Questions
with, Steve Cotton, John Sonedecker, and John Michel, 3 RSE
level designers who designed maps for Covert Ops Essentials.
[ Steve
Cotton | John
Sonedecker | John
Michel ]
Missile Silo - John Michel
| 1.
Introduce yourself and tell us a little about your map,
Missile Silo. |
John Michel -
My name is John Michel, and I'm currently a dedicated map builder
here at Red Storm. I've been with the company for about two
and a half years; my first project here was Force 21, where
I was tasked with building the vehicle and building models.
Since then, I've worked on Urban Operations and Covert Ops.
The Missile Silo was an interesting map. All I knew from the
start was that it was supposed to be a missile launch site,
location undetermined. That gave me a lot of freedom in choosing
direction and content, but as a relative newbie to the R6 map
design process, it also meant I needed to work that much harder
to keep up with the veterans on the team.
Steve
Cotton hooked me up with his perspective on it: he suggested
that it maintain the feeling of the old airfield from R6 in
the exterior, while still providing most of the gameplay indoors.
Also, I always liked the twisted, cold passageways in the dam
from R6, so I tried to capture some of that same experience
when putting together the underground launch center. I got really
excited about building it once I gathered some resource photos
from some old U.S. Titan missle bases. I then began to lay out
the path I wanted to see the player take from the outside in.
Of course, in the end, the missile silo proper was to be at
the end of the single player path, so the rough floorplan came
together pretty quickly after that.
| 2.
What other maps have you done in the R6 series? |
John
Michel -
Besides the Silo, I built the Warehouse District, Subway Station,
MP Snowbase, and MP Training Maze, all from Urban Operations.
In addition, I made the revisions and updates to the classic
maps Hacienda, Skyscraper and Hot Zone (the hacienda cave was
an idea thought up for R6, but there was no time to implement
it. Steve Cotton suggested that I add it into the revised map).
I also started building a cool European castle before the UO
stuff... but it didn't work too well because the map building
process is pretty complicated, and I just didn't know it well
enough yet, so it never got finished. I then decided to go simple
in the extreme and build the Training Maze as my first complete
map (besides, I always wanted to play R6 on an indoor paintball
field). I learn more and more with every new map I build and
that learning continues even today.
| 3.
The Missile Silo map has been getting a lot praise because
of its large environment that offers many points of engagement.
What types of sacrifices did you have make in the development
process of this map because of engine constraints? |
John
Michel -
Well, the exterior of the map was designed to be a major engagement
point, but the Rogue Spear engine was never optimized for large,
outdoor spaces, so a framerate problem arose quickly. In the
original design, more concrete slabs and light poles were called
for, and players were supposed to be able to climb on top of
the main building. I also thought a crane or tractor would be
nice (for moving around the slabs in the field, that is). While
I was building the map, I periodically tested it and found that
the exterior slowed to a crawl when more than a couple characters
were drawn in it. That meant that I had to trim down all of
the unnecessary geometry to overcome this hurdle. There are
now no more of the cool, extraneous objects outside - what you
see is as much as I could squeeze into it. The rooftop of the
main building had to be scrapped because I couldn't afford the
geometry of the ladder or stairs, and the framerate issues dictated
that I should bring the primary gameplay indoors.
The
other big compromise was in putting a ladder into the silo proper.
I tried it, believe me. Unfortunately, ladders are a really
touchy subject in Rogue Spear and they don't often work well
and when I put in the ladder, it just didn't hold up in testing.
In order to make it work, the entire section of the map would
have to be redesigned and rebuilt. No good map will get redesigned
for a single ladder.
| 4.
From start to finish how long did it take to complete this
map? |
John
Michel -
I probably used about five weeks from start to finish to get
the map done. A good week was devoted to gathering resource,
making sketches, and building the initial geometry layout. Then,
about two weeks was devoted to finalizing the geometry and applying
textures. The fourth week was for lighting everything and polishing
up the geometry and textures, and the fifth week was devoted
to testing and fixing bugs. This should give you a rough idea
of how the process flows.
I
know a lot of fans have requested that we release new maps every
week or two. I hope they can all understand now why that would
simply not be possible. Even the smaller multiplayer maps would
require three to four weeks of solid work to polish up. A lot
of time and energy goes into creating each map and I just want
to thank everybody out there who spends the money and time to
play our games. My biggest reward is knowing that I'm creating
something that gamers will enjoy. Thanks, everybody!
Interview conducted by: Snicker
