Star Wars: Empire at War Designer Diary #5 - The History of Empire at War

One of the more anticipated strategy games of the year arrives in stores this week in the form of Star Wars: Empire at War. Set prior to the events of Episode IV, Empire at War will let you take command of the armies and navies of either the Galactic Empire or the Rebel Alliance as you attempt to conquer or liberate the galaxy. There's a lot of buzz around Empire at War, thanks in large part to last month's demo, which showed off the game's innovative gameplay. Instead of sticking to the tried-and-true real-time strategy formula of gathering resources, building a huge base, and then constructing a large army, Empire at War focuses more on tactical space and land battles tied together by a galactic campaign. With the game just days away from hitting shelves, Michael Legg, the president and lead programmer of developer Petroglyph, looks back on the project.

A rebel fleet swaps fire with Imperial Star Destroyers.

The History of Empire at War

With the development of Star Wars: Empire at War, the last two-plus years have been a wild and fun thrill ride of nonstop challenges and intense teamwork for both Petroglyph and LucasArts. It's been a labor of hard work and dedication for both companies. Empire at War is now officially "gold mastered" in all of its languages and will be arriving February 16 in the hands of gamers around the world.

A high bar was set for this game from the beginning: Create an all-new Star Wars real-time strategy experience for the PC with a brand-new cutting-edge game engine. Empire at War had to feature both amazing tactical real-time space and planetary surface battles, which then needed to be elegantly integrated with a strategic galactic map that represented the Star Wars planetary systems from the movies and lore. It all had to be created from scratch, and it had to be done in roughly two years. There was going to be a ton of work to do. In October 2003, we made the jump to light speed and development was under way.

Both companies agreed that the game could not be a formulaic, me-too real-time strategy game that was just "more of the same" gameplay. It had to take a creative risk to be innovative while still being accessible, fun, and deep with strategy. It would take place in the classic Star Wars universe, just before Episode IV. We agreed upon three major features for the gameplay to advance the real-time strategy genre.

The first is the idea that persistence in a "living universe" would allow our infantry, vehicles, structures, land bases, star bases, fighters, and star ships to live on after surviving battles. Retreating from a battle became a viable tactic, as units could escape and regroup. Losing a major (and expensive) unit in battle would actually mean paying a price. Every unit that was produced would now have lasting value.

The second big feature is the idea that tactical offensive and defensive "hard points" on large units (such as the Star Destroyer) would provide more tactical depth to combat, making these units a sum of their parts. Is it better to target the hyperspace engines, shield generator, fighter bay, or a bank of weapons? Large capital ships and orbital star bases would become not just large art models with a single health bar, but rather formidable forces with multiple strengths and potential weaknesses to strategically attack and defend.

And the third feature is the idea that the strategic galactic map would be where income is generated from occupied planets, bases are established, vehicles and ships are constructed, infantry are trained, and forces are mobilized. This map mode would be the glue to smoothly bond tactical space and land battles together, while making persistence truly matter. Units travel between the planets and can be stationed on the ground or in orbit. And it would all run in real time rather than being traditionally turn-based as with other strategy games.

To round out the design, the massive scale and scope of the game would be incredible. We would give the ability to amass units from small infantry platoons, ground vehicles, speeders, assault vehicles (AT-ATs), and land structures up to starfighter squadrons, corvettes, frigates, capital ships, and multiple levels of star bases. All battles would occur on or above planets. We would even be able construct the Death Star, which could travel across the galactic map and demolish entire planets into asteroid fields. Empire at War was going to be a game of seriously epic proportions.

Pop quiz: Which AT-AT has the right-of-way in this situation?

Through the preproduction process, we wrote the bulk of our core technology and tools from scratch. We began staffing up on the programming team so that we would reach our technical design review (TDR) goal and begin production in the spring of 2004. We originally evaluated two third-party graphic-rendering engines. Though architected very well, neither gave us the specific rendering power that was required for the game. To satisfy our high requirements, we wrote our own proprietary Alamo graphics engine. When implemented, Alamo quickly proved to look stunning and perform solidly. The new graphics engine would allow Empire at War to play well and look good on lower-end systems, while also looking amazing with a full DirectX 9 feature set on high-end systems. When the technical demo was presented for TDR, there were stormtroopers, AT-ATs, and AT-STs assaulting a rebel base on Tatooine. It was mind-blowing to see walking AT-ATs on the sands of that famous desert planet. It all looked incredible!