Welcome to the third edition of the TWB Chronicle.
TWB interview Rising storm
We talk to Tony Gillham producer of the Rising Storm Mod team
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Thanks for taking time out to speak to us Tony.
We'll get straight to some of the key questions our members have asked regarding Rising Storm.
What made you decide to join the RS mod team?
I don’t think you could rightly say that I decided to join the Rising Storm team as such. Partly because I had decided a long time ago that I wanted to be deeply involved in the development of something to do with Heroes of Stalingrad, whatever it might be, and partly because, as the producer, there was no team at all, just me and a list of people to look up.
Looking at it now, though, I have to say that Rising Storm is going to be breaking ground in the theatre it represents, a little like Heroes of Stalingrad… Heroes will give the players a chance to play on both sides without favour, RS will depict both sides evenly; with no cartoon Japanese or uniformly square-jawed marines.
This is a great challenge, bringing something both novel and realistic to the table.
What is your job within the team?
I like to say that my job is overseeing and co-ordinating the efforts of people far more talented than myself. I recruit (or, latterly, oversee recruitment), set up the procedures and protocols by which the team can operate and I represent the mod to the outside world. I am also the person who deals most frequently with the people at Tripwire.
Darkest Hour is a really immersive mod, what lessons that have been learned are you bringing over to Rising Storm?
Darkest Hour was the product of a cast of thousands, spread over many years. It was also a fairly anarchic enterprise in many respects. I came to the mod quite late and saw that, the goal of getting released over Steam was a very distant one until there was a bit more organisation there. There were some extremely dedicated and highly talented individuals in the team but they needed a better framework to operate within.
I came to realise that extreme talent was of no use to the team if the people with the talent were not team players. Once the team had developed its own discipline, trimmed down, focussed and got its hand on the right tools to do the job (version control being the most important), they were in with a good chance of getting a Steam release.
How much input do TWI have into the mod?
TW have laid out the basic parameters for the mod, in terms of number of levels and what kind of nations and equipment are expected. Additionally we will, of course, be working with the gamemodes that we get from Heroes. When it comes to important recruiting choices we generally run that by TW as well. Other than that they do not tell us, “You have to have a dev meeting this week and you should be discussing this.”
I’d like to think the autonomy we have is because we can generally be trusted. There is also the fact that Tripwire are too mad busy with their own game to be micro-managing ours.
How much of the Pacific conflict are you covering?
Mark Dittmann, the lead level designer, whom you probably know as Slyk from AHz, has focussed his team on producing maps that cover as wide a range, geographically and in terms of time period, as is practical, given our resources.
There will also be some very different styles of map – inasmuch as the terrain/environment of the Pacific allows. This comes down to the great experience of the LD team – they all have as a reference a common language of maps they know and love.
Will there be vehicles including naval ones and amphibious?
I’m afraid that, like everyone, we’re waiting on TW there.
Is RS going to include all the new gametypes that are coming with ROHoS?
At least.
Will you have a Public beta like TWI are having for ROHos?
Given the number of testers we need to thoroughly test out the bigger maps we will pretty much have to do that. I got to know some very good testers in DH and would hope that they would be on the list of people hoping to help us.
A good , tight and thorough testing team is worth its weight in gold towards making a successful release.
As we are going for release some time after HoS, I would expect that beta testing would start pretty soon after HoS’ release.
How good is the UE3 and how much of a step up is it from UE2?
I think that as a basic engine that has all the functionality anyone could possibly want and is very well supported and documented, there is not a better engine at the moment for the kind of project we are engaged in.
The release of the free UDK has been an incredible boost to the games industry and there is a huge new generation coming through of young, talented devs who have cut their teeth on the latest technology thanks to the UDK. I think in the future people will look back at that as one of the key defining moves of gaming in the last 5-10 years.
Many new games seem to include a lot of dust, floating items and even insects drifting on the wind and into vision in order to immerse the player into the game.Will RS be looking to include these types of FX's?
Let’s just say that I specifically hired one very talented, enthusiastic and energetic young developer (PeaceKeeper) because of his skill with particle effects in E:TW and BG2 mods.
One of the things that, for me, made the series ‘The Pacific’ so gripping and visceral was the explosion effects – those black clods of earth flying in the air looked just plain evil.
Will you be using real languages in your character voices i.e. will there be japanese voice actors etc?
Absolutely. I have many contacts in London who are Japanese and are willing to help…including one or two Japanese professional actors. I am really looking forward to giving them my drill sergeant treatment in the studio…”I can’t hear you!” and ”Give me your war face!!!”
I also intend to use photographs of the Japanese guys’ faces to help our character modellers get a nice range of different types of Japanese.
It is a fallacy to think that Japanese people look alike…in my opinion there is a much wider range of facial types than you might think.
How will you include all the sounds a jungle makes, like wildlife and insects etc?
I have always been very passionate about the importance of environment noise.
My maps, back in the days when I had time to map, were full of lots of little noises and I can guarantee that there will be a lot of immersion through sound.
I believe that Level designers should try the exercise of listening to someone going around their map, rather than looking at the screen.
How are you going to deal with the density of jungles and darkness of tunnels and still keep the game playable? Will we be able to "see" through the undergrowth, or will the RO:HOS engine help with the danger sensing?
One of the greatest concerns for our entire team has been how are we going to capitalise on the various bells and whistles included in the unreal engine… meaning light shafts, speedtree, deformable foliage, and some of the more esoteric material tricks that can add to the realism of foliage.
These things look great but they all come at a cost in terms of performance. Fortunately, we have clued-up enough LDs to be able to get the maximum possible performance out of their levels.
We have also been specifically looking for environmental artists who know their stuff about things such as speedtree and foliage. A great coup for us was that we were able to hire the guy who made the speedtree libraries of trees which ship to games developers all over the world. He is now our environmental art lead.
CODWaW was a big success and many players loved the pacific part of the story and its multiplayer maps but is there anything that you feel RS will bring to players that codwaw and similar jungle warfare games have not already?
Well I can pretty much guarantee that Japanese infantry will not carry SVT-40’s. ;D
I can also guarantee that the maps are going to be more based on teamwork than run-and-gunning.
This will be partly because we are taking our game-modes off of Heroes and partly because, of all the teams in the mod, the Level Design team has the highest proportion of RO:Ost veterans.
These are guys who cut their teeth in the classic RO ‘territory’ mode.
The other mod announced for ROhos was the "In Country" vietnam mod which is also set in the pacific's jungles will you be sharing assets and info as your bound to come across the same problems?
There is no formal contact between us and ‘In Country’ at the moment and our situations are rather different in that we have to respect our agreements and NDAs with Tripwire regarding revealing what is in Heroes.
So it is difficult to see a way of pooling info that does not run up against that.
Will you be creating an MP only mod..i.e. are there plans for an SP version of RS?
RS will have all the features of RO:HoS (and very possibly some extra ones thrown in).
Given that we are using Heroes as a base I wouldn’t be doing a very good job and nor would the coders if we didn’t bring a little extra to the table in several ways…gameplay, weapons, features.
Will the mod have all the armies from the pacific or is it just USA and Japan?
I am sorry to say that it will be just the US and Japan.
When Heroes comes out people will realise just why it takes so much work to bring each nation into the game.
So, much as I and our code team (who are predominantly Australian) would like to see other nations added, we have to say it will just be US and Japan for any initial release.
Bots are pretty dumb in UE2 are they any better in UE3 and will you include them in your maps?
Bots have evolved into a much higher lifeform in Heroes – they are not pushovers who can be outsmarted and outgunned on all settings.
They have pwnt me several times even on easy setting if I have stopped paying attention in testing.
How many classes do you plan on including in the mod?
I think RO players have a pretty shrewd idea which of the Ostfront classes are likely to appear in RS, although they will definitely be surprised (pleasantly) by some of the things that Heroes and RS are adding to that standard line-up.
How many maps do you plan on including at release in the mod?
This really is not something I can discuss now – we are just past the initial planning phase but there are so many factors that could move the planned number up or down.
How large will the map sizes be?
As you are probably aware, there are going to be maps in Heroes that suit a relatively large number of players. However, TW have been doing some very neat things that make the maps ‘scaleable’ to suit server size.
I’m sure you will find out what these things are in due course.
Will the fighting be focused more on single large scale engagements or multiple small scale engagements?
I think the best thing we can say here is that there will be a good mix of engagement types – the LDs want variety in their work as much as players want variety in their play.
Will the individual battles be more connected like RO:HOS, or disconnected like RO:OST?
There will be a campaign mode for Rising Storm, where the single player can pit himself against an AI across different areas of the Pacific.
Will the infamous Japanese Knee mortar make an appearance?
There are several ‘specials’ that we are looking at…however, we owe it to the community to get all the main shooting weapons in first, before working on the ‘bells and whistles’.
Let’s just say that we have some pretty interesting brainstorming sessions.
Will we get a chance to use the samurai sword?
Melee was a very great part of the battles of Stalingrad and in the Pacific. I do not want to write any cheques that our coders and animators cannot cash but you can be sure we are looking intensively for good animators… and I think we have found one or two.
Please say the Japanese will be able to lay booby traps?
On booby traps I cannot comment.
One weapon the Japanese apparently did use which made a big impression on me, was the very effective anti-tank weapon called “a guy in a foxhole with a 500lb aircraft bomb and a hammer”.
I can’t guarantee THAT would be in but it would be an excellent mutator for someone to make.
Any chance of air support?
I think anyone expecting BF1942-style air support will be disappointed.
We also need to consider the effect on gameplay of having aircraft like mobile artillery – can you imagine what even a small bomb would do to a small area like an RO map?
Also the coders would shoot me if I committed to air strikes while they are still working on other goodies.
Are you going to look to put in some of the features of other projects, like mortars from Carpathian Cross? or parachutes from Darkest Hour?
It seems unlikely that parachutes are going to feature much in RS as they were not an especially significant feature of that theatre. Mortars – no comment.
They were great but actually proved rather difficult to implement in CC – I know worluk had countless headaches with them.
ROHos is released early next year how long after do you anticipate the release of RS?
We are aiming to release RS at a time when it achieves maximum impact on the Heroes community. I’ll let you work out when, approximately, that might be.
Basically we want TW’s community to feel like they are being love-bombed next year.
When do you think your first Screen shots will be available to the community?
We will be able to show some screenies a lot sooner than people are probably expecting. I can guarantee that people will say “wow!”
Many thanks Tony and good luck to you and all the team with the Rising Storm Mod.
Click on the Rising Storm banner to visit their site.
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