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| Battlefield.com Interview |
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First Strike Interview
First Strike is a player created mod of epic proportions for Battlefield 2142. Set across the span of a much loved galaxy, you can fight battles in space, on a dusty desert planet, densely forested moon… sound familiar?
We invited some of the players who created First Strike team to DICE to hear more about how they created their mod. In between playing their mod we found time to ask them some questions about developing a mod.
1- Tell us a little bit about how the mod team got together and started working on things.
*xEROhOUR:* First Strike started way back in August 2005. A handful of guys had an idea, sadly most of them have since gone leaving myself and Dutch Razor as the only original team members. We felt there was a real need to re-organise and structure the mod from the ground up. I went on a recruiting frenzy, persuading some of the talented guys that frequent the BFEditor forums to join our team. That’s where Blitz, our current Mod Leader, joined and soon after the original Galactic Conquest crew also joined along with some former Shattered Faith members. It’s this talented, pro active, and "out of the box"-thinking team that has made this mod what it is. It really is a team effort.
2- Why did you decide to go with a popular Sci-Fi setting rather than the modern day setting of many Battlefield mods?
*TALON:* I think a lot of Battlefield mods out there don't really change the core game a whole lot, they tend to be more focused on adjusting the dynamic of the gameplay, increasing the realism aspect of the game for instance. By working with this particular Sci-Fi universe we are given the opportunity to totally rebuild the game from the ground up and turn it into something very different. It’s also a setting that we the developers are very passionate about, resulting in our best possible work as we want to create the best possible game, a game made by the fans for the fans.
3- You’ve clearly got a very professional team setup. Could you tell us more about how it’s organized?
*Blitz:* We have over 30 team members with 15 being the core group that gets things done on a regular basis. There are over 10 countries represented and 5 time zones to deal with. Organization and cooperation are our biggest strengths apart from raw talent. Anytime you do something for free it requires cooperation from everyone - it’s not like a day job where your motivation is to avoid getting fired!
I’m really proud of our team, and though we don't always agree or sometimes get along we always cooperate in the end to bring the public the best Sci-Fi experience out there. We have artists for concepts, GUI art and asset texturing. These guys work closely with our modellers and level designers. We also have a great Public Relations/Website team who make sure the public knows about our work.
What would a mod team be without a Lore Department! These guys keep us in line on technical expectations. Last but not least we have our coders who bring things to life.
As for organisation, I personally oversee everything that goes on from concept to final code tweaks. I believe that the best way to run a mod that has this much diversity is to centralize the decision making so things can get done quicker and cleaner. To this end I try and make decisions in the best interest of the majority of team members. Team votes are normally how we settle disputes although I have been known to make a decision on impasse votes. We are currently working on expanding and improving our system so I can share with you a little about what we have done.
Our process is fairly simple. We have a series of criteria that we use to determine if something is worth doing, will be fun to play, have accurate lore, be technically achievable and so on. We then look to our team for inspiration for levels; anyone can submit an idea for a level and it is then discussed. Once a level is approved by the Dev Team and Testing Team to some degree, we get prototypes done with some placeholders and generate a load-out of what is needed for that map. A lead mapper is assigned and normally an artist is assigned to oversee the art side of things. This is one area we hope to expand upon and improve. We can generally build levels and revised content fairly quickly thanks to Woody's Autopatcher system that allows for rapid build deployment. Some days we may put up 2-5 builds and up to 10 a week has not been unknown. We continue to test and retest until we have a level of satisfaction as a whole.
From an art perspective, I assign people to work on certain areas of the mod and I myself fill in where needed. I keep track of everyone and their assignments and try to help them achieve their targets. Each asset goes through a series of steps to ensure the best possible result. Now we don't always make things perfect and we don't always get things done on time but we have done rather well considering what we have to deal with. Here are the steps simplified so as not to bore you!
1. Model created
2. Model submitted to Quality Control (QC)
3. Texture artist will texture the model
4. Texture and UV'd model submitted to QC
5. Model approved and LOD's/COL meshes created
6. A final QC round is made and the model is then exported with any base codes needed
7. Each asset is then put into the build and developed further with sound, final coding and effects
8. Finally any tweaks are made by our live team to ensure that we can continue rapid development
4- Have you any advice for mod teams getting started?
*Ulversial:* Open as many channels of communication you can and keep talking, but make sure you have a determined goal to aim for. Stay focused and organised, try to reach step goals rather than doing everything at once. Making mods takes time, and realise that your ideas might not come to full bloom for months and months. Do loads of PR to get the people and talent the project needs, but don't be too picky early on with who you recruit - realise people might grow into their roles and talent! I speak from personal experience here. Also realise most of the initial people might actually drop off, so don't be too disheartened when fellow modders leave or stop getting in touch.
*Pumbaa:* Make sure you have someone that likes the role of leader, someone that enjoys keeping track of things and setting deadlines and isn't afraid of speaking the truth. In short, an organisation freak! To keep things organized and planned is very important and in many cases underestimated. Also, never stop communicating with each other! This will, among other positive things, help the team reach a common goal in the end.
5- How would you suggest someone go about getting into a good mod team?
*Dutch_Razor:* I followed a video tutorial for 3DS Max which started with the very basic tools like the orbit cam and followed all the way up to final rendering and animation. You can find plenty of free tutorials on the internet or buy one that is an all-in-one. The all-in-ones in my experience really help since that way you won't get things explained to you 3 times in 4 different ways.
*Ulversial:* Apply, early on! The mod needn't be huge yet. The earlier on the greater the chances of getting your feet wet even though you don't have that much experience with the things you want to do.
*xEROhOUR:* 1) Evaluate the tools to hand and your capabilities, be prepared to learn.
2) Research the editor forums and if need be research yourself.
3) Be persistent but not to the point of being overbearing when applying.
4) Show examples of your work.
5) Be prepared for the long haul, a mod isn’t created in a month.
*Pumbaa:* There are several mod teams out there, however many of them tend to get cancelled due to different reasons. Check the forums to see how long they've been running and how active they currently are.
Also, show off your work often and at many different sites. Be prepared to take criticism and be able to accept it in a positive way, see it as gained knowledge. However do not swallow it all, try to see what suggestions might suit you and what may not. This is one of the best ways to develop your skills. Lastly, as you probably have heard a gazillion times, practice, practice! Practice will never make perfect, but will get you pretty darn close!
6- What kind of mistakes has the team made that you wish you’d avoided in hindsight?
*Dutch_Razor:* Not sharing team member pictures before going on the DICE trip might be one of them! I wasn’t there, but going from all the stories of people not recognising each other…
*The_Preacher:* People being too flattering lead to one of our main early mistakes. Sometimes we’d be too encouraging towards fellow team members rather than being honest about their work. This has in turn led to some (not all) models and textures being at first approved, but then later when it's in-game testers complained about and requiring to be re-done, in fact we actually set up a Post QC (Quality control) department to go over and re-do these items.
This means the item gets scrutinized throughout its Work in Progress state, then gets scrutinized, in the Normal Quality control department, and finally gets given more scrutiny once in-game, and can often go into the post production QC process, which then sets the whole thing in motion again from scratch.
This leads to one model/texture possibly taking over a month or more to be completed which just slows down production. I much prefer the old saying "Measure Twice Cut Once" way of doing things. If something isn't right, I tend to speak up about it, even if it's not the most favourable thing to say.
*Ulversial:* Some things could have been done in a different order to avoid some wasted work (for features cut out later on due to limitations, for example).
7- You’ve come up with some very innovative solutions for things like the starscape, forest, trench run and other fantastic design elements. Can you tell us about how your team came up with these solutions?
*The_Preacher:* Creating the starscape was indeed a challenge. I spent a great deal of time trying out crazy experiments with the sky domes, double sky domes with one inverted, sky spheres and sky boxes… nothing worked out well. The resolution was always too low, and we were limited to stars only. It was a disheartening time as without the starscape, without space, there couldn't be a SPACE map.
This was made a priority for me to sort out. With a couple of suggestions from Woodrow and Blitz one day, that weren't THE solution on their own, I went to bed and the next morning when I woke up I had a “light bulb over my head” moment. I combined both ideas, while adding in my own thoughts on how to accomplish what we wanted, and set to experimenting with it all day.
The basic concept is this: You create a Skybox, 6 sides, and split it into a 10 x 10 grid on each face of the box. You then take a planar map of the grid and put that into your texture file so you know where the grid lines are. Now in the texture file you create your star field, and erase any stars intersecting a gridline. Next you texture in your planets, nebulae, stars etc and you can basically place them anywhere but either central for a large planet or in a line across the top or bottom is best.
You then go back into 3D max and star UVW mapping. Basically look at your sky box and say to yourself "where do I want this planet?" Pick a spot on the grid, select the appropriate grid faces and map it to where the planet is on your texture. When making the texture make sure that your planet has its outermost edge of the graphic NOT crossing a grid line.
Once you've mapped all your Points of Interest (POI) you can use remaining clear untouched portions of star field to map the rest of the skybox with empty space, rotating and flipping to create completely random space. Because nothing is directly on a gridline you get no seams whatsoever and a nice high resolution skybox.
This method is not without its limits, but when you consider that the Battlefield 2142 engine supports 1 Texture to wrap around 6 individual sides of a skybox with a maximum of 2048 x 2048 resolution size, this is probably the best way to approach the tricky challenge of putting space flight into Battlefield 2142.
*Bandu:* Creating a Redwood Forest was certainly a challenge. The 1st thing was to decide whether we wanted quality or quantity. Do we make nice high poly trees and have far less on the map or go with very low poly trees (and ferns etc) and get a lot of them into the map? In the end I decided to go with quantity. After much thought I felt the overall immersion and gameplay factors outweighed the need for having nice individual trees.
Creating the forest involved using a lot of bi axis planes. While it was very tedious I’m glad I stuck to the task of mixing all the available settings and creation techniques to get a forest in an engine that wasn’t built for such environments.
Saying that though, there are a few things I intend to go back and tweak/change/add but seeing as though we are a mod there are many other jobs to get done.
8- Last of all, which other Battlefield mods out there have impressed you or the team?
*Dutch_Razor:* Stargate La Releve looks pretty good, more so since I'm Stargate fan too. I also played US Intervention a long time ago and it was pretty fun.
*The_Preacher:* Forgotten Hope 2 is always impressive due to their dedication to getting everything as accurate as they can to WW2. From an artist’s perspective you have to be impressed by RAD's modelling and texture skills, the guy is very talented.
*Bandu:* I am a very big fan of Project Reality. While it’s not a total conversion, they have managed to create a mod that really feels like its own entity. It plays as the name suggests and is a lot of fun. A lot of clever features and well made maps, such as Assault on Mestia, make this the stand out mod I’ve played so far. When I’m not slogging it out on First Strike you may just find me playing Project Reality.
*TALON:* For me, the greatest mod for Battlefield was without a doubt Desert Combat. I could never get enough of that mod, ending up playing it more than the original Battlefield 1942 in the end. They really did a cracking job of updating from a Second World War setting to modern day combat, and it looked so slick. A beautiful, professional, well put together game. And don't even get me started on those choppers, wow.
*Ulversial:* My personal favourites would be Pirates 2 and Brickfield, both mods nearing release stage. They're unique and based on crazy concepts! | |
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Closed Alpha Test & Deth..
