14 DAY TRIAL // Since Nuclear Dawn has been announced for release in the first quarter of 2011, we've decided it would be a great idea to give you some new insight into what the game would be all about and so we've directed a couple of questions towards the development team.
As you are well aware, Nuclear Dawn will no longer be a mod for Half Life 2 and instead they've tried to go full throttle and turn it into a standalone multiplayer co-op. Combining the first person experience with the excitement of a real time strategy game, the development team hopes to achieve the unprecedented and offer us a fully new and unique experience.
Filled with great expectations and the satisfaction of long and tedious development hours, the Nuclear Dawn team is confident that the game will not only change the way we look at multiplayer co-op games but also set new standards in the field.
Hope you enjoy our (Adrian Arsene, Alex Niculaita) interview with the Nuclear Dawn team, and we can’t wait for the official release of the game. We certainly are convinced that the game is worth the wait.
1. Everywhere you look multiplayer is the name of the game right now. Do you have plans for a single player mod for Nuclear Dawn?
Nuclear Dawn will be a multiplayer release only, with no plans for single player expansions. It also is but the first instalment of what we hope will become a long and successful IP, for which we’re definitely planning single player instalments.
2. There are other games that use this blend (real-time strategy and first-player shooter), so what makes this game special and why would the players choose it? Considering that it's an FPS/RTS blend, how will weapons and upgrade systems be made available to the average gamer? Which one is more important than the other, in terms of in-game action time?
Scope is what mostly distinguishes Nuclear Dawn from other, similar forays into the FPS/RTS genre. While other games have managed the fusion by limiting the scope to what a single hybrid player could accomplish, in Nuclear Dawn we have kept the RTS and FPS experiences as full-fledged as possible, by dramatically fleshing out the role of the Commander.
The ND Commander has a full-time job on his hands: deciding on upgrade paths for weapons, players and structures, producing and deploying said structures, finding out which vehicles his soldiers need the most, planning out tactical objectives, directing his troops, intervening directly on the battlefield with a series of abilities, and making sure that his base is not open to attack – there is a lot to do, and ND Commanders will need to have their thinking hats on, to survive.
Players themselves will be able to unlock a number of weapons and ‘gizmos’ to better suit their playing style. Even at odds with their commander, they will still be able to customize their load-outs with ammo selection and favourite, unlocked weapons.
Both roles are absolutely vital to in-game action time, and that’s the biggest paradigm shift in Nuclear Dawn versus similar games. A clan of brutally efficient killers will not survive long against a better organized, better equipped army that can leverage several outposts and defensive structures. Likewise, a genius tactician can plan and scheme and organize all he wants, but he won’t be much good if his Farmville-playing troops can’t live long enough to get him resources.
3. The game will be available on Steam and Xbox Live. Is a retail version planned or are you going only with the download option? Is this, at any level, somewhat of an alliance against PlayStation?
Not at all. The game will be available on PC, Mac out of the box, because the Source engine allows us to work on those builds in parallel, with minimum customization. Xbox is on the cards because of the familiar development environment.
PS3 was never excluded – we just haven’t fully evaluated the cost of developing on a third system, and therefore cannot yet make a definite announcement on the matter. Ideally, we’d release Nuclear Dawn as far and wide as we can, which is why the Playstation as a platform has not yet been ruled out.
4. There is a lot of talk about in-game resources. What are they going to be and how will they be gathered by players?
Players will have to find and capture resource points. Bigger, more important resource points will be placed in easily accessible, difficult to defend areas, so that players have to focus a portion of their forces to defending their livelihoods.
Resources are necessary to access upgrades, vehicles, all commander abilities, and even to spawn troops more efficiently. There will be motivation and several reward mechanisms to ensure that players understand the importance of resources, though the final, ultimate motivation is that if your enemies get there first, you’ve handed them tactical superiority, and the game.
5. Why the long delay in launching the game? From 2005 until now: that’s a lot of time working on a single project.
Nuclear dawn the mod has been in development since 2005, true. Nuclear Dawn the game has been in development for just under two years now, after the original modding team dissipated. In these two years, we’ve started from scratch with our own design, and basic class/atmospheric concepts from the old team.
Nuclear Dawn the game will take a little over two years to develop which, when you consider the scale of the game, the scope of the design and the limited time and resources to realize it, is not a long time at all.
6. Do you have any future projects to release new DLC's and if so, could you give us any hints of what they might be about?
We have definite plans to release two major, free to download update packs to Nuclear Dawn, after initial release. Our original concept called for game elements that we could simply not realistically deliver to commercial standards, with the time and resources at hand.
Those gameplay elements will be released as follow-ups of the initial game release, and include more playable levels, two major gameplay modes, AI bots for squad commanders and team commanders to control, commander-controlled war drones, and (of course) more weapons and gizmos.
7. What game modes will be made available in multiplayer co-op?
The full game mode that most accurately represents the Nuclear Dawn experience is called ‘Warfare’ and requires two fully player-staffed teams, each with a human commander, vying for resources on the various battlefields. This game mode gives players access to researching and building all technologies, structures and vehicles.
There will be three more gameplay modes, one of which will be a ‘simple’ team deathmatch, and two that we’re playing close to the chest, because they’re going to be THAT awesome.
8. Considering the game’s concept, do you expect novice gamers to have problems adapting to the game’s requirements? And while we’re on the subject, which of the two categories (FPS & RTS) will gamers find easier to adopt the game’s idea and controls?
Because of the extensive scope of the game, Nuclear Dawn players will have an equally easy time accessing either side of the gameplay, stretching their legs in it, and fully playing FPS or RTS without coming across serious limitations.
Pure arcade FPS players will enjoy a hard-hitting tactical shooter that relies heavily on cooperation and class-consciousness, as much as on twitch reflexes. The weapon upgrades, vehicles, unpacking structures and evolving battlefield will be added bonuses that deliver additional value to the gameplay session, but do not undermine its essential elements.
Pure RTS players who’ve seen at least one Starcraft or C&C game (hard to think of and RTS player who hasn’t) will be immediately at home with the waypoint/order system, the team selection and grouping, and the production/research interfaces. The only difference will be a host of fully autonomous soldiers who will not hesitate to tell you what they think of your bad strategic choices.
9. The Source engine has been on the market for over 4 years now, do you think it will become a problem any time soon? What do you have to say to those who might consider it outdated?
The Source engine has also received several substantial upgrades over said four years, which have tracked progress from Half Life 2, to Team Fortress 2 and then Left4Dead 2, all the way to the yet unreleased Portal 2.
Each milestone has seen a host of features and functions added to the pile, which has kept Source competitive throughout. Engines like Crysis may deliver dreamlike visuals, but that comes at a cost in material and end-user requirements that makes them unpractical to effectively leverage fully with our team size and budget.
Source still allows the creation of AAA-level visuals, at more accessible system requirements. Where it does perhaps lag behind are the over-the-top easy to activate light and bloom and image effects that are used to cover up bad art in so many ‘modern’ engines. Luckily, our team really shone through with the creation of visually impressive assets that don’t need to blind people with post-processing glare, in order to wow.
At the end of the day, it’s not the size of your shaders that matters, but how you use them, and in that regard, the Source engine still carries a host of features that may not be as shiny as the newest toys, but that are solid, proven, and definitely still worth investigating.
That said, the underlying infrastructure and tools are long due a kick in the buttocks and general overhaul, but we’ll let Valve address that one, in the coming months.
10. The futuristic post-apocalyptic story has been tackled by other major game developers as well, what's different about Nuclear Dawn in terms of originality and depth of character?
Nuclear Dawn story’s takes off straight from current events, technologies and developments, and attempts to forge an interesting storyline in a believable world. Bomb X did not just explode in universe Y, creating mutant race Zzz. One faction’s fanaticism clashed against another nation’s extremism, both of which you can handily observe in modern events, and they turned on each other with the most devastating weapons imaginable.
Nuclear Dawn’s setting is in the shelled remains of the great cities of the world, which means no strange glowing fields or creepy creatures; its people, regular everyday soldiers, engaged in combat for survival.
That realistic edge is extremely hard to maintain, but we’ve attempted (and hopefully succeeded, but players will have to tell us that) to walk that fine line between outrageous, doom-ray-wielding fun and ‘this makes sense’.
