Dark Reign

January 31, 1997

Greetings from Australia. I'm here this week with the Technical Director and Art Director of Dark Reign to spend some time with our development partners in Brisbane. The company we are working with, Australis, is busy getting the final features into the game before we begin our first phase of testing. Australis was the company that first brought this amazing engine to us back in September. They have some of the most talented programmers and artists I've seen and it has been a pleasure to work with them. I was also pleased to see that they are all hard-core gamers. When the sun goes down the network is fired up. We had several games going last night and I was very happy to see that Dark Reign was one of them. The game has taken a huge leap forward over the last month and is really fun to play. There's nothing like camouflaging your scout as a tree and sneaking him into your enemy's base or tunneling a few Triple Rail Hover Tanks under his base to take out his unprotected buildings. We've had some fierce battles and there are still several really cool features that we haven't put in yet.

As they do every Friday, Australis is compiling the latest build to send off to the States. Today's build is full of some really cool features including buildings that can be upgraded, a new system for network play which will help speed up play over the Internet, and a new system for displaying units in the interface. I like our new way of displaying units the most. We now display all of the units that can be built during a mission whether or not you have the buildings to build them. If you don't have the buildings necessary to build a particular unit you can click on that unit and it will tell you which buildings you are missing. This will help in those tight situations when you are wondering why you can't build a certain unit.

Back in the States, the designers have just completed the design for training missions. We've decided to include training missions to help players get up to speed quickly. There are two levels of training missions: a beginner level for people who have never played this kind of game before, and an advanced level for players who just want to learn how to use some of our advanced features (such as waypoints or user-definable AI). Of course, if you don't want the training missions you don't have to play them and you can go right into the game. But our design team has come up with some awesome and very creative missions. They are very different from what you will find in other games. I don't want to give away too much so you'll just have to wait and see them for yourself.

I wanted to touch on AI a bit. I have so much to say about our AI that I will probably spread it over the next few reports but let me give you a taste for what we are doing. Ian Davis, our AI programmer, is down working with programming team here in Brisbane. Ian actually created many of our AI elements in a simple demo game that he wrote and they are now incorporating this into Dark Reign. I don't want to brag too much but our AI is going to blow you away. Even at this preliminary state it is beating several of our designers. And not by just giving the AI more units, as many other games do, but by playing smart! The AI picks its battles very carefully. If it thinks it can take you, it will go after you. If it detects that you are kicking its butt, then it will retreat and regroup. It is really amazing to see. It's so nice to see an AI that doesn't just resort to sending wave after wave of the exact same units at you. Right now they are working on having the AI build up its own base. Not only will it do this but it will also build the appropriate buildings for the attack it feels will work best against the way you are playing. Our goal is to make the AI feel act like a human player would and we are well on our way to achieving that.

That's it for this week. Time for me to get back to work. Next week I'll tell you more about my adventures in Australia and I'll also discuss our Construction Kit. The Construction Kit is almost a game in itself as it allows you to do so much. Not only are you going to be able to create maps easily but you will also be able to create missions. But I'll save that for next week.

In the meantime, if you have any questions please email me at darkreign@activision.com or at dkreign@aol.com. While I'm in Australia I won't be able to answer my mail but I'll do my best to get back to everyone when I return to the U.S. We'll see you back here next week.