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Freelancer Interview Feature
Stephen Leyton
12/03/2003
We spoke with a member of the development team, Jorg Neumann, Lead Designer, at Digital Anvil to find out a little more.
Itâs not long now to the release of Freelance. We spoke with a member of the development team, Jorg Neumann, Lead Designer, at Digital Anvil to find out a little more. Check out the demo of the game on the Microsoft website.
Set in the outer reaches of the planetary system, Freelancer combines the action of 3-D space combat, the exploration of a dynamic, living universe and trading in a rich galactic economy, where players' decisions drive the adventure. Developed by Digital Anvil, the epic adventure challenges players to determine their own reputations and choose their own distinctive styles of play. Players can choose to act like police officers, traders, pirates or explorers for different gameplay experiences. The open-ended style of gameplay gives gamers a choice between following a linear storyline or determining how the story will unfold. The multiplayer component enables players around the globe with their own servers to fly missions or explore space together. An enhanced mouse and keyboard interface simulates the realistic feel of flying a spaceship while making the game accessible to a wide range of gamers
Q Freelancer has and still is a long time in the making. Why the long delay and is it now inline for April 2003 release? Over all this period have you changed the spec target of the machine and has any of the concept of the game changed?
JORG: When Freelancer was first conceived, it was fueled by the ambition to create a truly new and groundbreaking gaming experience. That single concept has been a constant throughout its development cycle. Freelancerâs first steps were technologically successful, but as time continued the vision for the game took on a more refined and focused direction. The core idea of the game became centered around the creation of a vast and vibrant universe that truly feels alive and has its own dynamic, while also providing players with an unprecedented amount of freedom. We focused first on a great story with interesting and 3-dimensional characters, and the development of the rich and detailed history of the Freelancer universe; what was where, why, who lived there, what was going on â“ all to provide context â“ a reason to be. We then turned our attention to the more formidable task of actually bringing the universe to life.
That task alone was no simple undertaking. However in the end, we were able to develop an expansive, detailed universe complete with nearly fifty large star systems to explore, over one hundred and sixty bases to land on and nearly two thousand base-side NPCs to interact with. Each one of these systems has its own unique environments, commodities, political machinations and factions. When a player flies through an area of space for the first time, he is filled with a sense of wonder as he encounters a population buzzing with activity; merchant convoys are traveling trade lanes to deliver goods, fighters are flying escort or sweeping for criminals or enemy factions, criminals are plundering cargo and different factions are either fighting or helping each other out in armed combat. And everyone has something to say â“ to the player or to each other. Every NPC you encounter in space or on bases speaks and is aligned with some faction â“ and that faction is related to other factions â“ which are ALL related to your reputation, which is constantly changing based on your actions. Itâs very complicated. And that â“ that just provides a rich tapestry of âlifeâ for the story arc to play out against.
Since the story is modular and the player has control over how quickly and even when it progresses, that actually the âcomposite experienceâ of surviving in the Freelancer universe (getting better weapons, other ships, exploring new frontiers, taking on an endless supply of fictionally related sub missions to increase your cash or better your reputation with a particular faction), as well as being swept up in the action and mystery of the main plot and all of those missions becomes the true story of the game. (Pause for breath) It is a profoundly personal adventure as the mystery and the universe unfold in their own unique ways.
Naturally as the design and vision for Freelancer matured over time, so did the need to keep up with the changing install base of home PCâs. Moreover, in order to implement many of the more ambitious features of the story, AI and of the universe, it was felt that a higher minimum processor speed was necessary â“ while still striving to support the original minimum spec accelerators (from nearly four years ago). This was again was no easy task â“ requiring considerable programming effort to support such an extreme range in performance. However, our motto for this game from the beginning was that we wanted to be able to âgo anywhere, do anything, and be anyoneâ. You donât get that from going half way on anything.
Freelancer itself defies to be classified as any one genre â“ it has space sim elements, it has RPG elements, it has a cool story line and supports a rich, living universe. Sure, itâs taken longer than we initially thought and hoped to deliver it. But like many new and ambitious projects, it was hard to predict at the start how long it might take to accomplish. However like all good things, I am very happy to say Freelancer is well worth the wait.
Q: If you had to give an overview of the game (game play and concept) in a short paragraph to entice, what would you say?
JORG: If I had to condense all of Freelancer down to a brief paragraph, Iâd have to say that itâs conceptually about discovery.
Freelancer is a huge universe of action, combat, trading, political intrigue, money, power, exploration and mystery. In this universe, the player (known as Edison Trent) is set down in the cosmopolitan center of the known galaxy, Manhattan. Trent has just lost a fortune in a devastating attack on a station that he was on and so he literally has nothing, except his skill and desire to survive. Playing as Trent, the player must discover the galaxy, and experience both its opportunities and dangers â“ all the while making money, buying new weapons and ships, taking missions, and gaining favor with the various factions of the universe. In addition to this, there is a mystery that begins to unfold around Trent â“ one that centers on why his station was blown away and why he becomes a marked man. As Trent is swept up in the action, he must discover where he can go, discover who he can trust, and discover the true nature of the universe around him.
Q: Developers are always striving for innovations in both game design and technology. How focused is the team on these two aspects and what in terms of pushing technology does Freelancer offer?
PAUL ISAAC:
(Another member wished to add his view)
We don't really have a lot of technology that can't be found in some other game, but we certainly have a wide spectrum. Here are some highlights: using DirectX 9 APIs, hierarchical 3D object renderer with real physics, 3D point light sources with custom attenuation curves, very expressive particle effects, a flexible space terrain rendering that supports everything from asteroids fields to nebula, detail maps to make planets look real, illumination maps to make windows pop out on giant stations, and many other custom materials. Full 3D positional sound system with various attenuation and pitch effects, deformable meshes to make characters smooth and life-like, a facial animation system with more control points than any other game would dare to attempt; and a powerful real-time cinematic playback system. We're targeting a PIII/500 with 128 MB RAM as a minimum system to run the game.
JORG: Freelancer, in the beginning and throughout the first stages of development, benefited from significant boosts in technology. However, as time went on, we became much more focused on the application of these advances and expressing them through the design as it matured and became more refined. Consequently, Freelancer has at its core a huge, âlivingâ universe to explore. Every bar you go into, every Equipment Dealer, every base you land on, every battleship or station you dock with, every NPC ship you see and hear in space â” itâs all there for a reason, it all has a past, a present and a future. Thatâs amazing for a game like this; this is the largest explorable universe of any other game in this genre. But we didnât stop there. We also carefully designed the story arc in a modular way and embedded it in a non-linear RPG matrix. The practical upshot of this âdesign innovationâ is that you can play Freelancer any way you like best â“ in whatever ship, as a trader, a fighter, a pirate, anything really â“ and then return to the main story thread without interruption. This, as well as the dynamic reputation system, makes the Freelancer experience larger than simply a story-driven game or an open sandbox or a trading game or a space combat sim. Freelancer combines these disparate elements in a very unique way to create an experience that is shared by everyone, yet very personal in terms of how the story unfolds. The end result may be the same â“ but itâs who you meet along the way, what you do moment by moment, and with what - that all differs between players. Itâs a lot like life.
Q: We are told that at present Freelancer will not support joystick controls and will be very keyboard intensive? Firstly why and roughly how many keys will be used and how have you gone about making things intuitive?
JORG: We're not supporting joysticks for a few simple reasons. Firstly, our interface was designed to be accessible to a more mainstream audience. Many people don't even own joysticks - especially if they don't play games of this genre. Secondly, controlling a point-and-click interface with a joystick is strange and unintuitive. The user would be forced to constantly switch between joystick (in space) and mouse (when on planets). Thirdly, we've actually found that mouse-driven space combat can be fun! Our control scheme is very quick to learn, and we've changed the minds of a lot of diehard joystick-users in our beta tests. In addition to this, we also have provided a âtool tipâ over every interface element that has a keyboard command, so if they so desire, the player can quickly learn the hotkeys for those functions.
Therefore, Freelancer isnât any more keyboard intensive than any other PC game. We also feel that this control arrangement provides intuitive, clean and direct access to all of the different modes of game play. Itâs easy â“ and once the player starts to play, itâs one of the things that makes playing Freelancer so unique and fun.
Q: How many mission (chapters) make up the game and can you give us a little detail to how varied they are?
JORG: There are 13 missions; most of them containing 2-3 sub-mission encounters each, with as many as 10 mission objectives. There is a great variety to these missions; including everything from simple âdestroy enemiesâ and escort missions, to massive fleet encounters with multiple capitol ships and missions involving massive âhardâ targets (where the player must disable shield generators or retrieve a critical item). Many story missions will take over two hours to complete.
Meanwhile, between these story missions Freelancer also offers more than 5,000 other different missions of varying types and difficulty level. This, to us, is the real heart of the mission system â“ and where the player finds the most variability - success, failure, cash, reputation fluctuation - and where, when combined with the story missions, the truly visceral experience manifests from the game. The Freelancer universe supports nearly 3,000 different trade routes that are offered to the player for cargo missions, and are also used by transports and convoys to deliver their goods from base to base. Other mission types include patrol missions, assassination missions, and destroy missions.
Q: Do you see a fundamental difference in games developed for PC and console and could this fit on a console if the keyboard features are transferred to control pads? (Apart from keys, what makes this a PC title?)
JORG: Historically there have always been a few fundamental differences between PC and console titles, however I think there are certainly more similarities now than there used to be â“ certainly much more crossover potential. In terms of Freelancer, since it tends to defy even being categorized into a single genre â“ part space sim, part RPG, part trading game, part combat action game, I think there is tremendous potential for crossover here as well. There are many elements that have universal appeal: the combat, exploration, mining, playing as a pirate, a bounty hunter, an LSF agent, etc. â” all very appealing. However, there are also other game play and content issues that make this an equally challenging proposition as well â“ chief among them is the interface design. Since everything is controlled via point-and-click interface, it would be difficult to provide the unified experience that exists on the PC on the console â“ without some serious modifications.
I suppose this could be viewed as a handicap â“ but I did say that these were simply challenges. On the other hand, these same issues are what give Freelancer its strength as a PC title as well. Its style of play, its interface, its design, its esoteric heritage in the genre all unite to create a composite experience that is well suited for the PC.
Q: Diversity is surely one of the features of the game. How many weapons and ships will be on offer and can you give us some detail of one of the best ships you can acquire along with its features?
JORG: As Iâve said, Freelancer is huge. The game world spans 50 large star systems with approximately 160 bases to land on. Each system consists of a large variety of natural phenomena (many types of planets, moons, sun, 3D nebulae and asteroid fields) as well as man-made objects (space stations, trade lanes, jump gates, mining stations, etc.). The visual variety is awesome; players can see, for example, star formations or nebulas that are 10-15 systems away from their current position, and if they just keep and if they keep jumping systems in that direction, theyâll eventually end up inside these fields.
As far as ships are concerned, there are 32 ships that can be purchased during the course of the game. These ships are scattered throughout the galaxy and have ties to the specific factions that live and work there. The simple philosophy is â“ the further out and the higher in rank you go, and the more people you meet (and get on better terms with), the better the ships and weapons that will also become available to you. Of course, it also helps to have plenty of cash, as well. Meanwhile, it also depends what role you want to play on the game as well. As the player progresses, they may want to fly a freighter at first because of the added turrets and ample cargo space. If thatâs the case the Humpback or the Dromedary Freighter might be the kind of ships they would want to fly. These ships provide good protection as the player traverses the established trade routes that criss-cross Sirius. On the other hand, since there are a lot of very bad things out in the universe, the player might also want to explore or hunt down enemies, if this is the case then perhaps the Sabre or the Titan would be more to his liking. They provide an excellent blend of firepower, maneuverability and armor.
Q: The AI must be the area you have worked on for along time. How do you ensure it plays intuitively even for a novice player? Does beta testing really work and how do you ensure you have a wide range of gamers with skill levels to test it? (Surely most beta testers are avid gamers with more skills than average)
JORG: We've tried to keep the enemies challenging, but fun. You'll see a steady progression in the difficulty of the game as you play, and we've spent a lot of time tweaking this balance in order to make it fun for the average consumer as well as the consummate gamer. We also have implemented some features to keep the difficulty controlled with varying play-styles. For example, we have a system, which dynamically assigns enemies to the player in big battles. If the player is overwhelmed, we'll assign new targets to some of the attackers to give the player some relief. If the player isn't challenged enough, we'll bring in ships from other parts of the battle to attack the player. Itâs a very dynamic system.
Yes, beta testing does work. Microsoft has also provided various resources to us, such as usability and focus groups, which allowed us to get the game into the hands of a wide and varied spectrum of gamers. (Often we'd have focus groups with large numbers of non-gamers in the mix, which was very enlightening). In the end, we had over 500 highly enthusiastic gamers making hundreds (if not thousands), of useful suggestions over the course of several months. They were extraordinarily helpful in giving feedback on balance issues, stress-testing our multiplayer connectivity, finding obscure bugs, and reporting configuration problems that would have otherwise been very difficult to track down. For a product as large and complex Freelancer, the more eyes and hands we had on it â“ allowing us the opportunity to refine it - the better.
Q: Can Freelancer be played in a number of ways or are you pushed or moved throughout the game with most events pre planned?
JORG: In a nutshell, the first story missions and cinematic scenes lead the player through the initiation phase of the game, which is useful in orienting them to the universe, the basic conflicts, some key characters, game controls, basic features, and introduction to typical combat encounters. After that, the player is left to explore on his or her own for a while. This occurs periodically throughout the story arc of the game. Some âintermissionâ periods can be many hours, if the player so desires. During these phases, the player can do or be a whole variety of things â“ take on sub-quests, become a pirate, trade, attack other ships, explore, seize cargo, assassinate, build up weapons and cash, etc. - however, eventually they will have to return to the story to advance in rank. Finally, as the story progresses towards all out war in Sirius, the player is obviously more limited in what they would be able to do during their free time. The story arc takes up more and more time, until the last five missions are played out consecutively in the climax. Upon finishing the story (which will only take the player through about half of the Freelancer universe), the player is then free to do whatever they want in open ended play. Thereâs still a huge universe out there and plenty to do!
Q: What would be the most typical 'ask' requirements, throughout the game, on the player?
JORG: Watch out! The Freelancer universe is full of conflict and whatever role you choose to play -- youâll have friends and enemies alike. Back to our core design goal that allows the players to âgo anywhere, do anything, be anyoneâ: If you play a pirate, the police and military forces and most of the legal shipping companies will dislike you and will likely open fire when they meet you in space. If you play an independent merchant, pirates will be after your cargo. If youâre a bounty hunter, many of the factions will fear you and youâll have lots of enemies. You also have to manage your resources carefully. What type of ship will you buy? How many offensive weapons will you have? How many defenses? How much will you invest in commodities? Do you spend money on bribes and information? These are all questions that you will find yourself exploring as you play the game. The universe is alive and has very particular rules that you should try to understand (realizing that ignoring what is going on around you is dangerous). You will have to manage your inventory and your reputation, since if too many factions dislike you, your ability to move cargo, explore or even just plain survive might be very difficult.
Q: How hard is it to maneuver one of the ships and is there in game tutorial to assist throughout?
JORG: Maneuvering the ship is pretty simple. Turning is accomplished via the mouse. Move the mouse in the direction you want to steer, and the more you move it, the faster you'll turn. To activate "turn mode", you either hold down the left mouse button, or hit the space bar to toggle. Firing is done by using the right mouse button. The guns on the ship can rotate, so you can fire in a different direction than you're pointing. (It's quite similar to playing a first-person shooter). There are a bunch of "auto-maneuvers" that are on a bar at the top of the screen. These can be used to automatically pilot your ship to an object, dock with a station, or get into formation with a group of ships. During the single player game (early on), we pop up information windows, which teach you how to use the various commands. The interface is pretty easy to learn, so even novice users get the hang of it very quickly.
Q: Finally and thanks for your time, sum up the experience in a sentence!
JORG: Freelancer takes a dark, unfolding mystery and plays it across a vast and vibrant, living and very dangerous universe â” full of enemies and allies; providing the player the opportunity to âgo anywhere and do anythingâ â“ and making Freelancer a compelling cinematic action-adventure that truly redefines the genre.
