taken our artists many days of work on detailed geometry and textures. When we're done, the map essentially works as a 3d concept sketch. The artists now proceed to create highly detailed versions of all houses and objects.
14. Where do you get your inspiration from?
This differs for each environment. Mainly movies though: Steven Spielberg's various suburbs for utopia. Road Warrior and Terminator2 for dystopia. Twin Peaks for mountains and weird ladies.. The vision of an idyllic eighties America getting besieged by Russians is of course partly inspired by the epic ;) movie Red Dawn.
15. Are you allowed to experiment with game-play on the maps you create, or do they have very specific guidelines?
Experimentation has not only been allowed, but rather encouraged. It has definitely been a Darwinistic process. We've continously kept - and elaborated on - the fun stuff, and thrown out the bad stuff...
16. How many maps do you expect each level designer on your team to create, in the development?
Well, all maps are the result of collaboration between several designers, so I can’t say. Also, the team works on many things besides actual map-making, mainly research and experimentation, so I have no specific figure on an average maps-per-level-designer.
17. What environmental obstacles can we expect? Of course their will be rivers and forests but what about canyons or waterfalls?
Much of WiC takes place in towns and cities. There is a very special range of "environmental" obstacles that emerge once you start looking closer at urban areas. A rail yard may be blocked by commuter trains that force vehicle to zig-zag through, but at the same time providing cover and tactical advantage for infantry, who will use the wagons for cover and move fast in between them. A freeway providing a fast lane from North to South may at the same time obstruct Eastward movement. There can be traffic jams... Either take the time to make way through the mass of vehicles or choose another route. A fuel depot may provide high ground for your sniper squad, but one stray bullet and they're toast.
18. Ground Control II offers some buildings you can "capture" that offer you tactical advantage. Will World in Conflict offer such buildings as well? Have you thought of any additional types?
Yes, but we don’t talk about these ideas yet.
19. How destructible will the landscape be? (i.e bridges, dams, craters, landslides, avalanches)
The terrain (ground) itself is not destructible. Basically everything else is, though.
20. How will the collapse/destruction of a skyscraper be portrayed.
Hard to describe, but what I have seen so far from the art team looks very promising...
21. Will tanks leave tracks in certain substances, such as snow?
We are testing both with tracks and without tracks.
22. Will there be a map editor out for players? when the game comes out?
Last update: December 13, 2006, at 02:54 PM
