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[br]
Life on Mars?[br]
[br]
Not for long, by the looks of things. We take a look at one of the most promising
and heavyweight Half-Life 2 mods as I meet with the leader of Warpig Studios, John
Beck, over a luncheon of liquefied space-food. [br]
[br]
Mars is a planet traditionally associated with war. Boiling down an angry red from
above us, it has been a god of warfare; the home of murderous tripods; the site
of a horrific demon invasion; perhaps soon the focus of the all-singing, all-dancing,
Bush-sponsored space race II. But now the valleys and plains of the red planet will
vibrate with the drums of a new war, a new revolution.[br]
[br]
Yes, it's the year 2200, and the scramble for Mars is over. Corporations have colonised
the virgin hills, vast cities and societies growing from the humble origins of the
pioneer outposts. Mars is big and old enough to have a cultural identity in its
own right, yet it still plays second fiddle to what is seen as an oppressive and
traditionalist Earth- highly taxed and milked for resources, the Martian populace
begins to rally under a common flag. [br]
[br]
On January 1st 2200, the Martian Body Politik declares its independence from Earth.
[br]
[br]
War between the worlds [br]
[br]
This is Badge of Blood: one of the most ambitious total conversions for Half-Life
2- and beyond. Make no mistake: this is not some two-bit concept with nothing
but unskinned renders to show. We've docked at the Deimos Orbital Facility to grill
John Beck, the man in charge of Warpig Studios, and get him to show us his vision.
"As time passes", he says, "technology may advance, cultures will evolve, and society
will change; but the nature of war and politics will not, and it's exactly that
peculiar aspect of humanity what we will try to explore through the telling of our
tale". [br]
[br]
Note the emphasis on story. Badge of Blood will see players becoming part of an
epic narrative spun between the two worlds with immersive maps and multiplayer 'campaigns'.
"The basic idea is for the player to feel that, when he plays the game, he's a part
of something that is much bigger than just himself and the map". This is a key point
of BoB- that epic storyline and detailed universe won't just be background, but
an integral part of the multiplayer game. It's often a problem that multiplayer
is divorced from the backdrop to such an extent that it becomes really more of a
'insert universe here fantasy match-up' rather than a plausible situation. But with
Blood, Beck's team intends to change this. "It's like reading a good book, or watching
a good movie", says John. "What makes those stories good is the fact that you're
drawn in and care about what's going on. Video gaming is another medium of story
telling".[br]
[br]
What's interesting is that it completely eschews traditional 'high sci-fi' values:
there are no magical laser guns or Einstein-baffling warp drives here. "There is
a distinct lack of games out there that treat science fiction with the kind of genuine
seriousness or plausibility that a lot of folks might like to see", says John. Hence
the BoB universe, where everything is based on sound scientific principles and real
concepts being developed- right down to the smallest detail. The team draws inspiration
from many places: not just games, but the political philosophy of Thomas Hobbes
and John Stewart Mill (apparently); historical precedent in global politics and
current events; and contemporary games like Operation Flashpoint, Ghost Recon, and
FASA's Battletech universe- the setting of the Mechwarrior games. "I have a
great appreciation for the power of a game world's history and lore", says Beck.
"[FASA] treated their material with a certain matter-of-factness that made it concrete
and bigger than life. We hope to someday bring that same feeling to our own community
of gamers, giving them a world that they can invest their imagination, and care
about what happens in it". [br]
[br]
So: the game. Opposing forces will squabble over a variety of Mars and Earth-based
maps: from rocky Martian exteriors whistling with alien winds, through colonial
outposts and dome-city interiors, to an Earth-orbit space elevator facility. The
gameplay will be objective-based, and generally quite tactical and realistic with
a heavy focus on teamplay. But the experience, says Beck, will vary widely depending
on the role you take: an assault trooper will find the game far more fast-paced
and action-orientated than, say, a sniper sitting on a hill. [br]
[br]
"We will have smaller scale tactical engagements between units of troops, obviously.
But we also endeavour to include larger scale battles that will make use of vehicles,
VTOLs, artillery, and other military equipment. The nature of a map will depend
entirely on the campaign". The team are aiming for mappers to decide the objectives,
gametype, and scale of a map. "One map could be a DoD style attrition -fest, with
two sides competing for their respective objective points", Beck enthuses. "Another
map could be one side, with limited troops, having to hold a point for x amount
of time while the other side, with unlimited reinforcements, must take it. Generally,
the intent is to present map makers with a set of tools that will allow them to
make their own objectives for a given map, to prevent gameplay from become stale
and boring".[br]
[br]
Many such objectives will be combined in one game: assault the outpost, take down
the support guns, defend for as long as possible while the enemy counterattacks,
escape to the extraction point. There'll be fraught infantry encounters and massive
open-ground battlefields with multiple vehicles and objective points in maps up
to 8 square kilometres. The plan is that many, many scenarios will be incorporated
into longer 'campaigns' that will span several hours on one server, where the outcome
of one battle will affect the next. You might leave to gobble down a hasty dinner
and return to find the war's still going. Like the rest of Blood, the maps themselves
are being treated with the utmost accuracy, precision and seriousness: the team
are using data from NASA's Mars Orbital Laser Altimeter project to generate height
maps and terrain displacements. Just think about that for a second. An amateur mod
team is using laser maps from a satellite whizzing around Mars at incredible speeds.
What a world we live in. [br]
[br]
In the red corner... [br]
[br]
"The Global Peace Authority in our storyline is the descendent of NATO, and serves
as the peacekeeping arm of the Concordat, a 'league of nations' that comes about
after the U.N. collapses under the weight of several global catastrophes", John
tells me. Their ideology can be summed up in the Arthurian ideal of 'Might Makes
Right' - that it is the responsibility, the obligation, of the powerful to enforce
justice, peace, and order. "They have taken upon themselves the mantle of global
peacekeeper, and use their collective wealth and military power to squash hot spots
around the globe before they escalate out of control. The GPA and the Concordat
are essentially a descendant of the U.N., but with teeth and a mandate to use them".
[br]
[br]
On the battlefield, they come across as a rugged and dependable force. Their equipment
isn't fancy or high-tech, but it gets the job done. Their style is robust, reliable,
and spartan. Players can expect to be fielding the FA-112 flechette rifle, the Wz78
– a tiny buzzsaw of a sub-machinegun- and the fearsome death-spray that is
the ML-114 light machinegun. [br]
[br]
The Martian Defence Force, on the other hand are not a traditionalist conformist
government- they are a 'corporate republic', if you will- "hundreds of colonies
of varying size and influence that come together to form a confederation of city
states". [br]
[br]
Beck elaborates. "Most of the Martian colonies were founded around a collection
of core industries that have come together in several joint ventures. So imagine
a Telecommunications Company, an Aeronautical Engineering Firm, and a Broadcasting
network working in unison to form a single colony". Furthermore, the MDF, like other
institutions on Mars, is the product of a consumer driven society- and as the
corporations vie for weapons contracts they'll develop more high-tech, flashy equipment
that comes with unique functionality- like the Gauss Rifle, a two-metre long
railgun/sniper rifle so heavy it can only be used in the low-grav environment of
Mars. Unfortunately, this advanced and untested technology comes at a price: MDF
equipment is potentially less reliable in the field, and more likely to malfunction
in a pinch. [br]
[br]
The MDF uses a system the team have dubbed CombatNT - similar to the US Land Warrior
program. With it, infantry elements can co-ordinate organised tactics to fox the
enemy. The AB65 'Radix' combat support weapon (read porta-mortar), for example,
will allow players to act as mobile artillery- one will designate a target with
a laser pointer, and a 'fire here' icon will appear on his teammate's heads up display.
Cooperative gameplay mechanisms like this are intended to promote organised teamplay.
"We intend to implement features that will encourage players to operate in cohesive
groups, or 'teams'. Those who are team players will gain experience more rapidly
than lone wolves, and therefore improve in ability during a campaign more rapidly".
[br]
[br]
Wait a second. 'Experience'? Oh yes. "Players will be able to create static characters
that can gain experience through the course of a campaign. With that experience,
they can purchase skills and advantages that will give them a little bit of an edge
in certain game roles". The system, tying in with a planned pen-and-paper role-playing
game (!), will add an element of persistence to game campaigns. Make no mistake,
though: this is not an MMO. It's unlikely that characters will be completely persistent
and those with a wealth of experience points and extra skills won't necessarily
be able to dominate their less-endowed underlings. In the manner of Enemy Territory,
the RPG element will be fast-paced and easily accessible, while still maintaining
complexity enough to make it interesting. [br]
[br]
Then there's the matter of transportation. A myriad of vehicles are planned, all
of them feasible and realistic. At first, it may only be APCs and Infantry Fighting
Vehicles- designed to transport and directly support combat teams. But the team
is planning VTOL gunships, jeeps and more besides. "You can operate and fight in
a vehicle as a single player if you want to, and be very effective at it", Beck
told us. "Or you have the option of multi-crewing the vehicle with other players.
"[br]
[br]
On smaller maps less than half a kilometre long, vehicles won't be essential if
they even appear at all. But on an 8-kilometre Mars exterior map, you're not going
anywhere without co-operation with drivers and pilots: essential for getting from
point A to B, let alone doing anything effective. [br]
"Some maps might even be just armoured engagements", says Beck, grinning wickedly.
[br]
[br]
Why we fight [br]
[br]
At this point there's really only one piece of ground we haven't covered: that of
the single player game. With such an involving backstory, such a complex universe,
it would have been perhaps a waste of a good setting not to include it. But when
quizzed, Beck is keen to stress that the story will be integral to both single and
multi-player. [br]
[br]
"The single player game will tell the story of one person's journey through what
is a complex, swirling, and often frustrating set of circumstances that lead up
to the war, and his or her place in it". Beyond that, he could say no more: SP will
be implemented only when MP is up to scratch, and that will keep the team occupied
for a long while yet. [br]
[br]
Warpig Studios are ambitious- perhaps fatally so. In due course they hope the
mod may in fact evolve to join the new wave of Steam-based retail titles. Beck is
enthusiastic about the possibilities of Steam as a platform for indie developers.
"Despite some of the early headaches, I think Steam is without a doubt one of the
most innovative and cool things to come out of the gaming industry in a long, long
time; particularly the unprecedented support it gives to the modding community".
Beck believes that Steam might well be The Future Of Gaming- allowing amateur
game developers to distribute their goods through an official channel that every
potential player is going to have access to. "I mean, what Valve is doing is creating
a whole new strata of game developers. Small dev teams are being the given the empowerment
to pursue entrepreneurial ventures without having to have the immense resources
required to found a traditional studio, hire talent, find a publisher, put boxes
on the shelf, so on and so forth", says Beck, clearly excited at the possibilities
of a new front of indie developers rising from the mod scene. "Do you think
we'll
see other studios like Epic Games doing something similar in the future?" he asks.
"I think they'd be fools not to". [br]
[br]
Warpig are planning to upgrade to retail and join this new wave when the time is
right. "Our intent is to bring the game to a level of quality that will allow us
to sell the mod via Steam when the time comes. But only after a nice long beta test
that will assure that we're putting out something worth buying".[br]
[br]
And when will that be, we ask? "Holy cow", Beck deadpans. "Well, we're still building
our alpha, but we are having fun touring maps, using the new jump functionality,
and breaking Fredrik1's prone code". Beck relates in full the nature of the challenge:
gutting the HL2 weapons code and restarting from scratch for full-on ballistic realism,
coding the character experience system, 'shrinking' the players and entities to
allow the construction of very large-seeming maps with much smaller actual sizes.
"We have several layers of our own inheritance hierarchy that is entirely our own,
using ballistic weapons that read custom tags from our weapon script files...it's
rolling along".[br]
[br]
But when? "The first public beta will probably arrive..". John pauses melodramatically.
"When it's ready. I absolutely cannot speculate on that right now". Spoilsport.[br]
[br]
Recent developments have cast an uncertain light on the mod's future. "We've been
meeting with the CEO of a major game company here in North Carolina and discussing
the prospect of a partnership in developing and publishing Badge of Blood as a retail
release, which is fantastic. However, there has been some pressure there to leave
the Source engine and move to Unreal". If this happens, there will hopefully still
be a steam release. [br]
[br]
But there's more. "At the same time", Beck tells us, "we've also been approached
by two rather big-time venture capitalists who are interested in funding our project.
Now, we could just do that, and develop on whatever engine we damned well feel like.
But having the previously mentioned game company as a partner would be a huge windfall
from us as a resource. So we've spent the past few months trying to work out business
plans for different scenarios, getting legal advice, and so on". Right now, the
team is working on a non-public demo to use as a proof-of-concept, and hoping they
will be able to distribute Blood over steam. [br]
[br]
We left him then, for it was at that point the raid sirens sounded all non-essential
personnel were ordered to evacuate the station. But we left with every confidence
in Warpig Studios. They were confident, competent, inspired and professional. Their
vision is an exciting one: full-scale objective-based vehicle-enabled space war
- teamplay, tactics, open warfare, all wrapped up in a sweeping storyline and
rendered with military precision and scientific detail. Forgive me hyperbole-
I admit I'm rather prone to it. But the fact is that Badge of Blood looks good.
Damn good.[br]
[br]
Then again, both Garry of Garrysmod fame and Valve themselves have heavily criticised
the 'big game stuido' approach to mod development. Many claim it is far better to
start with almost nothing and build on it, never making a big thing of your mod
until you have a playable version. But then, Badge of Blood seems far closer to
a full standalone title than to a modification. [br]
[br]
If the last two hundred years of human history have shown us anything, it's this:
while war is hell, it does make for some very good entertainment, and especially
good videogames. Blood aims to integrate multiplayer with a strong storyline in
a way rarely seen before in games, and to present a plausible future in a way most
mods- or, often, full games - don't bother with. Let's hope it lives up to its
promises.[br]
<tr>
<td align="center">
</tr>
</table>
[br]
Life on Mars?[br]
[br]
Not for long, by the looks of things. We take a look at one of the most promising
and heavyweight Half-Life 2 mods as I meet with the leader of Warpig Studios, John
Beck, over a luncheon of liquefied space-food. [br]
[br]
Mars is a planet traditionally associated with war. Boiling down an angry red from
above us, it has been a god of warfare; the home of murderous tripods; the site
of a horrific demon invasion; perhaps soon the focus of the all-singing, all-dancing,
Bush-sponsored space race II. But now the valleys and plains of the red planet will
vibrate with the drums of a new war, a new revolution.[br]
[br]
Yes, it's the year 2200, and the scramble for Mars is over. Corporations have colonised
the virgin hills, vast cities and societies growing from the humble origins of the
pioneer outposts. Mars is big and old enough to have a cultural identity in its
own right, yet it still plays second fiddle to what is seen as an oppressive and
traditionalist Earth- highly taxed and milked for resources, the Martian populace
begins to rally under a common flag. [br]
[br]
On January 1st 2200, the Martian Body Politik declares its independence from Earth.
[br]
[br]
War between the worlds [br]
[br]
This is Badge of Blood: one of the most ambitious total conversions for Half-Life
2- and beyond. Make no mistake: this is not some two-bit concept with nothing
but unskinned renders to show. We've docked at the Deimos Orbital Facility to grill
John Beck, the man in charge of Warpig Studios, and get him to show us his vision.
"As time passes", he says, "technology may advance, cultures will evolve, and society
will change; but the nature of war and politics will not, and it's exactly that
peculiar aspect of humanity what we will try to explore through the telling of our
tale". [br]
[br]
Note the emphasis on story. Badge of Blood will see players becoming part of an
epic narrative spun between the two worlds with immersive maps and multiplayer 'campaigns'.
"The basic idea is for the player to feel that, when he plays the game, he's a part
of something that is much bigger than just himself and the map". This is a key point
of BoB- that epic storyline and detailed universe won't just be background, but
an integral part of the multiplayer game. It's often a problem that multiplayer
is divorced from the backdrop to such an extent that it becomes really more of a
'insert universe here fantasy match-up' rather than a plausible situation. But with
Blood, Beck's team intends to change this. "It's like reading a good book, or watching
a good movie", says John. "What makes those stories good is the fact that you're
drawn in and care about what's going on. Video gaming is another medium of story
telling".[br]
[br]
What's interesting is that it completely eschews traditional 'high sci-fi' values:
there are no magical laser guns or Einstein-baffling warp drives here. "There is
a distinct lack of games out there that treat science fiction with the kind of genuine
seriousness or plausibility that a lot of folks might like to see", says John. Hence
the BoB universe, where everything is based on sound scientific principles and real
concepts being developed- right down to the smallest detail. The team draws inspiration
from many places: not just games, but the political philosophy of Thomas Hobbes
and John Stewart Mill (apparently); historical precedent in global politics and
current events; and contemporary games like Operation Flashpoint, Ghost Recon, and
FASA's Battletech universe- the setting of the Mechwarrior games. "I have a
great appreciation for the power of a game world's history and lore", says Beck.
"[FASA] treated their material with a certain matter-of-factness that made it concrete
and bigger than life. We hope to someday bring that same feeling to our own community
of gamers, giving them a world that they can invest their imagination, and care
about what happens in it". [br]
[br]
So: the game. Opposing forces will squabble over a variety of Mars and Earth-based
maps: from rocky Martian exteriors whistling with alien winds, through colonial
outposts and dome-city interiors, to an Earth-orbit space elevator facility. The
gameplay will be objective-based, and generally quite tactical and realistic with
a heavy focus on teamplay. But the experience, says Beck, will vary widely depending
on the role you take: an assault trooper will find the game far more fast-paced
and action-orientated than, say, a sniper sitting on a hill. [br]
[br]
"We will have smaller scale tactical engagements between units of troops, obviously.
But we also endeavour to include larger scale battles that will make use of vehicles,
VTOLs, artillery, and other military equipment. The nature of a map will depend
entirely on the campaign". The team are aiming for mappers to decide the objectives,
gametype, and scale of a map. "One map could be a DoD style attrition -fest, with
two sides competing for their respective objective points", Beck enthuses. "Another
map could be one side, with limited troops, having to hold a point for x amount
of time while the other side, with unlimited reinforcements, must take it. Generally,
the intent is to present map makers with a set of tools that will allow them to
make their own objectives for a given map, to prevent gameplay from become stale
and boring".[br]
[br]
Many such objectives will be combined in one game: assault the outpost, take down
the support guns, defend for as long as possible while the enemy counterattacks,
escape to the extraction point. There'll be fraught infantry encounters and massive
open-ground battlefields with multiple vehicles and objective points in maps up
to 8 square kilometres. The plan is that many, many scenarios will be incorporated
into longer 'campaigns' that will span several hours on one server, where the outcome
of one battle will affect the next. You might leave to gobble down a hasty dinner
and return to find the war's still going. Like the rest of Blood, the maps themselves
are being treated with the utmost accuracy, precision and seriousness: the team
are using data from NASA's Mars Orbital Laser Altimeter project to generate height
maps and terrain displacements. Just think about that for a second. An amateur mod
team is using laser maps from a satellite whizzing around Mars at incredible speeds.
What a world we live in. [br]
[br]
In the red corner... [br]
[br]
"The Global Peace Authority in our storyline is the descendent of NATO, and serves
as the peacekeeping arm of the Concordat, a 'league of nations' that comes about
after the U.N. collapses under the weight of several global catastrophes", John
tells me. Their ideology can be summed up in the Arthurian ideal of 'Might Makes
Right' - that it is the responsibility, the obligation, of the powerful to enforce
justice, peace, and order. "They have taken upon themselves the mantle of global
peacekeeper, and use their collective wealth and military power to squash hot spots
around the globe before they escalate out of control. The GPA and the Concordat
are essentially a descendant of the U.N., but with teeth and a mandate to use them".
[br]
[br]
On the battlefield, they come across as a rugged and dependable force. Their equipment
isn't fancy or high-tech, but it gets the job done. Their style is robust, reliable,
and spartan. Players can expect to be fielding the FA-112 flechette rifle, the Wz78
– a tiny buzzsaw of a sub-machinegun- and the fearsome death-spray that is
the ML-114 light machinegun. [br]
[br]
The Martian Defence Force, on the other hand are not a traditionalist conformist
government- they are a 'corporate republic', if you will- "hundreds of colonies
of varying size and influence that come together to form a confederation of city
states". [br]
[br]
Beck elaborates. "Most of the Martian colonies were founded around a collection
of core industries that have come together in several joint ventures. So imagine
a Telecommunications Company, an Aeronautical Engineering Firm, and a Broadcasting
network working in unison to form a single colony". Furthermore, the MDF, like other
institutions on Mars, is the product of a consumer driven society- and as the
corporations vie for weapons contracts they'll develop more high-tech, flashy equipment
that comes with unique functionality- like the Gauss Rifle, a two-metre long
railgun/sniper rifle so heavy it can only be used in the low-grav environment of
Mars. Unfortunately, this advanced and untested technology comes at a price: MDF
equipment is potentially less reliable in the field, and more likely to malfunction
in a pinch. [br]
[br]
The MDF uses a system the team have dubbed CombatNT - similar to the US Land Warrior
program. With it, infantry elements can co-ordinate organised tactics to fox the
enemy. The AB65 'Radix' combat support weapon (read porta-mortar), for example,
will allow players to act as mobile artillery- one will designate a target with
a laser pointer, and a 'fire here' icon will appear on his teammate's heads up display.
Cooperative gameplay mechanisms like this are intended to promote organised teamplay.
"We intend to implement features that will encourage players to operate in cohesive
groups, or 'teams'. Those who are team players will gain experience more rapidly
than lone wolves, and therefore improve in ability during a campaign more rapidly".
[br]
[br]
Wait a second. 'Experience'? Oh yes. "Players will be able to create static characters
that can gain experience through the course of a campaign. With that experience,
they can purchase skills and advantages that will give them a little bit of an edge
in certain game roles". The system, tying in with a planned pen-and-paper role-playing
game (!), will add an element of persistence to game campaigns. Make no mistake,
though: this is not an MMO. It's unlikely that characters will be completely persistent
and those with a wealth of experience points and extra skills won't necessarily
be able to dominate their less-endowed underlings. In the manner of Enemy Territory,
the RPG element will be fast-paced and easily accessible, while still maintaining
complexity enough to make it interesting. [br]
[br]
Then there's the matter of transportation. A myriad of vehicles are planned, all
of them feasible and realistic. At first, it may only be APCs and Infantry Fighting
Vehicles- designed to transport and directly support combat teams. But the team
is planning VTOL gunships, jeeps and more besides. "You can operate and fight in
a vehicle as a single player if you want to, and be very effective at it", Beck
told us. "Or you have the option of multi-crewing the vehicle with other players.
"[br]
[br]
On smaller maps less than half a kilometre long, vehicles won't be essential if
they even appear at all. But on an 8-kilometre Mars exterior map, you're not going
anywhere without co-operation with drivers and pilots: essential for getting from
point A to B, let alone doing anything effective. [br]
"Some maps might even be just armoured engagements", says Beck, grinning wickedly.
[br]
[br]
Why we fight [br]
[br]
At this point there's really only one piece of ground we haven't covered: that of
the single player game. With such an involving backstory, such a complex universe,
it would have been perhaps a waste of a good setting not to include it. But when
quizzed, Beck is keen to stress that the story will be integral to both single and
multi-player. [br]
[br]
"The single player game will tell the story of one person's journey through what
is a complex, swirling, and often frustrating set of circumstances that lead up
to the war, and his or her place in it". Beyond that, he could say no more: SP will
be implemented only when MP is up to scratch, and that will keep the team occupied
for a long while yet. [br]
[br]
Warpig Studios are ambitious- perhaps fatally so. In due course they hope the
mod may in fact evolve to join the new wave of Steam-based retail titles. Beck is
enthusiastic about the possibilities of Steam as a platform for indie developers.
"Despite some of the early headaches, I think Steam is without a doubt one of the
most innovative and cool things to come out of the gaming industry in a long, long
time; particularly the unprecedented support it gives to the modding community".
Beck believes that Steam might well be The Future Of Gaming- allowing amateur
game developers to distribute their goods through an official channel that every
potential player is going to have access to. "I mean, what Valve is doing is creating
a whole new strata of game developers. Small dev teams are being the given the empowerment
to pursue entrepreneurial ventures without having to have the immense resources
required to found a traditional studio, hire talent, find a publisher, put boxes
on the shelf, so on and so forth", says Beck, clearly excited at the possibilities
of a new front of indie developers rising from the mod scene. "Do you think
we'll
see other studios like Epic Games doing something similar in the future?" he asks.
"I think they'd be fools not to". [br]
[br]
Warpig are planning to upgrade to retail and join this new wave when the time is
right. "Our intent is to bring the game to a level of quality that will allow us
to sell the mod via Steam when the time comes. But only after a nice long beta test
that will assure that we're putting out something worth buying".[br]
[br]
And when will that be, we ask? "Holy cow", Beck deadpans. "Well, we're still building
our alpha, but we are having fun touring maps, using the new jump functionality,
and breaking Fredrik1's prone code". Beck relates in full the nature of the challenge:
gutting the HL2 weapons code and restarting from scratch for full-on ballistic realism,
coding the character experience system, 'shrinking' the players and entities to
allow the construction of very large-seeming maps with much smaller actual sizes.
"We have several layers of our own inheritance hierarchy that is entirely our own,
using ballistic weapons that read custom tags from our weapon script files...it's
rolling along".[br]
[br]
But when? "The first public beta will probably arrive..". John pauses melodramatically.
"When it's ready. I absolutely cannot speculate on that right now". Spoilsport.[br]
[br]
Recent developments have cast an uncertain light on the mod's future. "We've been
meeting with the CEO of a major game company here in North Carolina and discussing
the prospect of a partnership in developing and publishing Badge of Blood as a retail
release, which is fantastic. However, there has been some pressure there to leave
the Source engine and move to Unreal". If this happens, there will hopefully still
be a steam release. [br]
[br]
But there's more. "At the same time", Beck tells us, "we've also been approached
by two rather big-time venture capitalists who are interested in funding our project.
Now, we could just do that, and develop on whatever engine we damned well feel like.
But having the previously mentioned game company as a partner would be a huge windfall
from us as a resource. So we've spent the past few months trying to work out business
plans for different scenarios, getting legal advice, and so on". Right now, the
team is working on a non-public demo to use as a proof-of-concept, and hoping they
will be able to distribute Blood over steam. [br]
[br]
We left him then, for it was at that point the raid sirens sounded all non-essential
personnel were ordered to evacuate the station. But we left with every confidence
in Warpig Studios. They were confident, competent, inspired and professional. Their
vision is an exciting one: full-scale objective-based vehicle-enabled space war
- teamplay, tactics, open warfare, all wrapped up in a sweeping storyline and
rendered with military precision and scientific detail. Forgive me hyperbole-
I admit I'm rather prone to it. But the fact is that Badge of Blood looks good.
Damn good.[br]
[br]
Then again, both Garry of Garrysmod fame and Valve themselves have heavily criticised
the 'big game stuido' approach to mod development. Many claim it is far better to
start with almost nothing and build on it, never making a big thing of your mod
until you have a playable version. But then, Badge of Blood seems far closer to
a full standalone title than to a modification. [br]
[br]
If the last two hundred years of human history have shown us anything, it's this:
while war is hell, it does make for some very good entertainment, and especially
good videogames. Blood aims to integrate multiplayer with a strong storyline in
a way rarely seen before in games, and to present a plausible future in a way most
mods- or, often, full games - don't bother with. Let's hope it lives up to its
promises.[br]
