Perimeter Impressions

At a recent meeting with Codemasters, we were given a demonstration of Perimeter, the upcoming strategy game from K-D Lab. The game is currently scheduled for release in April, and we were told that the version we saw was approximately 80 percent complete.

Perimeter is a futuristic real-time strategy game in which humans have been forced to leave their dying home planet in search of another. They leave the planet in gigantic floating cities known as "frames" in search of a new life, but somewhere along the line things go awry, and the humans split into three factions--each with different ideas about what their next move should be. In the single-player campaign, you control one of these factions--one consists of colonists who are determined to make a life for themselves on a new planet, while the other two have ideas of either returning home or of conquering other planets.

Perimeter has a number of features that distinguish it from other real-time strategy games, including terraforming, nanotechnology, and perimeter shields. The first of these that we got to see in action was terraforming, which can be used in a number of different ways. For instance, once you've flattened a tract of land, you can place various buildings and energy extraction cores there. Energy extraction cores, as their name suggests, are used to extract energy from beneath the planet's surface. Energy is the only form of resource or currency in Perimeter, and it's used to pay for new buildings and units, and, crucially, to power your base's perimeter shield.

To flatten the terrain in Perimeter, you simply "paint" it using the terraforming tool and then sit back and watch as your drones move in to do the hard work of shaping the land. When the land has been flattened, which doesn't take long, it takes on a gray, metallic appearance and is ready to be built on. The terrain isn't affected by weapons in any way, which seems a little odd, but given the importance of terrain, it's not hard to see why the developers made that decision. "Terraforming isn't just used to gather energy; it's also a great way to shape the terrain so that you gain a tactical advantage," explains Callum Godfrey, the game's producer at Codemasters UK. "Instead of just flattening large areas of land, you can use it to create trenches that will be more difficult for your enemies to cross, or you might decide to flatten a hill near your base so that the enemy has no high point to attack you from."

The perimeter shield you build to surround your base is essentially an impenetrable force field that looks a lot like a giant, electrically charged bubble. The shield looks very impressive visually, especially when swarms of wasplike aliens fly into it and disintegrate on impact--but it's not without its disadvantages. For starters, it uses up so much energy that, more likely than not, you simply won't have enough energy extraction cores in place to power it indefinitely. When activated, the shield also prevents any of your own units from leaving the base--unless they're capable of burrowing their way underneath it of course, in the same way that some enemies will when looking for a way in.

All units in Perimeter are created using nanotechnology and therefore are able to morph into different forms should you require them to do so--and provided you have researched the correct weapon technologies. Initially you'll be able to build only small soldier, officer, and technician units, but by researching new technologies and combining multiple units to form larger ones, you can achieve some impressive results. We were shown how about 10 different units can quickly be selected and instructed to morph into a single unit, and then we watched as they each turned into a ball of liquid metal, joined one another to form one big ball, and then morphed into a large unit armed with lasers.

Once you've researched enough technologies, you'll be able to morph units into different forms en route to a battle, so, for example, you could create a flying unit to get across a chasm, morph it into a subterranean unit to get underneath your enemy's perimeter shield, and then morph it into something with a very big gun before attacking the enemy base. Though we didn't get to see it in action, another type of unit that will be available in the final game is a "leech" unit, which is capable of sucking energy from an enemy's stockpile. We were told that this is expected to be an important tactic in the game and that it can also be achieved by constructing a line of energy extractors that intersects an enemy's line. Units with their own cloaking devices will also appear (and disappear) in the game, but since they can be killed only by perimeter shields, it seems reasonable to assume that they won't be very well armed, if at all.

In addition to enemy units in Perimeter, you'll have to concern yourself with natural disasters that could threaten your base when you least expect it. We watched several of these in action, and the earthquake effect, which causes terrain to crack open, was undoubtedly the most impressive disaster that we witnessed. We also witnessed attacks by giant burrowing worms and an odd-looking, gigantic face known as the "spirit of the planet," which apparently appears on the landscape and moves around at random. The local inhabitants of whichever planet you happen to be on can also cause you a lot of problems, although as Godfrey explained to us, they can also be turned to your advantage.

"Alien inhabitants are drawn to the presence of humans and will attack them on sight, which makes them one of the key obstacles in the game. If you want to play as the aliens, though, then technically speaking, you can spend time researching nanotechnology that's based on copying the aliens. So, you can basically have your units take the shape of organic life-forms. A lot of the aliens in the game are insectlike, so there are ants, wasps, and worms, [as well as] sharks, and dragons--there are all kinds of different aliens that can be replicated."

Whether you're playing one of Perimeter's 30 campaign missions or are playing on one of the specially designed maps for up to four players, you'll be able to assemble an army comprising some 500 units before engaging in battle, should you wish to do so. The game's graphics engine is said to be capable of rendering more than a million polygons per second, and, having seen the game in action, it's not hard to believe. The terrain, units, and buildings are all very detailed, and we were told that graphics chip manufacturer ATI plans to use the game to showcase its DirectX 9 technologies this year. Otherwise, Perimeter's new features seem like they could be much more than simple gimmicks, and the game itself should hopefully offer a unique gameplay experience when it's released in April.