Interviews
Fierce Combat and Lethal Attacks are underway in “Soldner: Secret Wars”
“Soldner: Secret Wars requires a fundamental change in gameplay: you have to play more realistically, and with a greater emphasis on tactics.”
If there’s one thing that both movies and video games have taught us, it’s that the future is going to be in turmoil. How much turmoil? Some games have indicated the complete destruction of our planet. Some films tell us that humans will become extinct! I don’t really care what they “predict” will happen, just as long as the game is fun to play.
Soldner: Secret Wars is another one of those set-in-the-future war games. There’s no need for despair, however. Soldner incorporates a plethora of realistic elements that other games won’t (or can’t) touch. Satellite data was used to design the game’s worlds, and the gameplay emphasizes the importance of realistic actions in combat situations. Even your heartbeat has an effect on the game! (Not your real heartbeat, the game character’s heartbeat.)
Surely these juicy tidbits made us anxious for more details. Screenshots are just paintings and fact sheets are never long enough. We wanted more information. We needed more exciting details!
So we put on our tactical espionage suits, snuck into Jowood’s HQ and kidnapped Teut Weidemann, Managing Director of Wings Interactive for Jowood and Designer of Soldner: Secret Wars.
One of the game's most touted features is its fully-destructible environments where players can destroy everything they see. That sounds really cool on paper, but could you give us some examples to help us visualize the experience?
Teut Weidemann: The team and I feel that the indestructible environments in other games can lead to a pretty unrealistic behavior of players in the field. With Soldner: Secret Wars, this changes; hiding in a wooden building does no good against a tank, the tank will simply shoot away the building, including you inside. Stone buildings, however, offer more protection, but a tank can still shoot it to pieces.
The ADS (Advanced Destructible Environments) aspect of Soldner: Secret Wars requires a fundamental change in gameplay: you have to play more realistically, and with a greater emphasis on tactics. If you hear a tank, hide, out-flank the tank and try to get a shot with your launcher, from behind, where the armor is the weakest. Although the environments are destructible, they can still be used to your advantage; tanks are at a disadvantage in dense environments like towns or villages.
With the ADS, the role of helicopters vs. tanks vs. soldiers becomes more like in the real world. Playing the lone wolf soldier will almost always lead to a quick death.
Soldner's worlds were designed using digital satellite data. Please tell us how this was done, and how it's enabled you to make the world more realistic.
TW: We used satellite data because we needed huge areas to allow proper support for helicopters and jets. As no human being can edit a map 6000x3000 kilometers (roughly 2500x1500 miles) we needed to automate it. We used satellite data with a 1 kilometer grid. The space in between to the high-resolution terrain we use is generated by a fractal world generation algorithm. Sounds more complex than it is, but simply said the world is stored highly compact in Soldner: Secret Wars, and is generated on the fly to the 3D image you see, including textures. This is the reason why the terrain is so huge.
But the terrain is only one thing; there's also the stuff on top of it. We use land cover data, which is a database telling us where woods, lakes and buildings are. This data is being used to generate woods, bushes, and villages in various sizes and density on the terrain.
This leads to a nice looking complete landscape, but still not quite enough for a cool multiplayer map. So our editor allows defining areas in this huge map to be edited and modified by a level designer to implement the special stuff we need for various styles of maps.
It’s best to shoot helicopters before they start deploying troops.
What are the five high-tech specializations?
TW: The player can choose freely between heavy weapons, sniper, medic, engineer, bomb specialist and commander, although the latter needs to be elected. Each role has advantages and various uses depending on team play and game situation. A soldier with a sniper kit can hide and recover from longer sprints faster, an engineer can repair and re-supply vehicles or weapons and disarm bombs, the bomb specialist can blow things apart and lay mines or booby traps, the medic can heal himself or others and drop medic packs for his teammates to use even when he's not nearby, the commander can easily issue commands with point and click actions, or distribute the team funds while the heavy weapons soldier uses his launchers to fight armor or helicopters.
How do the tactical game elements (stamina, heartbeat, different hit zones, etc.) come into play?
TW: We have pixel-perfect collision detection with the various hit zones of the soldier. With body armor this becomes more complicated as heavy power rifles tend to ignore body armor while it is a good protection vs. most assault rifles. Damage is calculated depending what part you hit; to headshots count twice than body shots, arm and legs usually count less.
Stamina influences how far you can sprint without the fatigue setting in and making your aim less precise. You need some time to recover until your ability to hit a target gradually restores.
Basically it means that you can't expect to shoot at a target from long ranges while running or jumping, like in action or sports shooters. You have to stand still, even crouch or go prone to increase your aim. Again, we're taking a more tactical and real-world approach to combat, and usually the guy knowing which precision he has in what stance or condition has a better chance to defeat the enemy.
Soldner is said to have a great unit customization system intended to change the aesthetics of the characters. Talk about it.
TW: The system we call UCS (Unit Customization System) was put into Soldner when we realized that most people want to look cool in tactical shooters, but a handful of skins wasn't enough. The chance that someone is looking like you makes your looks basically unimportant and not unique. Clans in particular like to customize and unify the look of their team members. With the thousands of possibilities we have it's easy to create your character, and nearly no one will look alike. This feature can also be used to customize characters to better fit the environment of the gameplay conditions better.
Thanks to video games (and Mother Nature),
it can snow in Michigan any time of the year.
Soldner features 70+ vehicles. When do they become available to the player, and how do you go about acquiring them?
TW: Units range from trucks, jeeps, armored personnel carriers, light tanks, heavy tanks to helicopters or transport helicopters to jets. They need to be bought like all equipment in Soldner. Some maps may offer pre-spawned vehicles, but don't count on it. The reason why we have the buy system is simple: the one who earned it can afford the units. This prevents newbies from stealing cool units only because they camp their spawn point.
All units are usually available and it's a simple matter of earning money. However your commander has access to additional funds, to electing him gives each side an advantage.
Can you hop from vehicle to vehicle? For example, can you land a helicopter, hop in a jet and take off?
TW: Using a vehicle is easy, simply hit the use key. To switch between units simply hit the use key to exit, run up to the next and hit the use key again. It's very straightforward, same with the controls. One thing I haven't tried is base jumping into a flying helicopter; maybe I should try that someday. Oh, I did mention we got parachutes?
Tell us about the weather and season changes. Are they executed in real-time? And how do they affect the gameplay?
TW: Weather doesn't change dynamically, it's a server setting. However, the server admin can change the weather anytime and the clients immediately adapt to it. In terms of seasons they are divided on the map, i.e. further north is the winter zone, south is the summer zone, in between the autumn zone. Weather changes from zone to zone too.
Weather influences gameplay primarily with visibility. Snow, Rain and fog hinder visibility in various degrees and so influence ranged combat heavily.
What was it like to design a game that plays from both the first- and third-person perspectives? Were there any gameplay or frame rate issues?
TW: We initially designed Soldner: Secret Wars to be third person only. The reason was obvious at first: due to the large wide landscapes a third person offers much better view compared to first person, in fact much closer to your real human field of vision. However, the fans and our community quickly demanded a first person view, simply because they were used to it. Therefore we implemented it. There were no frame rate issues, as there is really no difference. Strangely enough, we've noticed that many 1st person players tend to play Soldner in 3rd person … there are reasons why. :)
Apparently you must point the controller at the screen.
Seriously, look at the sign. What else could it possibly mean?
Deathmatch is a given, but what online play modes are being planned for the game?
TW: We base all our modes on Team Deathmatch, with Deathmatch being a special mode. Our primary mode however is Conquest as it offers the most tactical possibilities. Other modes we support are Capture the Flag, Hostage Rescue and Bomb Run. Additionally we offer a modified CTF mode called Capture the Vehicle. We will see a lot more though when the mod community [finds] out how easy it is to modify existing or creating new modes as they are scripted in an open source language called Python.
How does the multiplayer experience compare with the single-player campaign? Are all of the weapons and vehicles featured in both modes of play?
TW: All units are featured in single player. The single player is NOT simply the multiplayer modes with bots. We use the multiplayer basic goals and create random mission which play in one of over 250 areas on our map. Fulfilling missions gets you equipment and teammates in return which you can use to fulfill more difficult missions.
This gives you the impression of a campaign which is more interesting for the single player than the standard 'bot fights.
Thank you for your time.
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