PW: Thanks for sending the questions! My name is Paul ‘Locki’ Wedgwood and I’m the Owner of Splash Damage (SD) and Lead Game Designer on id Software’s Enemy Territory: QUAKE Wars (ETQW). We’re currently developing ETQW for the PC, and worked previously with id Software on ETQW’s spiritual successor, the award-winning Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory. Splash Damage started out as a mod team, working on a mod for Quake III Arena called Q3F. As mod-makers we received a ton of great support from id Software, eventually leading to them introducing us to Activision. We’ve focused exclusively on multiplayer combat with id Software ever since.

I should point out that, as id Software recently announced, ETQW will also be released on Microsoft’s XBOX 360 and Sony’s PS3. These are being developed by Nerve Software (the original developers of Return to Castle Wolfenstein Multiplayer) and Z-Axis respectively. They’re doing a great job, and we can’t wait to see console gamers getting some ETQW action too.

GCM: Enemy Territory has been in the works for more than three years now. How has the project evolved from conception to what we will see in the final release?

PW: Right from the start, Kevin Cloud of id Software and I shared a vision for how we were going to improve on the popular teamplay of Wolf ET. It’s taken a lot of time and effort and trial and error; a great example was our attempt to implement ‘base versus base’ combat – and that was a disaster :) The idea was that, somewhat like a traditional real-time-strategy game, each team’s goal would be the destruction of the enemy base. The problem with this implementation is that everyone wants to get involved in the destruction, and so both teams end up running past each other and attacking completely undefended bases! :). Our refocus on objective-based combat, and that of having the unique plot for each level, driving the reason that one team was attacking, and another defending, really paid off. Ultimately we’ve got what we originally aimed for. The teams at Splash Damage and id Software have put in an extraordinary effort to achieve this, with major advances in graphics rendering, physics and networking along the way, all to support this notion of greater player immersion.

It’s been a long process but now we’re on the edge of being able to put players into gameplay like they’ve never seen before, in the middle of the Strogg invasion of Earth. We’re now very close to Beta, where all the art and gameplay in the game is near final, save for a few annoying bugs. We’re finally at the stage where we have the game pretty much fixed, and can focus almost exclusively on performance and optimizations. .

GCM: The PC is home to many multiplayer tactical shooters. What does ETQW bring to the table to make it stand out from games like Battlefield 2 and Unreal Tournament?

PW: Our goal with ETQW has always been to offer gamers something they hadn’t seen before and give them a gameplay experience they wouldn’t get from any other game. ETQW will achieve that in lots of different ways. For a start, in ETQW your teamwork makes a difference in whether or not you complete objectives. The game is unique in pitting asymmetrical forces against one another – you don’t choose between two similarly-skinned character models - the choice of whether to play Strogg or GDF is important, the tactics are different, and your experience is different. Our technology includes huge leaps in terrain rendering, networking and physics, all to improve gameplay rather than just the visuals alone.

ETQW is primarily a multiplayer combat game - you can take on a role that suits your playing style (such as assault, support, or infiltration), and then pursue a mission as part of a coordinated team trying to complete military objectives (such as destroying a Strogg Contaminator device, holding off a GDF attack, or launching a strategic missile attack at the enemy stronghold). Combat is centered around a front-line that ensures really focused combat - you always know where to find combat, rather than dispersing across a map and death-matching or capturing flags. As you succeed in completing objectives, your team captures enemy territory granting you more space for deployments, additional vehicles and moving your spawns forward.

Also, unlike traditional arena-based multiplayer games, each map is part of an over-arching campaign, retelling the greatest battles of the Strogg invasion. These are the battles that lead to the retaliation against Stroggos in Quake 2, and so each map and its objectives have a reason for existing – and inspire the different gameplay you experience as you attempt the objectives. The game’s character advancement rewards you for the duration of a campaign in return for your successes with additional modes for your gadgets, and improved attributes for your weapons and character. Your military promotions are persistent, reflecting your status as a team-player to everyone else on the server.

Another consideration is that ETQW doesn’t use a single-player game as its foundation, so we haven’t had to make technology compromises to allow the game to be transmitted across a network connection. Instead, its team-play is built on the foundation of brand new technology, with advanced terrain rendering, networking and physics – all purpose-built from the start of development to improve your multiplayer combat experience.

Finally, it’s just more fun and for all of these reasons, we’re pretty confident ETQW will stand out.

GCM: Enemy Territory is pushing some technical boundaries with support for Vista and DX10. How much better will the game actually be for those early adopters already running Vista and DX10?

PW: We don’t rely on DirectX 10, and so it’s not a direct requirement for playing ETQW on Vista. However, we’ll certainly keep the community posted on any improvements Vista brings. One of the great things about platform-independent Programming (as opposed to coding for one specific console for example) is that our Programmers focus on making the game run as well as it can on all platforms – rather than optimizing for one specific hardware or driver path. At this stage in the evolution of gaming hardware, this is definitely the best route for the player on the PC.

GCM: What were some challenges in balancing out the various classes, vehicles, and deployable units, for the two sides of this war?

PW: Wolf ET featured teams that were essentially re-skinned versions of each other, and this meant we could employ a damage-over-time formula (rounds fired per minute x damage per round = potential damage per minute) to balance differing weapons. Conversely, ETQW features largely asymmetrical teams, and so damage-over-time formulae only work for simple hand-held weapons, and even then there are still unequivocal differences between the way the GDF reload, versus the Strogg weapons overheating. It’s even harder to balance the new weapons, tools, items, vehicles and deployables. The Strogg Infiltrator’s Flyer Drone is similar to, but doesn’t equate to, the GDF Cover Ops’ Third-Eye Camera. The Strogg Technician’s ability to create Spawn Hosts has no GDF equivalent. Vehicle propulsion is different between the teams – wheels and tracks just aren’t the same as anti-gravity repulsors.

The short answer is that there is no short answer, just lots and lots of discussion, analysis, comparison, trial, error and arguing amongst the team :). We analyze the feedback from the Closed Beta, focus groups, and Activision’s QA team, and we spend thousands and thousands of hours of playtesting. All these discussions result in iterative refinements that result in really polished gameplay.

GCM: The announcement of bots for single and multiplayer was very exciting. Just how smart is the AI in Enemy Territory and what level of control (command) will you have over non-human teammates?

PW: The bots are in development at id Software. id Software recruited John Dean (developer of the well-known Fritzbot for Wolf ET), and he works with Jan Paul Van Waveren, another well-known Bot Programmer, originally from the community. The design goal for the Bots is that they function exactly like any other player, from the team-killing that takes place during warm-up, to their use of all the game’s weapons, items, tools, vehicles and deployables in the pursuit (and completion) of the game’s objectives. While they’re still in development, we’ve had time to test them a little at Splash Damage and they’re great – you can choose whether they complete objectives (allowing you to practice this area of the game, or avoid it completely – perhaps to focus on your aim), and choose their AI and combat skill.

GCM: How much input from the Quake community went into this game? Any specific idea or suggestions come to mind?

PW: We’ve been really excited by the level of interest and involvement we’ve got from the Quake community. It wasn’t so long ago that most of Splash Damage were community members wondering “what if…”, so we really do appreciate it. We’ve had an enormous amount of comments and suggestions from our Beta testers, and we value their input highly.

That said, you can’t just react to people’s reactions, you have to have a consistent idea of what you want to do. In our case, it’s been a consistent desire not just to improve and evolve Enemy Territory’s core gameplay, but also to push the boundaries of terrain rendering, networking and physics in multiplayer games. We had lots of ideas we’d been wanting to try, in fact in a way, just as Wolf ET started out as a list of ideas left over from Return to Castle Wolfenstein Multiplayer, the initial concept for ETQW started out as a wish-list of ideas that we really loved, but didn’t have the resources to implement in Wolf ET. And now we have, and it’s nearly done, and we’re near to being able to share it with the world. We can’t wait to see what the community makes of it, both metaphorically and literally - we’re looking forward to giving the mapping and mod-making communities all the tools, resources and help they need to realize their own visions for ETQW.

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