Field Ops Developer Diary #2 - The Creative Process Feature

In the second chapter of the continuing Field Ops Developer Diaries, Freeze Interactive's Creative Director Marek Kasinski talks about the creative process behind the game and the struggles they've faced in merging the first-person-shooter and real-time-strategy genres.

Playtest, playtest, playtest...

In creating and designing Field Ops there were lots of difficulties to overcome in merging two genres which are completely different. As you could imagine, one of the difficulties has been to design the game mechanics using the many advantages and weaknesses of each genre without unbalancing the whole game.

When the first prototype was produced, which allowed switching from one mode to the other, we had to face many balancing issues. Fortunately we did lots of focus testing to check how each player handled this duality, what the flaws were, how the player coped and how often they would actually switch modes. We also spoke to many fanatical and experienced game players from both genres on how they felt about having a game like this and if they would actually utilize both roles?

Basically we intend to let the player decide when he wants to switch from the different game modes, enabling the player to play at any time RTS or FPS/TPS but the player will reach optimal results when he uses them both efficiently and possibly thinking and planning a little ahead.

After these focus tests it appeared that the FPS players always played in FPS view and the RTS players played from their RTS view! So although it was back to square one... we had got some ideas from these focus tests.

The end result was that we have decided to create, on the first step/level, what we called "battlefield" setups which are small maps where we setup a precise situation, where it's best to use one specific view or the combination of both. A kind of puzzle! Then we could use these configurations to build the mission map.

We had spotted some flaws with the RTS mode that needed adjustments, mainly because the usual RTS controls are not efficient when you have to face FPS players. So we created advanced RTS controls to have better control over the soldiers.

The Snapping Tool allows the player to quickly send their soldiers behind cover without undertaking any micromanagement and the second tool/option allows the player to make his soldiers face in the precise direction while the are moving or on a static position.

The design innovations lie in the fact that we allow the player to switch on the fly from a RTS game mechanics to a FPS game. This is a basic idea we've seen in the past in Battlezone for example but not fully exploited. In addition to this we create design elements such as the RTS advanced tools, the AI mechanics, and balancing. All of these create the ideal conditions to be associated to those genres but also offering true originality and innovation!

For instance, when we look over the balancing we had to manage lots of elements, such as: Will it be possible for the AI to make headshots in RTS mode? Normally you should allow that, but for a RTS player losing one soldier in one shot will be very frustrating. This is why currently; we've reached the stage where the balancing is the focus of the design team. Here we will spend time and effort to ensure everything is nigh on perfect. It is the many little things that combine to make the whole game a balanced and well thought out and immersive experience!

Status update

We are still working on the polishing phase.

Design: The design team is working now to balance the experience system and a part of the team is trying to enhance the secondary objective. Now for instance, we are able to call air strike support thanks to the sniper which uses laser designator. On the other hands, we start to script intro-cinematics for each map.

Art: The art team is still building new graphical elements. We now have new animations such as idle animations, cover animations, reloading animations (in RTS view), etc...

Programming: The code team has mainly finished the hard work and is now focusing on debug/ optimisation routine (especially for the network). They are also doing a new option which allows auto restart in FPS view when one of your soldiers dies whilst in FPS view. Otherwise you switch in RTS mode. This is quite useful when you play in multiplayer and you want to focus in FPS.

Look out for more on Field Ops from Freeze Interactive and Digital Reality next month...