Enemy Territory: Quake Wars Interview

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FiringSquad: Do you worry it's going to be a challenge trying to sell a game with fewer maps? Are people ready to trust developers that you'll spend more time making them better, rather than making more maps and hoping a few catch on? Do you think the need for quality maps is a consequence of your campaign-based design?

Paul Wedgwood: ETQW will ship with about 12 maps: they’ll all be good, and they’ll all be different. We’re confident that players would rather have fewer maps that they’re going to really want to play on than more maps that aren’t up to the same standard or support the same depth of gameplay. Maps don’t catch on by chance, they catch on because they’re better. We could have had more maps in the box, but we cut them to concentrate on making the dozen we have the best we can make them.

Having fewer maps means that we can make them more distinctive. Rather than all maps in ETQW being based on a single style of terrain (such as jungle), there are three themes in development: Temperate, Arid and Arctic. These are then augmented by unique geographical locations, individual plots to the missions, and unique objectives. Each map (mission) in ETQW takes place in a completely unique environment, with a different time-of-day, year and atmospheric conditions. Each battle charts a critical moment of the Strogg invasion, much as Wolf ET retold the important missions of World War II.

Because the type of surface being walked over, driven over or shot at, can be determined from the MegaTexture, each experience of fighting within dense foliage, across arctic planes or arid deserts is unique – this is true of the vehicle traction, explosions and vehicle particles, and audio effects. Sand storms, snow and rain all affect visibility. Because ETQW can render right to the horizon, designers can choose visibility conditions that are right for the battle, rather than the technology constraining the design.

This combination of plot, geographical location, light, shadow, differing atmospheric conditions and audio effects makes each map feel completely unique. We think this is really important for game-play and player immersion, especially in the context of the campaign system, where each game takes place across three maps.

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FiringSquad: How extensive is your post-release support going to be? Can we expect some new maps further down the line? Or is that something you see the community doing?

Paul Wedgwood: Firstly, yes, both id and Splash Damage would love to provide additional maps, but there are no firm details yet. This obviously depends on everything else that needs doing post-release.

As for the community, we’ll be giving them a full tool suite. Because the MegaTexture features unique detail, we’ve developed a tool called MegaGen which allows Level Designers to generate a unique-looking MegaTexture for their maps, using ‘Geometric Texture Distribution’. This system makes use of settings for the required geographical theme (such as the height of the water table, altitudes of silt lines, maximum incline for grass and moss to grow, precipices gathering stones and pebbles), and then distributes these textures across the whole terrain using custom normal and height-map based blends (ensuring that grass grows smoothly in to the crevices of rock, rather than being blended equally and looking unrealistic). Level Designers can lay down routes quickly with the Road Tool, simply dragging them across the terrain, and then compile the MegaTexture as easily as they did a Wolf ET map. The community mappers are going to go nuts; we can’t wait to see what they come up with.

FiringSquad: Are you planning for the game to launch with the SDK?

Absolutely. id Software has a reputation for excellent mod-community support, and with Splash Damage’s roots firmly in that territory too, you can be sure to see the release of a Software Developer Kit that allows great flexibility and power for mod-makers.

Both new and experienced Programmers will have some really powerful tools, although with the majority of the game controllable in script, you can get a huge amount done without modifying a single line of source code. Nevertheless, the source code for many of the game’s components will also be released, allowing for more advanced modifications and total conversions. Mod-makers will be able to script their own vehicles, and create new hardware shaders and particle effects.