Exclusive: Dragonshard Q&A Feature
Derek dela Fuente
11/05/2005
We sat down with Ed Kaminski and couldn’t shut it up when it came to Atari’s appealing D&D RTS...
Dragonshard is a real-time strategy game based on the exciting new Dungeons & Dragons universe, Eberron, which is being developed by Liquid Entertainment. Introducing an entirely new engine and innovative technology Dragonshard encompasses all the classic RTS ideals along with a rich and compelling storyline.
Derek dela Fuente spoke with Ed Kaminski, Producer, and a very detailed interview ensued!
TVG: Tell us some interesting facts about Liquid, the development team, please!
Our team consists of about 40 brilliant and talented people, plus 15 contractors (also brilliant and talented) that we bring in as needed. The people here come from various backgrounds and titles, both PC and console, such as Command & Conquer, Spyro, and the classic Might & Magic series, just to name a few. I think the team is a great bunch of people that definitely share a common bond: the love of games. If weâre not making them, weâre playing them every chance we get.
TVG: A Dungeon and Dragon inspired game â“ tell the readers about the universe the game is set within and the factions â“ races - to choose from?
Dragonshard takes place in a new campaign universe that was released by Wizards of the Coast last year called Eberron. What makes this universe different? Well, if I were to describe to you a classic D&D campaign universe, Iâd say that itâs basically a medieval setting with magic thrown on top of itâ¦a world where magic is very special and only certain individuals have studied hard enough to master it. What Eberron does is it starts with magic at its core. It gives magic to all the main races in its universe and then it fast-forwards into the future a few hundred years to see how those races evolved with magic around. It sort of makes it so that magic is almost like a technology, which makes for all sorts of cool things such as flying airships and new races such as the living machines known as Warforged.
The planet itself has a ring of special stones called Dragonshards that encircle it, kind of like the rings of Saturn. From time to time shards fall to the planetâs surface and its inhabitants find and collect the shards in order to use them for their magical properties.
Our story within Eberron takes place on a continent known as Xenâdrik, in particular a very unexplored area known as the Ring of Storms. The Ring of Storms is a circular mountain range that is constantly consumed in terrible storms and tempests. There is no way through these storms, so air travel into the lands at the center of the ring is impossible. However, some have found passage under the mountains to reach the lands within (such as the characters in our game). The Ring of Storms is home to a legendary Dragonshard known as the Heart of Siberys â“ the largest of all Dragonshards ever to fall to the surface. It is through this shard that all 3 of the races in our game are intertwined.
The Lizard Folk are a race of reptilian people who are actually natives of the lands within the Ring of Storms. For centuries theyâve been charged with the protection of the Heart of Siberys and have successfully kept all outsiders away from their lands and the shardâs great power. The Order of the Flame is a group of humans, dwarves, halflings, and warforged that are all united by religion. They know that the Heart holds great power and are on a conquest to claim it in the name of the Flame, not just to aid them in their holy wars abroad, but to also keep it out of the hands of any who would use it for evil. The third race in the game are known as the Umbragen. Long ago when the Heart of Siberys fell, it destroyed a great and vast ancient elven city. Although the city was destroyed, large parts of it still exist far below the ground (which makes up the bulk of the underground realm in our game). Of the survivors of the elves, a small group decided to search down deeper into the depths, where they lived and learned to manipulate the dark shadows around them. It is these shadow elves that make up the Umbragen. The Umbragen have now returned to the surface in search of the Heart of Siberys. It is their belief that if they shatter the shard and release its power, they can claim it as their own, raise their lost city, and make them rulers of Xenâdrik once more. Wowâ¦that was a lot of info. I hope itâs not too much, but heyâ¦you asked.
TVG: Can you expand on the way you are fusing both RTS and RPG together and what unique ideas and gameplay that this conjures up!?
When we first started working on Dragonshard, we really had to think hard on how to approach it. Here you had two very different game genres to work with â“ RPG focuses on an individual character that you play as. You feel connected to this character, you work hard to level him up, acquire armor, weapons, and special items to make him stronger. Your character becomes more and more powerful the more you play. Then you take a look at RTS and it seems to be the polar opposite â“ youâre controlling a large group of different kinds of characters to do battle on a massive scale. Sometimes, you may even throw units at an army, ultimately sending them to their deaths without batting an eye. Thereâs not as much intimacy here as there is with an RPG. How the hell were we going to combine these two types of gaming?!
The answers came when we did the simplest of things â“ we started playing a classic campaign of the Dungeons & Dragons paper and pencil game. We rolled up our characters, played the game, and talked. The question that popped up was: If I were to be the dungeon master for a campaign where a large-scale war was the background story, how would I do it? The answers that shaped our game came from there. It was decided that the characters playing (the units in the game) belonged to a specific army, and when they explored the dungeon and found treasure, it didnât automatically go to one of them. Instead, the treasure was used to further the armyâs war effort, and the army would decide how the loot would be spent, which members of the army would get better weapons, better armor, etc.
The more we talked, the more ideas evolved. We obviously needed 2 levels on which to play the game, but how would they work in conjunction with one another? What would make players want to play on both? One of the first was resources. We took a common resource in the Eberron campaigning realm, dragonshards, and made them the resources above ground, allowing them to rain down to the surface from time to time. The other resource, gold, would only be found below ground being guarded by horrible creatures. Another was places of power. We constructed special areas that could be found both above and below ground. Once an army took over the area around a place of power, a special blessing was bestowed upon the entire army. This blessing could be any number of things such as higher attack power, movement speed, defensive power, or increased health regeneration. Protecting these areas would be extremely important because if your enemy were to take over the place of power, the benefit would be taken from you and bestowed upon his army.
Now that we had reasons to be on both levels, we turned to melding aspects of RPG into our RTS. The idea of leveling up through experience was a given, but again, we wanted to benefit the army and not just the individual. So, we made it so that when units fought and defeated enemies, they werenât the ones that necessarily used the experience gained. Instead, all experience gained goes into a global poolâ¦kind of like a third resource. Itâs from this pool that the player can pick and choose which units in his army he wishes to level up. So, for example, I could send my barbarians off to battle and gain experience, but I can use that experience to level up the sorcerers that Iâve kept back at my base. We also made it so that any special items that were picked up went into a global inventory. When armor, weapons, and potions are gained, the player can pick and choose which units become equipped with them. So, the customization that an RPG player has come to expect is present in Dragonshard, itâs just on a grander scale â“ an army rather than an individual.
TVG: Could you expand on the two different game styles on offers pertaining to upper and lower ground?
Above ground is where youâre going to find a lot of the RTS elements that gamers in this genre come to expect â“ youâll be building structures, training units out of those structures, and using the units to form an army to ultimately kick the crap out of your opponent and destroy his army and base. However, some of the rules that RTS gamers are used to may be bent, and in some cases purposely broken. A prime example of this is our city grid system. Once upon a time when a gamer played RTS, he would build his structures haphazardly on the map wherever level ground could be found and once his base was set up, he ignored itâ¦focusing only on what units and upgrades he wanted to create. What weâve done is weâve tried to make building creation just as important as creating the units that come out of them. For example, when you build a Dwarven Armory on the city grid, youâll be able to train Dwarven Barbarians from that structure. Youâll also be able to level up your Dwarven Barbarians from the Armory, as well. However, youâll only be able to level them up to level 3. If you want to level them higher, youâll need to build another Dwarven Armory adjacent to your existing one. Now, you can level them up to level 4â¦and level 5â¦but not level 6. To do that youâll need to build yet another one adjacent to your existing Dwarven Armories. What this does is, it quickly starts filling up the available grid squares in your city, and real estate will start to become scarce. This means the player will need to start deciding which structures are more important than others, and which unit types he wants to level up to maximum levels and which heâll be ok with being at lower levels. Plus, when he starts seeing which units his opponents are building, the player may find that he needs to destroy certain structures in order to make room for the ones that train the counter units to his enemyâs units. So, not only will the player need to change up which units heâs creating in order to counter, but heâll need to do the same thing with the buildings in his city grid. So, above ground youâll still have the RTS play you love â“ building an army and conquering your enemy â“ but youâll find new twists to the rules that youâre used to.
Below ground youâll find a different game feeling altogether. Here, the camera moves in a bit closer to make things a little more intimate, and youâll be controlling small groups of elite units that make up your dungeon party. The party members will have classic D&D classes such as rogue, sorcerer, ranger, etc. and theyâll have abilities that will aid the party as they explore deep underground. Down here youâll be searching for treasure and special items while also fighting large boss monsters such as Umberhulks, Hydras, Gelatinous Cubes and Horned demons, just to name a few. Youâll also run into traps which your rogues will need to detect and disarm, plus you may find a few puzzles that need to be solved to allow your party safe passage to hidden areas or to unlock special treasures. However, keep in mind that just because the below ground experience feels a bit more RPG than RTS, the game is still a Real-Time Strategy game and your opponent may be doing the same things you are. It wonât be uncommon to be exploring below ground and running into your enemyâs dungeon party while youâre down there. So, be prepared for battle with your opponent on both levels of play.
TVG: Is the game focused solely toward serious gamers that are very much into D&D and will you offer some kind of easy learning tutorial to novices and newcomers?
I believe that RTS gamers will enjoy the game. I also believe fans of the D&D world will enjoy it as well, however I hope theyâre forgiving with some of the liberties weâve had to take with certain aspects to make it a fun, balanced game. For example, whenever Iâve demoed the game to the general public at gaming conventions, some of the most inevitable questions I get from D&D fans is, âDo you follow the 3.5 rule set?â, or âDoes each of the beholderâs eyestalks fire off a different type of attack as stated in the Monster Manual?â My answers to such questions are, weâve tried to stay as true to the D&D universe as weâve possibly could, and weâve used the 3.5 rule set as a guideâ¦but weâve had to take certain liberties in order to make an RTS out of an RPG franchise. If we followed the RPG rules to the letter, the RTS game would be way unbalanced and not fun. So, I do hope they will be somewhat forgiving if they find that spellcasters can cast more spells than they should be allowed to during the day or that if a fireball spell does not do the specific amount of radius damage that theyâve come to expect.
As for novices and newcomers, weâve done a number of things to make Dragonshard as accessible to as many people as possible. One way we do this is by eliminating a tech tree. In RTS games of the past, there was a preset pattern of structures and units that needed to be generated in order to âunlockâ access to other structures and units. The tech tree turned into something that had to be memorized by seasoned players, and ended up becoming one of the things that turned off the casual gamer from picking up an RTS game. With Dragonshard, weâve done away with such a convention. The player will be able to build any structure he wants and train any unit he wants provided that he has enough resources to do so. Also, every structure that you can build will be able to train at least one type of unit. So, it only comes down to knowing which units come out of which structureâ¦and even then we make it easy through a menu called the King Screen. The King Screen is a single menu that lists all structures youâre able to build and everything that can be built out of those structures. From this single screen, the player can choose what he wants to build without having to know anything. He just looks, decides, and clicks and those units and structures get built.
So, weâve made constructing your base and army easy for the casual gamer, but what about the rest of the game? Well, weâre providing a tutorial that will teach the basics, but weâre also putting together an AI that will allow the novice RTS gamer to have fun and not feel frustrated. If the player sets the AI difficulty low enough, the AI will only focus on whichever level the player is focusing on. For example, if the player wishes to spend more time below ground, exploring, fighting monsters, collecting treasure, and enjoying more of the RPG aspects of the game, the AI will only focus on that game layer as well. He wonât do a surprise attack above ground and wipe out the playerâs base. If the player wishes to spend most of his time above ground building his army and battling his enemy, the AI will switch focus and not go after the special items and places of power that are held below ground. Itâs very accommodating. Of course, if the veteran RTS player wants a challenge, he can always crank up the difficulty level and all bets are offâ¦the AI will try to backstab him any chance it gets and be as sneaky as possible. As I said, we try to make our games accessible to as many people and play styles as possible.
TVG: What did you learn from creating Lord of the Rings that you have implanted within Dragonshard?
After creating a game, you always come up with a list of things that went wrong and went right. I think the biggest thing weâve tried to do between these two games is make it intuitive and accessible. We also learned that units need to have more focused rolesâ¦making them all valuable in unique ways. We tried really hard to execute on this in Dragonshard.
TVG: Please tell the readers about how many different types of buildings and units on offer?
There are 3 different races with 11 structures each. Each side has a total of 25 unique units comprised of 4 different categories: Soldiers, Captains, Champions, and Juggernauts. This gives us a grand total of 33 structures and 75 units. And those are just the playable ones! There are also an array of non-playable NPCs and monsters throughout the game.
TVG: Would you highlight the most important points of the âstreamlinedâ resource management system?
Well, there are two main resources in the game â“ gold/treasure and dragonshards. Dragonshards can be found above ground. Also, from time to time they will fall from the sky and land randomly around the map, constantly changing which areas youâll be fighting over for this resource. Gold is mainly found below ground in the ruins of the underground city. Youâll find them locked in chests or scattered about, but being guarded by horrible creatures such as Beholders, Umberhulks, and Hydras just to name a few.
In Dragonshard, you wonât have to deal with maintaining a constant stream of workers that walk back and forth from resource nodes back to your keep. Here there are no worker units. Instead, every ground unit in the game is capable of gathering resources, and once they do they donât have to walk all the way back to your base in order for you to use them. Just click on a unit, tell him to collect some gold, and BAM â“ itâs in your reserves ready to be spent. We wanted players to be able to concentrate more on exploration, warfare, and strategy than having to spend a lot of time making sure their economic stream wasnât being attacked by their competition.
TVG: Combat is done on a great scale â“ would you give one interesting insight into an epic conformation!
Well, above ground the battles are squad-based. So youâll have small groups of certain types of warriors at your command, moving them tactically to surround your enemies with melee combatants in the front while being supported by ranged units and spellcasters from the rear. When squads fight, they form battle linesâ¦each member of a squad stand so that each will be fighting an enemy, but standing shoulder to shoulder with someone else in their squad. As one squad kills of units in the other squad, their battle line will start to pincer, then surround the smaller lineâ¦so youâll definitely get an idea of whoâs winning and whoâs losing just by looking at the lines.
Personally, my favorite kinds of battles happen below ground. Iâve taken my dungeon party into the depths to find my enemy fighting an Umberhulk who is guarding a large amount of treasure. While my enemy is wrapped up in battle, I sneak to the back, grab the treasure, and run away before either of them discovers what Iâve done. Sometimes the underhanded way is more fun than a straight-up confrontationâ¦but thatâs just the way I play.
TVG: At present the game is looking gorgeous. What 3D engine are you using?
There was no licensing a third-party engine. This is a new engine that weâve created ourselves.
So there you have it, enough material to keep even a D&D fanatic busy; Dragonshard is scheduled for release during summer 2005, weâll have more information from E3.
