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Parkan Feature Feature
Derek Dela Fuente
00/12/0000
Derek dela Fuente, spoke with three members FROM Nikita to get a full insight INTO a game that has already started to create a lot of attention.
Over the last few years Russian developers have elevated their position from also-rans to some of the most creative in Europe. Nikita, which was founded in 1991 by three graduates of MFTI - an elite Moscow higher education institution - is at present working on a âReal Time Strategyâ title which includes plenty of action. Derek dela Fuente, spoke with three members of the team to get a full insight into a game that has already started to create a lot of attention.
Nikitaâs teamâs experience and expertise includes comprehensive knowledge of war and weapons history, along with proficiency in computer-aided design and Artificial Intelligence, together a love of Science Fiction, which is well suited for the creation of Parkan - an implementation of a very complex model of a future war. With an already released version of a game in Russia, which includes the Parkan world, the team is hoping to be as successful in Europe as they have been in their homeland.
Fight as the Captain of a Parkan cruiser, in a sci fi world, controlling a squad of battle robots on a battlefield, issuing orders to mobilise units from inside a well-protected bunker, and create hundreds of different battle machines that can be controlled from a first-person perspective or remotely. Nearly 4 years in the making, one of the most interesting aspects of the game is the warbots, which can best be described as 'mechs' and the player can create many different kinds depending on the type of mission you are to undertake. First you choose a chassis (actually it's an empty steel case) and then you fill it according to your taste and preferences: chassis, armour, turret, weapons, internal systems and ammunitions. Although in theory you must select components from each of the categories, in practice you don't have to do all of this work since many systems are installed on the chassis by default and you must change them only if you have some special requirements. Naturally, possible robot designs are limited by available components, type and size of the future machine (e.g. you can't install heavy cannon on a light chassis) as well as its maximum weight â“ it shouldn't exceed maximum carrying capacity of the chassis. Depending on the mission specifics, you can control up to 10 warbots simultaneously. And these battle machines can be very self-sufficient: they do understand when it's time to retreat, replenish their ammo or repair themselves, they would even help out their âcomradesâ - if it is not detrimental to the mission objectives, of course.
Oleg Kostin, the Producer, explained about the inner workings of the game. Parkan: Iron Strategy is a scaleable system and has 26 missions (including tutorials). The maximum size of the mission territory is approximately 5X5 km, and the average walk through time is from 20-30 minutes to up to several hours (depending on the mission type, player's experience and the tactics used). There is a great variety of mission types, which, if we may so phrase it, form âa continuous seriesâ starting from action or simulation up to something resembling a classical RTS. For example, in one of the first missions the player must find and capture a neutral warbot. Naturally, in the course of the mission you are required to destroy several enemy machines and escape from local predators (you may also try to set local fauna and enemy patrols against each other or invent some other clever trick, but, after all, how you achieve your objective is a matter of your personal preferences). Most of the missions are hybrids though and incorporate elements from different genres. At the initial stage, for instance, a player can act as a lone fighter, then (after capturing or building several facilities) he may switch to scientific research and warbot production, and, finally, end the mission by leading a group of battle machines in some kind of special operation.
The splendid and atmospheric settings that make up the universe are well detailed. Day and night change, and natural phenomena (rain, snow, thunderstorm, fog) are very important in creating a credible and emotionally charged world. And it's only natural that they have paid very serious attention to weather modeling but at the same time this has no direct influence on the warbot behavior. Why? Well, Parkan is a dynamic and multi-genre game where a player has to manage many different types of battle machines. In such circumstances the user is very often physically unable to give proper attention to the finer points of robot control! This is real pity but on the other hand, night darkness or untimely descending fog can endanger the successful completion of the mission. As soon as the player's field of vision narrows to the effective range of radar (i.e. he is reduced to terms of equality with his computer-operated rivals), the fighting becomes much more difficult.
Eugene Lomko, one of the directors, eagerly gave an insight into the firepower in the game. âRegarding the weapons, we tried not to go very far from what is used in real wars or exists today: automatic cannons, lasers and discharges, self-homing missiles and rockets of various types â“ it is all already in existence (at the very least in the form of prototypes). Perhaps what we aimed to do can best be described by the words - nearly real guns for nearly real robots.â
âYou can procure weapons in many forms but, nonetheless, all quite ârealâ ways: capture or build a new warbot, conduct scientific research and then create a completely new weapons system â“ at any rate there are no weapons laying around for you to pick up. And, certainly, a well-aimed shot can put a cannon out of action, ammo ends when you can least afford it, while self-homing missiles often âlose target range trackingâ if the target performs an anti missile manoeuvre.â
The main weapons include projectiles, flame-throwers, 25 to 152 mm-automatic guns and howitzers, standard guns using binary liquid gunpowder, Electromagnetic guns, radiated energy-type weapons, battle lasers â“ radiation devices, plus a plethora of missiles. The sophistication of the weapons is impressive and Parkan also encompasses some resource management elements that make this even more wholesome but winning is about understanding many things and knowing the âhot spotsâ of the enemies is a good one which was explained! âIf, for instance, you shoot off a warbot's turret, the cannons will be lost together with the turret. If you smash a tank's corner, the tank veers to the side. And, finally, if a cannon barrel is destroyed the cannon can no longer fire. The same rules apply to other systems, even those which the player can't see directly. For example, when you shoot at a turret, you can't destroy the engine and thus make the warbot go slower â“ the engine is located in the middle section of the machine. There are, of course, specific âhot spotsâ. Thus, you can destroy warbot's deflector (force field radiator) â“ the force field will immediately disappear.â
âWhen radar is damaged, the results may be rather funny. Many times I've witnessed the following situation: a severely battered warbot slowly drags itself towards a factory hoping, no doubt, to get necessary repairs. Itâs radar is all smashed and, therefore, the robot can see no further then its nose. So, it's totally unaware that the enemy has long since captured the factory, and the repair pad is crowded with enemy tanks. After unceremoniously pushing the enemy machines aside and climbing onto the repair pad it finally discovers that it won't get any repairs here. Making a sorrowful honk, it stumbles off again usually followed by heavy fire from enemy warbots.â
The main opponents are, of course, rebels or, to be more specific, rebel warbots. And they are absolutely the same as our hero's warbots (well, if there is some difference it is negligible). Moreover, the hero fights with what he managed to capture or steal from the enemy. The main distinguishing feature of military tactics on the planets of the Labyrinth is that, as a rule, at the start of a mission the attacker has always fewer military resources than the defender. And, therefore, if in some missions you have to deal with two opponents, you may only tackle them one at a time â“ sometime it's the only alternative. In addition, there is local fauna. But even the most aggressively minded representatives of this fauna behave in a typical animal fashion â“ attack only after being attacked themselves or simply try to drive the intruder away from their habitat.
Although the game might sound like an out and out action sortie it is RST focused but creating the right components to convey this, including near destruction of buildings and environments, helps create a believable story and the producer explained. âDestruction is one of the most important features of the game. A player, if he has necessary equipment, can build any facility in any place suitable for the purpose. He can do it, for example, at any distance from his home base (he would have serious problems defending such a facility though, but then it's a separate matter). Every building is a real building â“ you can walk or drive inside it on a little warbot, you can control it manually from it's own computer pad (it may come in very handy, if the command centre or the bunker was totally destroyed by the enemy). In addition, you can upgrade a facility, destroy it or simplyâ¦capture it.â
Getting the right info to undertake and complete a mission is essential and so the hero has his mission explained to him at a briefing before the mission, as is routinely done in any and every army in the world. Of course, if circumstances justify such an action, a commanding officer, who observes the events âfrom a safe distanceâ, can disregard 'radio silence' limitations and communicate directly with his subordinate, but this is more of an exception than a rule.
Depending on the situation a player can use different cameras: while he controls the main hero or any of the warbots in âtelepresenceâ mode, he sees the world in a âfirst person viewâ or in one of the âthird person viewsâ. Generally, you can always choose the camera position you like best (many, will prefer to look from the hero's eyes). In the command mode, which is called in the game an HQ-mode, the camera can freely rotate and travel in space. And although the travel zone is limited, a player can always switch to the camera of another HQ or 'inhabit' one of the warbots.
There are two main modes of control in the game - HQ-mode (command mode) and 3D-view mode (direct control of the hero or a warbot). The team desperately wanted to model a ârealâ High-Tech war â“ and in the end, by fair means or foul, they got what they wanted but were horrified by the result: not only was the game enormously âgreedyâ, but controlling the game required enormous concentration from the player. Finally, they assigned the most monotonous control functions to the AI. In a word, they believe that any person, who has at least once in his life played such a game as a standard shooter, will easily manage a warbot in 3D-view mode. At the same time theyâve retained a secondary conventional control system designed for experienced players.
Of course there are a number of games in a similar mold but they have not merely joined two game genres together, RTS and Action, but integrated two ideas, maybe more, to form a single gaming model experience. Producer: âIn Iron Strategy it is often impossible to say in what genre you are now playing. And it seems to me that this is the strongest side of the project. Consider these factors -
⦠The hero finally got through to the bunker, climbed onto the computer pad, connected his mental link to the bunker's supercomputer and soared⦠directly into cyberspace or into the Command Mode. So far everything is ordinary and familiar: âbird's flightâ view, buttons, screens and all the other traditional strategic paraphernalia⦠Then our hero selects a suitable warbot â“ let it be an HQ warbot â“ and is immediately âtransportedâ to this warbot's local camera. This is the same Command Mode, with the only exception that the observer is now connected to a moving object (by the way here is an interesting question for you â“ if you now issue commands to this particular HQ warbot what will it be, simulation or strategic control?)
- After that the hero with a single push of a button âinhabitsâ â“ i.e. connects to the control system of the selected machine and goes into attack as if it was his own battle costumeâ¦
- And don't forget that he can issue orders to his wingmen at the same time.
- And at the crucial moment, when the hero with his own hands points the cannon of his mighty robot at his rival's turret, the mission suddenly ends in a shocking failure. An agile enemy scout penetrated the bunker using circuitous passages and shot dead the unconscious body of his arch opponent.
And now do try and tell me what this is: simulator, tactics or strategy? It seems to me the question is meaningless. If you have difficulties in solving a purely tactical problem but at the same time have an option of switching into a strategic mode and easily solving the same problem by other means (without having to rack your brains trying to invent some clever manoeuvres), this, then, is not tactics or strategy. But what? Personally, I don't know. Perhaps it's a High Tech war.â
Hmm folks, this sounds more than your average game!
