UFO: Aftermath Wrap Report

Areas for Improvement I would point out three things where we probably wasted the most effort. The first one would be the system of generating city-based missions. We had six architectural regions, and for each, we had about 30 blocks we used to create missions (with nine on average per mission). However, the missions were not spread around the globe uniformly. In the beginning, the player had lot of missions in the vicinity of his starting bases, and as a result, he came to see the blocks from this area 10 times each, while not seeing some blocks from other regions at all.

Another area we failed to exploit in full is the visualization of combat. There are quite complex rules for cover, spotting, influence of skills and training, but very little of it is actually communicated to the player. The player does not know how much the range of his sniper rifle increases because of his Marksmanship skill, and is unaware of the penalty to chance to hit his enemy incurred because of an obstacle between them. As a result, some players feel the game is not tactical enough.

Related to this problem is the general issue of the interface. Developing GUI was actually one of the more difficult tasks in developing our own 3D engine, and because of it, the user interface lacks some features we might have wanted it to have.

Lessons Learned Another lesson we learned was the positive influence of strict code control. Until quite late into the project, all code submitted to the project was reviewed by our Lead Programmer, and many times, he asked the author to rewrite it - not because of bugs, but because of potential problems like code that could produce unpredictable results under special circumstances, or that was simply messy. As a result, the progress of coding was not as fast as possible, initially, but I am quite positive it saved us lot of the time in the end of the development.

Lastly, we fully realized the importance of community. It was a great experience to work on a game that was so eagerly expected by many, and it was also a great responsibility. We had established a forum quite early in the development cycle, and we posted there regularly, taking great care to explain our design decisions and their rationale. In return, we had an opportunity to listen to the players' feedback even before the game was released, and we could modify some design decisions accordingly.

Personal Thoughts I can't think of anything more to say that wouldn't be repeating something that was already said. It was a pleasure to work on this article though, and even helped me to sort some thoughts for myself.

Martin Klima Lead Designer Altar Interactive

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