A LITTLE INTERVIEW TIME - Throughout the Enemy Territory: Quake Wars preview day while we were getting to play the game there were interviews going on with Paul Wedgwood, Owner of Splash Damage/ETQW Lead Game Designer and Kevin Cloud, Co Owner of id Software/ETQW Creative Director. Near the end of the day two other attendees and I had a chance to sit down and ask a few questions.

Q: Enemy Territory: Quake Wars has amassed a huge online community. Why do you think it has become so popular and do you think Quake Wars will be able to live up to the hype?
A: Kevin: "I think for one thing the game offers something unique that interests people. It is very focused on team play. I think the objective based game play, feeling more like a military mission, then like a sport, interests people as well. Visually the game just stands out so I think people are attracted to that too. Also, for the people that have played Wolfenstein multiplayer and played Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory, they understand what we are talking about, they understand what we are getting to when we are talking about having the character classes that are actually meaningful classes where it is important that you are playing the engineer, and it is important that the medic supports the solder planting the charges and those types of things really do count. All that just touches a cord with people that they like, it does with me. When we started back with Wolfenstein multiplayer that was one of the things that always just sort interested me. I wanted to give that kind of game idea a shot and so I guess it is just touching with a lot of people that like the same thing."
Paul: "Everyone on the whole team is fairly modest about our hopes [for Quake Wars]. We are all blown away by the awards. If you look at the last two E3s, the E3 where the game was not playable and people couldn't actually sit down and play it, Enemy Territory: Quake Wars won two or three awards. But at this last one where people actually sat down and played it... when they gave it the 30 awards and the nominations, it was not based on PR hype where people were telling people it was going to be a really cool fun game, it was based on them playing it live at E3 and QuakeCon."
Kevin: "I was just as surprised as anybody. When you are working on something you like and that you have an interest in, you are never quite sure if other people are going to like it as much.  We came away from E3 just excited and scared at the same time."
[Both Paul and Kevin start laughing.] Paul: "There isn't a master group here planning to create hype or anything like that, it just happened on its own accord." Kevin [still laughing]: "Oh my goodness! A lot of people like this! Did we got lucky?" [More laughing. I get the feeling they know they've got a good thing going and sometimes can't believe it's real.]

Q: You have obviously made significant changes in the way terrain and levels are created for Quake Wars. What is the learning curve going to look like for folks that are used to modding and level creation in Quake 3, Wolfenstein, and Enemy Territory?
A: Paul: "I think that when it comes to creating standard brush geometry, the process is very similar if not improved over how it was done previously because with each iteration of Radiant that has been developed there have been big breakthroughs and big improvements that have taken place. I'd refer you to some of the specifics on some of the ways those things have been improved-- Jared Hefty has recently done a Developer Diary online. Even though you are creating a higher quality and a higher quantity of art for your environment in a map for Enemy Territory: Quake Wars, we've done our best with the tools to try to make it easy for people, as easy as possible. So for example, when you generate a terrain you could go into a tool like "World Machine" or "Terragen" to create your height map and create the terrain so you do not have to model it all yourself. You can take that terrain that you generated with a 3rd party application and then in our tool set geometrically distribute textures automatically based on properties that have been set for the materials... Then you can just drag splines through the map to create a river with a riverbed with a set of blends that you want to occur across those locations. You can do the same thing for putting rocks in, and on the materials they can be set for things like normal map blends as well, so an artist does not have to go in and paint grass that grows up into the crevices of rocks. The game will automatically render the MegaTexture...such that grass can grow up into the rocks through custom normal map blending. So there is a whole bunch of technology in the engine that will give you this first pass, something that really looks like the temperate, or arid, or arctic terrain that you are trying to create with appropriate water bodies. Then what else is new for level designers is the ability to go in and uniquely detail the MegaTexture. John Carmack over at id Software developed a tool called the "stamp tool". Basically you have a library of textures that you can use, like mud, sand, rocks, ground moss or whatever, and you can go in and stamp down unique detail around areas and specific components. Then back in MegaGen if you really wanted to put it out to artists to get a really final polished look, you could have somebody model some cracks for you and things that you could project down onto the MegaTexture as well. So the process is longer, but the net result of the effort that you put into creating a level is considerably less, proportionately. In other words to achieve those results with the previous generation of Radiant would take you tons and tons and tons of time painting a huge terrain. With this generation of technology you are going to get a level which is perhaps twenty times better but with less effort."
Kevin: "To come up with something that is reasonable looking and something that basically represents what you are wanting it to be, sand and roads, etc, that job is not a big undertaking because a lot of the tools are automated for that. The thing is that if you want to make something that is super detailed, if an artist wants to take on the challenge of making something that he feels is the best looking thing ever because every pixel is under his control, that option is there too. And given what the community comes up with as far as game play and the looks of maps, I think it is a mistake to underestimate their passion for doing something cool and really sitting down and making something unique. Because you can change any pixel you can make it look like anything you want, so I think they will have a fun time with it. But certainly because you have more opportunity it is more challenging if you want to take advantage of all of it."

Q: Sticking on the subject of custom maps, can you give us an estimate of how big, in disk size, a fully featured custom map would be?
A: Paul: "I guess it would depend on the compression system that was used when archiving the file so that it could be distributed. Our maps currently perhaps add 400 or 500 megabytes to a build when you add a map with the MegaTexture and components. Again, the level designer can choose to use a much higher level of compress on the MegaTexture if they want to. So when a maps in beta with a third party level designer they can put out a MegaTexture that is only 50 or 60 megabytes so people and play with it and test it and see how it is going. And then when they do their final distribution they can put the half gig one out. I get 500 megabytes for a map sounds like a lot...it's because it has this MegaTexture component to it, but the thing to remember is that it is almost a square mile, well actually it is a square kilometer, of geometry and content and unique detail.  So it's not a bad achievement really to have managed to [compress it so much]. The MegaTexture starts out as a 6GB source image so there's some wizardry that has got it down to 400 megabytes in the first place."
Kevin: "Yes, the file size is larger because of the MegaTexture. You do need to keep that in mind. For the people that are doing the mods and getting the game play down, you can send it out with a smaller MegaTexture that is highly compressed [so you can easily] get it out there into the hands of people. Then when you are ready to send it out for the final look you can send the larger file. For the people getting [mods or maps] out, for getting the game play tested and getting new ideas out there, I do not think that is going to be the big issue."

Q: Will the game servers have to be monitored similar to the ranked servers of Battlefield 2142?
A: Kevin: "Yes, servers will basically have to be under a validation process for ranked servers because the issue is that you do not want people going in and hacking your stats, and then having roll back issues for the stat tracking data base guys. It would just be a mess. So yes, there is a comparative system to Battlefield."
Paul: "Anyone who wants to can run a server, it just would not be an officially ranked stat collecting server, but anyone can run a server on your LAN or ISP for anyone you like. It does not have to be ranked. So you can have thousands and thousands of servers out there just like Wolfenstein and Enemy Territory now, but if you want to play on a ranked server then it needs to be on one [that has] an agreement with id and Activision to make sure it is kept secure."

Q: Regarding the ranked server system, is that only going to be available for the [official] maps that you have developed, or are user created maps going to be able to see the benefits of the ranking system as well?
A: Kevin: "Right now as far as when the release goes out it would just be our maps, but it is something we are talking about doing but there has not been a decision on it yet. Obviously we want to do what we can do to support the mod community. We just need to figure out exactly how to handle those stats and what impact having a map that has not been added to the database would cause. So right now when the game is released [stats will only be collected on] the officially released maps."

Our time was up. I wished there could have been a lot more time to ask numerous other questions but the three of us had to leave Paul and Kevin for their next interview session. It was time to get back to the presentation room and try out the Ark map and ask the id Software, Splash Damage, and Activision guys some more questions.