Posted: 01-06-05 In: Reviews By: Munro2 |



Life on Mars?

Not for long, by the looks of things. We take a look at one of the most promising and heavyweight Half-Life 2 mods as I meet with the leader of Warpig Studios, John Beck, over a luncheon of liquefied space-food.

Mars is a planet traditionally associated with war. Boiling down an angry red from above us, it has been a god of warfare; the home of murderous tripods; the site of a horrific demon invasion; perhaps soon the focus of the all-singing, all-dancing, Bush-sponsored space race II. But now the valleys and plains of the red planet will vibrate with the drums of a new war, a new revolution.

Yes, it's the year 2200, and the scramble for Mars is over. Corporations have colonised the virgin hills, vast cities and societies growing from the humble origins of the pioneer outposts. Mars is big and old enough to have a cultural identity in its own right, yet it still plays second fiddle to what is seen as an oppressive and traditionalist Earth- highly taxed and milked for resources, the Martian populace begins to rally under a common flag.

On January 1st 2200, the Martian Body Politik declares its independence from Earth.

War between the worlds

This is Badge of Blood: one of the most ambitious total conversions for Half-Life 2- and beyond. Make no mistake: this is not some two-bit concept with nothing but unskinned renders to show. We've docked at the Deimos Orbital Facility to grill John Beck, the man in charge of Warpig Studios, and get him to show us his vision. "As time passes", he says, "technology may advance, cultures will evolve, and society will change; but the nature of war and politics will not, and it's exactly that peculiar aspect of humanity what we will try to explore through the telling of our tale".

Note the emphasis on story. Badge of Blood will see players becoming part of an epic narrative spun between the two worlds with immersive maps and multiplayer 'campaigns'. "The basic idea is for the player to feel that, when he plays the game, he's a part of something that is much bigger than just himself and the map". This is a key point of BoB- that epic storyline and detailed universe won't just be background, but an integral part of the multiplayer game. It's often a problem that multiplayer is divorced from the backdrop to such an extent that it becomes really more of a 'insert universe here fantasy match-up' rather than a plausible situation. But with Blood, Beck's team intends to change this. "It's like reading a good book, or watching a good movie", says John. "What makes those stories good is the fact that you're drawn in and care about what's going on. Video gaming is another medium of story telling".

What's interesting is that it completely eschews traditional 'high sci-fi' values: there are no magical laser guns or Einstein-baffling warp drives here. "There is a distinct lack of games out there that treat science fiction with the kind of genuine seriousness or plausibility that a lot of folks might like to see", says John. Hence the BoB universe, where everything is based on sound scientific principles and real concepts being developed- right down to the smallest detail. The team draws inspiration from many places: not just games, but the political philosophy of Thomas Hobbes and John Stewart Mill (apparently); historical precedent in global politics and current events; and contemporary games like Operation Flashpoint, Ghost Recon, and FASA's Battletech universe- the setting of the Mechwarrior games. "I have a great appreciation for the power of a game world's history and lore", says Beck. "[FASA] treated their material with a certain matter-of-factness that made it concrete and bigger than life. We hope to someday bring that same feeling to our own community of gamers, giving them a world that they can invest their imagination, and care about what happens in it".

So: the game. Opposing forces will squabble over a variety of Mars and Earth-based maps: from rocky Martian exteriors whistling with alien winds, through colonial outposts and dome-city interiors, to an Earth-orbit space elevator facility. The gameplay will be objective-based, and generally quite tactical and realistic with a heavy focus on teamplay. But the experience, says Beck, will vary widely depending on the role you take: an assault trooper will find the game far more fast-paced and action-orientated than, say, a sniper sitting on a hill.

"We will have smaller scale tactical engagements between units of troops, obviously. But we also endeavour to include larger scale battles that will make use of vehicles, VTOLs, artillery, and other military equipment. The nature of a map will depend entirely on the campaign". The team are aiming for mappers to decide the objectives, gametype, and scale of a map. "One map could be a DoD style attrition -fest, with two sides competing for their respective objective points", Beck enthuses. "Another map could be one side, with limited troops, having to hold a point for x amount of time while the other side, with unlimited reinforcements, must take it. Generally, the intent is to present map makers with a set of tools that will allow them to make their own objectives for a given map, to prevent gameplay from become stale and boring".

Many such objectives will be combined in one game: assault the outpost, take down the support guns, defend for as long as possible while the enemy counterattacks, escape to the extraction point. There'll be fraught infantry encounters and massive open-ground battlefields with multiple vehicles and objective points in maps up to 8 square kilometres. The plan is that many, many scenarios will be incorporated into longer 'campaigns' that will span several hours on one server, where the outcome of one battle will affect the next. You might leave to gobble down a hasty dinner and return to find the war's still going. Like the rest of Blood, the maps themselves are being treated with the utmost accuracy, precision and seriousness: the team are using data from NASA's Mars Orbital Laser Altimeter project to generate height maps and terrain displacements. Just think about that for a second. An amateur mod team is using laser maps from a satellite whizzing around Mars at incredible speeds. What a world we live in.

In the red corner...

"The Global Peace Authority in our storyline is the descendent of NATO, and serves as the peacekeeping arm of the Concordat, a 'league of nations' that comes about after the U.N. collapses under the weight of several global catastrophes", John tells me. Their ideology can be summed up in the Arthurian ideal of 'Might Makes Right' - that it is the responsibility, the obligation, of the powerful to enforce justice, peace, and order. "They have taken upon themselves the mantle of global peacekeeper, and use their collective wealth and military power to squash hot spots around the globe before they escalate out of control. The GPA and the Concordat are essentially a descendant of the U.N., but with teeth and a mandate to use them".

On the battlefield, they come across as a rugged and dependable force. Their equipment isn't fancy or high-tech, but it gets the job done. Their style is robust, reliable, and spartan. Players can expect to be fielding the FA-112 flechette rifle, the Wz78 – a tiny buzzsaw of a sub-machinegun- and the fearsome death-spray that is the ML-114 light machinegun.

The Martian Defence Force, on the other hand are not a traditionalist conformist government- they are a 'corporate republic', if you will- "hundreds of colonies of varying size and influence that come together to form a confederation of city states".

Beck elaborates. "Most of the Martian colonies were founded around a collection of core industries that have come together in several joint ventures. So imagine a Telecommunications Company, an Aeronautical Engineering Firm, and a Broadcasting network working in unison to form a single colony". Furthermore, the MDF, like other institutions on Mars, is the product of a consumer driven society- and as the corporations vie for weapons contracts they'll develop more high-tech, flashy equipment that comes with unique functionality- like the Gauss Rifle, a two-metre long railgun/sniper rifle so heavy it can only be used in the low-grav environment of Mars. Unfortunately, this advanced and untested technology comes at a price: MDF equipment is potentially less reliable in the field, and more likely to malfunction in a pinch.

The MDF uses a system the team have dubbed CombatNT - similar to the US Land Warrior program. With it, infantry elements can co-ordinate organised tactics to fox the enemy. The AB65 'Radix' combat support weapon (read porta-mortar), for example, will allow players to act as mobile artillery- one will designate a target with a laser pointer, and a 'fire here' icon will appear on his teammate's heads up display. Cooperative gameplay mechanisms like this are intended to promote organised teamplay. "We intend to implement features that will encourage players to operate in cohesive groups, or 'teams'. Those who are team players will gain experience more rapidly than lone wolves, and therefore improve in ability during a campaign more rapidly".

Wait a second. 'Experience'? Oh yes. "Players will be able to create static characters that can gain experience through the course of a campaign. With that experience, they can purchase skills and advantages that will give them a little bit of an edge in certain game roles". The system, tying in with a planned pen-and-paper role-playing game (!), will add an element of persistence to game campaigns. Make no mistake, though: this is not an MMO. It's unlikely that characters will be completely persistent and those with a wealth of experience points and extra skills won't necessarily be able to dominate their less-endowed underlings. In the manner of Enemy Territory, the RPG element will be fast-paced and easily accessible, while still maintaining complexity enough to make it interesting.

Then there's the matter of transportation. A myriad of vehicles are planned, all of them feasible and realistic. At first, it may only be APCs and Infantry Fighting Vehicles- designed to transport and directly support combat teams. But the team is planning VTOL gunships, jeeps and more besides. "You can operate and fight in a vehicle as a single player if you want to, and be very effective at it", Beck told us. "Or you have the option of multi-crewing the vehicle with other players. "

On smaller maps less than half a kilometre long, vehicles won't be essential if they even appear at all. But on an 8-kilometre Mars exterior map, you're not going anywhere without co-operation with drivers and pilots: essential for getting from point A to B, let alone doing anything effective.
"Some maps might even be just armoured engagements", says Beck, grinning wickedly.

Why we fight

At this point there's really only one piece of ground we haven't covered: that of the single player game. With such an involving backstory, such a complex universe, it would have been perhaps a waste of a good setting not to include it. But when quizzed, Beck is keen to stress that the story will be integral to both single and multi-player.

"The single player game will tell the story of one person's journey through what is a complex, swirling, and often frustrating set of circumstances that lead up to the war, and his or her place in it". Beyond that, he could say no more: SP will be implemented only when MP is up to scratch, and that will keep the team occupied for a long while yet.

Warpig Studios are ambitious- perhaps fatally so. In due course they hope the mod may in fact evolve to join the new wave of Steam-based retail titles. Beck is enthusiastic about the possibilities of Steam as a platform for indie developers. "Despite some of the early headaches, I think Steam is without a doubt one of the most innovative and cool things to come out of the gaming industry in a long, long time; particularly the unprecedented support it gives to the modding community". Beck believes that Steam might well be The Future Of Gaming- allowing amateur game developers to distribute their goods through an official channel that every potential player is going to have access to. "I mean, what Valve is doing is creating a whole new strata of game developers. Small dev teams are being the given the empowerment to pursue entrepreneurial ventures without having to have the immense resources required to found a traditional studio, hire talent, find a publisher, put boxes on the shelf, so on and so forth", says Beck, clearly excited at the possibilities of a new front of indie developers rising from the mod scene. "Do you think we'll see other studios like Epic Games doing something similar in the future?" he asks. "I think they'd be fools not to".

Warpig are planning to upgrade to retail and join this new wave when the time is right. "Our intent is to bring the game to a level of quality that will allow us to sell the mod via Steam when the time comes. But only after a nice long beta test that will assure that we're putting out something worth buying".

And when will that be, we ask? "Holy cow", Beck deadpans. "Well, we're still building our alpha, but we are having fun touring maps, using the new jump functionality, and breaking Fredrik1's prone code". Beck relates in full the nature of the challenge: gutting the HL2 weapons code and restarting from scratch for full-on ballistic realism, coding the character experience system, 'shrinking' the players and entities to allow the construction of very large-seeming maps with much smaller actual sizes. "We have several layers of our own inheritance hierarchy that is entirely our own, using ballistic weapons that read custom tags from our weapon script files...it's rolling along".

But when? "The first public beta will probably arrive..". John pauses melodramatically. "When it's ready. I absolutely cannot speculate on that right now". Spoilsport.

Recent developments have cast an uncertain light on the mod's future. "We've been meeting with the CEO of a major game company here in North Carolina and discussing the prospect of a partnership in developing and publishing Badge of Blood as a retail release, which is fantastic. However, there has been some pressure there to leave the Source engine and move to Unreal". If this happens, there will hopefully still be a steam release.

But there's more. "At the same time", Beck tells us, "we've also been approached by two rather big-time venture capitalists who are interested in funding our project. Now, we could just do that, and develop on whatever engine we damned well feel like. But having the previously mentioned game company as a partner would be a huge windfall from us as a resource. So we've spent the past few months trying to work out business plans for different scenarios, getting legal advice, and so on". Right now, the team is working on a non-public demo to use as a proof-of-concept, and hoping they will be able to distribute Blood over steam.

We left him then, for it was at that point the raid sirens sounded all non-essential personnel were ordered to evacuate the station. But we left with every confidence in Warpig Studios. They were confident, competent, inspired and professional. Their vision is an exciting one: full-scale objective-based vehicle-enabled space war - teamplay, tactics, open warfare, all wrapped up in a sweeping storyline and rendered with military precision and scientific detail. Forgive me hyperbole- I admit I'm rather prone to it. But the fact is that Badge of Blood looks good. Damn good.

Then again, both Garry of Garrysmod fame and Valve themselves have heavily criticised the 'big game stuido' approach to mod development. Many claim it is far better to start with almost nothing and build on it, never making a big thing of your mod until you have a playable version. But then, Badge of Blood seems far closer to a full standalone title than to a modification.

If the last two hundred years of human history have shown us anything, it's this: while war is hell, it does make for some very good entertainment, and especially good videogames. Blood aims to integrate multiplayer with a strong storyline in a way rarely seen before in games, and to present a plausible future in a way most mods- or, often, full games - don't bother with. Let's hope it lives up to its promises.