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Exclusive: Desert Rats vs Afrika Korps Q&A Feature
Derek dela Fuente
28/01/2004
We chat to the developers behind a new RTS courtesy of Digital Jesters...
Desert Rats vs. Africa Korps places you in the heat of battle between legendary generals Montgomery and Rommel during the North Africa campaign of World War II from both the Axisā and Allies' perspective. Players can look forward to battle in the rugged desert landscape but the tasks of selecting the right combination of units, combat vehicles and tactics are not easy ones.
Atention to exating detail, along with the tools and hardware to get on with the job, includes a variety of Units: with more than 70 different units available, each with its own complementary characteristics, including eight specialized soldiers (rifleman, scout, machine gunner, medic, sapper, flamethrower, sniper, grenade launcher) and seven categories of vehicles (including recon, tank, anti-tank artillery, anti-air artillery, transport, air support) unite to form the player's armies.
The development team responsible for creating Desert Rats vs. Afrika Korps is Digital Reality, which has been in the video game business since 1995 and currently employs 40 people. Specializing in the development of strategy games, they are proud of the fact that their games offer cutting edge 3D technology, top notch graphics quality and sound (and mentioned that they won the BAFTA Award in 2000). We interviewed the Producer, Pascal Hery, whose task it is to ensure this offers more that the usual helping of RTS. He came up with some well thought out comments and ideas.
TVG: Why have you targeted this period and setting for the game and what do you believe will make it compelling for RTS gamers?
We felt that no game has really given this period the treatment it deserves. There were a number of very specific characteristics to this conflict and this theatre that imply some very exciting opportunities in terms of game mechanics. A driving concern for us throughout the design phase was the question: What would Rommel do? What would Montgomery do? For example in the North African conflict there was a lot of scavenging and repairing of enemy units, and Rommel had a large proportion of vehicles created in British factories (and vice-versa). In the game, this translates into the fact that a vehicle doesnāt belong to either side: it belongs to the allied side if it has an allied crew, it belongs to the axis side if it has an axis crew. If an axis crew deserts their tank, an allied infantryman can climb into the tank and drive it away. Weāve also paid special attention to all the units in the game. Visually, the in-game vehicles are very close to the real-life tanks, and their parameters also closely reflect the features of the real-life tanks. Overall this means the players will be facing the same kind of problems that Montgomery and Rommel had to master.
TVG: A game like this is all about the variety of missions so will you expand a little on the missions ā“ perhaps one that really sums up the essence of Desert Rats?
OK. In the fourth mission of the Axis campaign, Hartmann, the German principal character, has to lead a convoy of four trucks protected by as many tanks through a town along a road flanked with two hills upon which artillery guns are located. As he nears the town, he is hounded by incessant attacks. As soon as he leaves the convoy too far behind the allies see this and sneak in to destroy the trucks. Once Hartman is in the city he realises the town is infested with allied soldiers hidden in houses, and he finds himself fighting an urban battle in the streets of this small desert town. He finds himself fighting his way through roadblock after roadblock, and realises once inside the town that the two artilleries have sighted himā¦ The player is given a clear objective, but there is a strong story line through each mission that come and try to foil the player along the path to the objective. This means that the player will be presented with additional secondary objectives that amount to overcoming the obstacles presented to the player by the story.
TVG: Do your characters act for themselves and how much do they rely totally on the players input?
Actually we ran into a problem early on in the development where the AI was too autonomous, and basically the game ran itself. We consequently toned down the AI and we feel weāve now reached a satisfactory level of autonomous behaviour vs. player input. Units have three different firing behaviours and three different movement behaviours; this allows you to configure the amount of autonomy you want to give the units. They can also be set to automatically disarm traps, heal wounded units, repair damaged vehicles.
TVG: When it comes to real-time, squad based, period strategy, Commandos springs to mind immediately, so how, do you believe, Desert Rats vs. Afrika Korps stands out beside it?
Desert Rats vs. Africa Korps has an emphasis on tanks rather than on infantry, and is more of a tactical game than a problem solving game.
Desert Rats vs. Afrika Korps also features a very innovative command system, based around a pause feature. The complexities of the battlefield mean the player will be fighting on multiple fronts and having to coordinate the assaults of tanks, planes and other vehicles located throughout the playing field. The pause feature allows the player to give the various tank squads complex orders at any moment in the game and respond to the rapidly evolving situation on the battlefield. The units then execute the orders once the game is taken out of pause. This feature allows the player to have the advantages of a turn-based gameplay, i.e. being able to take the time to think out a suitable strategy for as long as he wishes, while keeping all the intensity of action that characterizes real-time strategy.
TVG: Explain a little about the gameās set up - start with the customary poser of who do you assume, do you have a choice of starting characters? What are your main objectives and sub objectives? (What also is the make-up of your squad? How are they replaced if killed? Do they have individual attributes? If so, what are they?)
There are six main characters in the game, four of which are playable, the two others being villains. Each mission starts with at least one of these characters, and that is determined by the story, then you set up your starting team (i.e. infantrymen, tanks and other vehicles) in the management phase.
Once in the mission, infantrymen that are killed or tanks that are destroyed are not replaced, however in Desert Rats vs. Afrika Korps, you can target specific areas of a tank. Destroying a tankās caterpillar stops if from moving, destroying a tankās turret will stop it from firing. Once you destroy an enemy tankās turret, itās crew will leave, and you will then be able to mount infantrymen into the tank, repair the tank and use it as your own. In certain missions there are also buildings (e.g. radio tents) that allow you to call for reinforcements. Thereās a multiplayer mode built around this gameplay mechanism, where the more points you hold the more reinforcements you get.
Just to give a few examples in terms of objectives of the single player mode, the player will lead a strike on a command post deep behind enemy lines in the middle of a sand storm, protect a general retreat in the face of superior forces, smash though heavily fortified defence line with mines, trenches, sand-bags bunkers, AT-guns, etc., protect a beach-landing, fight urban battles with a hidden enemy, be pestered by air raids, protect a convoy through hostile territory, and the list goes onā¦.
TVG: What weapons and equipment are available and are they all accurately and authentically presented?
Yes, all weapons, tanks and other vehicles in the game are historically accurate, i.e. not only are they visually very close to their real world counter-parts, they also behave in a very realistic way. Tanks have different values for front, side and back armour, their speed, accuracy and range are all accurately transcribed into the game. Indeed, all the battlefields are accurately transcribed into the game and were real-life battles.
TVG: Tell us about he management phase at the start of each mission.
For each mission you get to select the task force you will be taking on the mission from a pool of available units. Each unit has a cost (in Mission Points) and the player has a budget of MPs to spend in choosing his team. As the game goes on the available MPs become higher and higher and the pool of available units is larger and larger.
TVG: Thank you Pascal. Finially sum up the game in a sentence.
Desert Rats is a tactical 3D real time game which lets you experience the unique North Africa campaigns of World War II brought to life by some of todayās most realistic and detailed 3D technology.
Deserts Rats, in a highly competitive market, has many interesting features not least the fact that although the game is playable on a low configuration, it uses some very impressive effects that push the envelope of higher ranger configurations. In a word, the gameās resource requirements are scalable. On a lower configuration the gameplay is the same, but the effects arenāt as impressive as on a high-end machine. This is thanks to an advanced real-time level of detail system for both models and animations.
A well balanced Single Player Experience along with multiplayer gaming is on offer and a story-driven campaign spans 20 missions ranging from recon operations to large-scale battles for desert fortresses. This could well be worth checking out.
