Rise & Fall: Civilizations at War Q&A - Picking Up the Pieces After a Developer Shuts Down

When Rise & Fall: Civilizations at War arrives in stores this summer, it will have overcome some notable obstacles, the biggest being the fact that developer Stainless Steel Studios (which also made the original Empire Earth and Empires: Dawn of the Modern World) shut down in the middle of development. Undeterred, publisher Midway is pushing ahead. The company is completing the project, which is a real-time strategy game set in the ancient world. You'll command armies like those seen in the movie Troy, but you'll also be able to jump right into the middle of the combat thanks to the game's hero command mode, which gives you direct control of the notable heroes in the game, such as Achilles. To find out more, we caught up with Mark Caldwell, executive producer for the game.

GameSpot: Okay, first, what's the status of Rise & Fall? We know that Stainless Steel, the original developer, shut down earlier this year, and that the game was incomplete at that point. Was that an unexpected shock?

Mark Caldwell: Absolutely. One day we're talking about the game and the next we hear they shut down. Currently, the game is working great. We're approaching beta and finalizing the demo.

GS: Who's working on the game? And how complete was the game after Stainless Steel shut down? We've heard that most of the pieces were in place, but a lot of it still needed testing and polishing at that point.

MC: Stainless Steel had reached alpha but not beta before shutting down. We are finishing the development in San Diego. We never received any current assets before Stainless Steel shut down, so we had to rely of an archive of code and data to try and piece together the current version. Mostly we were able to re-create an alpha version of the game, but we did lose a lot in the transition. We have brought the game back to the state before the developer shut down and are currently fixing some bugs, fine-tuning some levels, finalizing the demo, and focusing on multiplayer.

GS: What sort of challenges did you encounter by suddenly switching development teams midway through development? Did you have to decipher some of the code? Did you have to reinvent or rebuild any features?

MC: The biggest challenge was finding data and code that would work together. Older code and newer data never match, and we've had to re-create a lot of data to get the game back to playable/modifiable. We still do not have all of the code and data, so changes are difficult, but not impossible. Once we were able to compile the game, we started looking into how it worked and how we could finish it. Deciphering it really didn't take that long, but it always takes some time.

GS: Are many of the key features of Rise & Fall intact? For example, hero command will let you switch from regular real-time strategy gameplay and take direct control of one of the game's hero units so it plays like an action game. Did you have to chop any features?

MC: Since we had reached alpha before Stainless Steel shut down, all of the features are intact. Most of what we were doing between alpha and beta was fixing bugs, play balance, multiplayer bugs, path finding, bugs, and more bugs.

GS: Rise & Fall has a beautiful graphics engine, but have you been able to optimize it and make it run well? What sort of minimum system requirements are you looking at for the game?

MC: This is and was our key focus before the developer shut down. We are definitely optimizing the game and trying to make it run as well as possible on the widest hardware. We are working with ATI, Nvidia, Intel, and AMD to support as many machines and video cards as possible, with a minimum of a GeForce 3 or ATI Radeon 8500 and a 1.5GHz CPU. Currently we are running it on a 1.6GHz laptop and it runs great. (Of course we had to turn down some options, but it's definitely playable.)

GS: How's multiplayer turning out? We imagine that the traditional deathmatch or skirmish modes are in Rise & Fall, but are there any cool modes that are unique to the game? There have been few details about multiplayer to date.

MC: Sorry, we're going keep you in the dark on this one. As you can imagine, we are supporting all the traditional modes and are working on new ones, but with time as our limiting factor, we're not sure how many will actually ship, so I'd rather not promise anything at this time.

GS: Does hero command work in multiplayer? Will this be a cool way to get into the game, but at the cost of losing perspective of the larger battle?

MC: Using your hero is a key way to turn the tide and win battles against greater odds. Your hero is limited by stamina, so as long as you have stamina you can pop in and out of hero mode as often as you like. I typically use the standard real-time strategy mode to control all units, even my hero. Then as I approach a battle, I jump into hero mode and I can control my hero and take charge of my troops all at the same time. And yes, the viewpoint is limited to first-person, so keep an eye out for those flanking attacks.

GS: Finally, could you relate some of the cool moments that you've had in the game thus far? What are some of the great things that you can do in Rise & Fall?

MC: Mostly I like hero mode and naval combat. One time (not in band camp) I was playing against my friend and he was bombarding me with his boats and basically took out my whole base, but I had another. As he docked, I switched to hero mode and managed to run through his troops, capture his boat, debark, and bombard him with his own boat. That was cool. I eventually won that game, which I had all but given up on.

As for great things? Hero mode, naval combat, pushing over trees with elephants, zooming in with my bow (in hero mode) and picking off dudes in a tower, using my boat to ram another boat and watching it sink, taking over and controlling enemy boats, and hero mode, hero mode, hero mode.

GS: Noted. Thank you, Mark.