Combat: Task Force 121 Wrap Report

Major Challenges The short schedule was our biggest challenge, but we designed Combat with that in mind so it turned out to not be an obstacle at all. Remember, there are two types of games - perfect ones and those that actually ship.

Simultaneous ship dates on the Xbox and PC versions was our second biggest challenge. Console manufactures have a great many rules in place for exactly how they want a game to be experienced on their platform. Rules covering everything from load times, save game sizes, exact phrasing / terminology to button functionality are laid out and must be followed. On a PC game, we can be a little more independent. Shipping games at the same time on two platforms can be challenging, but thanks to a good QA system, we were able to do so.

Combat: Task Force 121 is a game that delivers tremendous multiplayer action, all at an affordable price, and that is something we at Direct Action Games are really proud of.

Challenge number three was keeping the team in check. Everyone in the games business wants to make games that will change the world; no one gets into this business because they want to make widgets. Keeping the team focused on the task and constraints at hand, but letting them have some creative freedom that would not jeopardize the ship date was a bit of a balancing act. We focused that creative energy on the wide array of multiplayer maps. The team was pretty much given a free hand with them, and they genuinely ended up being fun and unique.

Best Decisions Using the Unreal Engine. Using an established engine that we have used before allowed us to hit the ground running and focus on the core gameplay. Within the first month of development, we were already tweaking the multiplayer damage models, for example.

Experienced Team. We had a great team on this project. Everyone had shipped at least one game, and a few of us have shipped over a dozen, including two top ten titles. Four of our team members had worked on the Spec Ops franchise, which has sold over three million units and was a top selling PS1 title for nearly a full year. Having an experienced team who know and love games allowed us to try new things, even with the compressed schedule.

Publisher. This may sound like I'm sucking up, but Groove was great to work with. We've published games with nine different publishers, and Groove was by far the most pleasant to deal with. From the get go, they understood the constraints we were under and offered realistic suggestions that recognized this fact. Some publishers have a limited view of reality and will make demands or offer up suggestions that disregard the realities of the time and budget at hand. Some publishers even seem to forget the type of game you're making; there is a reason why vehicle physics in a pure racing game are more accurate than in a combat game, for example.

Key Strengths The world geometry and texture work looks amazing. The game holds up to games with longer development cycles, and has much more gameplay variety than the majority of budget titles.

The game has some great 3D audio, which we pride ourselves on.

The number of multiplayer maps and game types is staggering considering the retail price point.

Areas for Improvement Just like movies have a director's cut, every game maker would like more time to tweak a few things. In our case, we would have liked to spend more time on the AI. Also, if a few of the bugs hadn't been so hard to track down, we could have made two or three more multiplayer maps.

Lessons Learned If you are going to ship on time, plan to do so from the onset. You can try to exceed your bounds, but you need to design in such a fashion that the rest of the game won't suffer if that idea does not work out.

Hire a great team and make sure they all get along. Working in the games business is high pressure; if you don't hit your milestones, you might not get paid. You can't afford the additional stress of working with people you don't like or who aren't productive.

Make sure your publisher understands the development constraints you are dealing with, and work with them to design with these constraints in mind.

For a product with such short development cycle, make sure you use every asset more than once. There is no point in spending 40 man-hours for a gag that the player will only get to use once. It is better to use that time improving elements that the player will use more frequently.

Audience Response We haven't seen many reviews yet, so it is too early to tell. I expect that people who are looking for something fresh with lots of multiplayer action will really love this game. The price point allows people to buy a copy and then get each of their friends to buy one too. Playing online against strangers is one thing, but playing against people you know is really where it's at.

Personal Thoughts Not only do we have large selection of maps, but there is a lot of diversity in them. There are indoor, outdoor, downtown, industrial, jungle, day and night maps. I love the Withering Heights; it is a vertical map that spans five floors in an office tower under construction.

In King of the Hill, the hill zone is a crane load of supplies hanging off the roof of the building that you have to jump to get to. We have a few movie "homages" scattered here and there in the multiplayer levels. We have maps that are great for 16 players and others that are great for four-player split screen.

We also have a VIP round-based game type that is my personal favorite. I will be hosting dedicated servers at home for that game type just so I can play a few games while I'm at the office. Finally, we were able to add an off-line training mode, where new players can develop their skills by playing against bots in a deathmatch. Combat: Task Force 121 is a game that delivers tremendous multiplayer action, all at an affordable price, and that is something we at Direct Action Games are really proud of.

John Williamson Designer Direct Action Games

[Since introducing them in November of 2003 to offer post-release viewpoints from the respective teams, it has been our pleasure to publish Wrap Reports on a good number of other titles, primarily within the RPG, online world, action and strategy categories. A complete list of the previous ones may be found on the next page. - Ed.]