audiolab Posted March 6, 2006 Share Posted March 6, 2006 dev diary 4 my favorite quote is this" Of course, we have a great bunch of really knowledgeable fans, who have no problem letting us know what they want in a game, and we work hard to give that to them." funny i didnt get binoculars thanks to rocky for the link on the news page Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lysander Posted March 6, 2006 Share Posted March 6, 2006 very good read on mp customization, this is combinatorial feast! On GR2 we had Siege, but fans wanted more bases. So, we added Double Siege. Some people liked that, but they wanted more randomness. So, we added Blind Siege, etc, etc. Honestly, that was a lot of work! I thought to myself "Why do we keep making these over and over again, when we can just let players do it themselves?!?" So, we came up with a system of options and defaults that lets players define their own game modes. An important design pre-req for this was that we couldn't have a system that was clunky to use, or alienated people that liked the old systems, so what we ended up doing was building a whole bunch of options, broken down into categories of elimination (kill everyone), territory (capture zones), and objective (control objectives). Then, within each mode, we added customization options that fit within the overall scope. Next, with all these options available, we built "presets" that made up the gametypes from past games, like Siege and Sharpshooter. This way, if people don't want to deal with the customization, they can just pick a pre-set, or if they do, they can get down into the nitty-gritty of the system. So first, before we even started building a map in the 360 engine, we "mocked-up" a really rough prototype in the GR2 engine. Then we played it, over and over again, for hours, tweaking layouts, moving things, bringing in different players, talking about it, etc. Once we were happy with the game flow and play, that's when it went into production on the 360. The really cool thing about this process is we really ended up with a cool variety of maps, not just in visuals, but in gameplay. Rocky Cove is a snipefest. Desert Gulch is CQB battle. Temple is a stealthy sneaking map with lots of hiding. Boneyard is a ######' meat grinder! We added the latest versions of these guns into the game. For example, in Island Thunder, there was the M4 SOCCOM, which was a suppressed M4, and now we have the M468-SD, which is basically the same model, only chambered in 6.8mm and with a red-dot sight. One of our Special Forces consultants specifically requested that gun too, since it was what he was using in the field, so that bumped it up higher on the list! The cool thing on the 360 is the level of detail that goes into the weapon models now. They are so detailed that I had to give feedback on one gun that the builder used flathead screws on the gun, when on the actual thing Phillips head screws were used. That is the kind of detail you can see on them. I love it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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