Rise & Fall: Civilizations at War - Developer Diary #2 Feature

With the second part of the Rise and Fall diary well past its due date, which unfortunately has been hindered by the fact that the original developer, Stainless Steel Studios, is sadly no more, TVG managed to glean some information from the internal team assembled to finish the job at Midway. The task of ensuring that this very promising RTS title comes to fruition as well as carrying on the great work that Rick Goodman and his team at Stainless Steel created could be a tough ask. Midway has assembled a small and well rounded team complemented with a number of designers and personnel, including those who worked on Lords of Everquest and Gauntlet to pull together the game and add the final touches for a summer release.

"Stainless did a great job, however sometimes you just get too close to a project and you miss the little things."

Mark Caldwell, the Executive Producer, who also worked with Stainless Steel Studios during the development of Rise & Fall: Civilizations at War, commented that the game is basically the same game it was before and they are currently optimizing, polishing, and balancing the experience. "Our mandate is to hold true to as much as possible of the original design. We are not making any sweeping changes, only minor modifications which will allow us to better balance and polish to ensure a top quality game. The bottom line is, Play Test, Play Test, Play Test is the rule... play it, fix it, play it, fix it, till it is broken no more. That is our design doc."

Currently at Beta, we were also told by the team that it was a bit rough at first, because of the inherent nature of taking over someone else's code, but things are now moving at a rapid pace! They have not only had to do work to get everything as up to date as quick as they possibly could, but were further curtailed with a few internal delays before they actually got their hands on the code, nevertheless Caldwell now believe things are coming together well.

The presentation and look of Rise & Fall has been one of its distinctive selling points. It was good to hear that the team shared this view and had made very few changes to this side of the game, "The key to the presentation of the game is the seamless switch from RTS mode to hero mode and getting this to look and feel correct, in both modes, while keeping the same level of player immersion is no small achievement. All of the technology in the game was developed with this in mind." Even the cut scenes were put together by Stainless, so naturally they are very true to their original vision of how they should be presented.

It did appear that a great deal of code/work was already in place when Stainless Steel folded and the team is actually focused on compatibility and bug fixing, which involves all the tiresome details of shipping a game: getting it to work on all the hardware out there, fixing crash bugs, stabilizing multiplayer, and so on.

Speaking with one of the programmers about the game's engine, and the fact that no other RTS game has ever offered sieges of this scale and scope, shed some light on some of the intricacies that have been encountered. "The most difficult issue was no doubt making the engine do two different things well. In all games there are assumptions that let you take technological shortcuts. In a standard RTS for example you can assume the camera will never get very close to the action, and/or it will only view the scene from a given angle. In an FPS you can assume the camera will always be close to the action and that there will be no more than a dozen or two units on the screen. Rise and Fall can not make these basic assumptions, and thus the engine can not take the shortcuts other game engines are allowed."

Asked to summarise the role that Midway San Diego are taking with the development of Rise & Fall: Civilizations at War, Caldwell was keen to stress the desire to make the :

"Basically we are not governed by any real motives other than to have the best game possible. If we play it and it's broken, we fix it. If we need to stray from the design ever so little to make it more fun or balanced, we will do so. Ultimately we don't want to make any changes, but sometimes things just don't work out the way you planned, once everything else is in place. Stainless did a great job, however sometimes you just get too close to a project and you miss the little things. The new team sees these right away and we are working on not only improving the quality, game balance, and polish, but fixing the little things."

TVG hopes to bring you more on the development of Rise & Fall: Civilizations at War in a concluding Developer Diary chapter, but we wouldn't hold out too much hope. Rise & Fall: Civilizations at War is scheduled for a June release bar any further delays; look out for a Hands On preview to follow shortly...