Dev Blog Capstone: Noble Vengence

 Hello,

This is a post where I describe my experiences working on this 2022 Capstone project dev team at College of DuPage. It's been interesting working with a large group for a single project. It in generally seemed a bit hard for visions to stay consistent with each meet people having varying opinions to the decisions being made. I started with jazz music and I think most members didn't really like and just kept messing with those and now I just clip audio tracks in to somewhat loop-able segments for playback in-game.

I also made a decision to be outside my field, working with audio as my background ins in computer programming, but it doesn't help much as I don't use Unreal 4 which  was decided to be the platform for development. It also didn't help with immediacy of collaboration as the project is uploaded and then downloaded through the use of a google drive which was more inconvenient for agile iteration when people working on different things can't really iterate the project efficiently. Same for messing with assets as they are turned into some unreal format that is then used in the project so it's not exactly a way drag n drop to update assets.

At the same time I feel that I let the team down and didn't try more communication, but that was also due to our life schedules where we also had many who were not available except for a day or two in the week for feedback and updates. And didn't make progress in my opinion in the audio front with clipping audio from pre-made songs for our level soundtracks and lack of skill with audio tools that can make audio and not tweaking existing sounds. We still worked things out but I felt that we lacked productivity and teamwork. We still made communications over discord group voice chat and streams, but we got bogged down waiting on builds for be completed and having an easy to access master file/repository that wasn't alot of copy paste and downloading, were we all could easily access new assets and scripts easily.

Same could be said of myself for not bringing it up or speaking up, it may have made a difference early on.

Still it's been a great experience that helps highlight aspects of teamwork that is needed for a project to be developed in a more easier and productive manner to all team members. Next time make sure we got the tools and time for make the most efficient use of our development time bv cutting down on the waiting to get a build that we all can access and mess around with without different build possible not able to be integrated together easily

Trying to Carry on the Torch

 Petroglyph Games

Founded in April 1, 2003 by former programmers of Westwood Studios, Petroglyph Games aimed to retain their strategy game roots. They were part of the creation of the acclaimed Command and conquer series while operating as Westwood, while they were creating hits like the second entries of their Command and Conquer series's universes, they were shortly closed after making the experimental FPS-RTS hybrid Command and Conquer Renegade and their MMO Earth and Beyond not meeting EA's expectations.

From there they eventually set up their own offices in Las Vegas, Nevada on June 24, 2004 and on November 16, 2004 announced their development of the famed Star Wars: Empires at War published by Lucas Arts. Released in February 16, 2006 it's an RTS with 4X elements like system management and resource production along with standard RTS versions of those mechanics. Their next game is in cooperation with Microsoft and Sega Creating another RTS called Universe at War: Earth Assault around May 10, 2007 that offered cross-platform play between PC and the later released xbox360 console version.

For some time after that they made various smaller strategy titles that were more like board games and card games that were available in physical games and digital and tried the growing MOBA genre. They
didn't return to RTS genre till sin 2015 when they announced their own project Grey Goo, an RTS not so distant from Starcraft in elements like unit caps and unique faction usage. Released in January 23, 2015 the game seemd to do well with critics, but at the time RTS is not as popular as it was in their heyday as the MOBA genre was getting more attention. 

They attempted to enter that market with a Free-to-Play game called Victory Command that was like a tactical RTS with no base building and just unit tactics like in Ubisoft's World in conflict nbbut unis locked to whatever commander you had. It released in May 19, 2015 and was shutdown over a month later and re-launhced as Battle Battalions and was shut down in May 28, 2018.

8-bit Game Series

They then later self published their own RTS going really far back in their roots with 8-bit Armies released in April 22, 2016. An RTS that very much looked like the original first command and
conquer title created by Westwood but in 3D Voxels. It later got expansions/ standalone games  8-bit Hordes and 8-bit Invaders with fantasy and sci-fi factions respectfully added and had multiplayer compatibility between the other 8-bit RTS titles. It lacked alot of common features like campaign as they mostly only had skirmish modes and online play.

Forged Battalion

They tried again with a customize your own faction RTS game Forged Battalion in 2018 that also had
elements of Mobile game style upgrading and unlocking, but these games to many gamers didn't please them with simplified/barebones systems and/or no new innovations. It wasn't until they Announced their work on Conan Unconquered that people hopped they flexed their RTS muscles with what appeared to be a something akin to Age of Empires in basic designs of systems and interfaces.

Conan Exiles

But that hope was dashed as it turned into a a survival type of game with randomly generated maps and waved based survival against increasingly stronger waves.

When EA announced their remaster of first Command and Conquer and it's Red Alert counterpart they also announced their partnership with Petroglyph Games due to their knowledge of the game's original source code and connections to it music computer Frank Klepacki and other information/materials that were source to the original game's creation. They fixed up some bugs and added some quality of life changes that were developed in later titles, while trying to keep the game true to it original release.

Their currently known project they're working on is another attempt to the Command and Conquer RTS FPS Hybrid called Earth Breakers.

They even showed support of thier older titles, working with moders on Empires at War to officially update the game in 2021 (*Only the Steam Version) to better work with modders who keep the game alive today.

With their past works up its very apparent that their commitment to the RTS genre is strong as majority of their titles are some form of strategy games, especially the Real Time ones. It seems to be a tough genre with a lack of consistent new releases like other game genres, but it doesn't seem to stop Petroglyph from making more of these types of titles and from supporting titles that they and their community around them supports. While it's hard to know the inner workings of such a studio that hasn't seen interviews with popular gaming media, people can tell they got a passion to make things and hope they can do their best.

The Great Art of Getting Big and Having Questionable Priorities

     Electronic Arts, a Publicly traded company HQ'd om Redwood City, California. Founded in 1982 the company is a current day giant in the gaming industry. They have published many great series such as Command and Conquer, Battlefield, Mass Effect, Crysis, Dead Space, and many more. They also created the Frostbite Engine from their development of the Battlefield games starting from the first Bad Company title, which offered great graphics leaps when truly showcased like it's Battlefield 3 teases with people on the debate of in-game graphics and reality.

However they are also a clear identity of many modern day gaming issues. One such is contributing to the current Loot Box problems of the morally grey micro transaction rabbit hole. Their current licensed sports titles have this system of spending virtual currency to earn randomly rolled virtual trading cards that affect gameplay with people who got better cards beat those who do not. Looped in there is also the micro transactions which are there to entice players to buy packs with paid virtual currency bought by real life currency as playing games normally will not offer virtual currency fast enough to be bearable, depending on the gamer.

Such problems were brought into public eyes with their implementation of it in Star Wars Battlefront 2 beta where players character stats were based on ability card's levels earned by upgrading a ability card with duplicates of itself where it broke game balance and players who accelerated their progress by getting card packs with money beat those without spending a dime and neglecting skillful play.

Also it sparked more fires in the issue wither their responses in the UK court cases of Lootboxes with their representative identifying them as "surprise mechanics", and a community reply about cosmetics of "a sense of pride and accomplishment" with the way it was implemented in the Battlefront 2 beta.

    EA was also sometimes called Ucronic Arts as a play on the Transformers Unicron character. There earned this name as they absorbed obtained studios they purchase or make and then disassembled the original developers to not re-establish their owned properties, unless they were guaranteed hits, because of big money. Prime example is the Command and Conquer series where they purchased Westwood studios who developed the title after publishing a few of them. After their Red Alert 2 entry to the series EA broke up the studio shuffled members around and Westwood was no more. 

Same could be said about Dead Space series where it started from an EA studio that rebranded into Visceral games which was dissovled after their 3rd entry into the series that was a departure from the series norm that didn't go well with fans, and the single player micro-transactions. Visceral games would later turn into a support studio that then just disappeared from gaming. 

And again Bioware, where they purchased them and then developed Mass Effect series and then broke then EA declared that all their games would utilize their in-house Frostbite engine to unify all their studio's technologies. This move contributed to their problems with games in development at the time Dragon Age Inquisition, Mass Effect Andromeda, and Anthem. These games had launch issues and incompatibility with their own inhouse tools due to the different technology that  powered the engine and its lack of support from the engine developers based in reports by notable game journalist Jason Schreier.

    It's a big company that had a great pedigree but even now there is weird questionable things going on, such as its re-use of assets in their annual sports titles with the removal of game mechanics to only re-release them in future titles and their current locking of graphics features of their FIFA 22 pc release being only last gen and only Xbox Series and PS5 getting the upgraded graphics and animation systems. They used to be well loved for the games they made, but now impressions are on not developing proper games and making systems that encourage spending of money for some sort of exclusive or accelerated unlock in multiplayer games. While they have made attempts to make a better public image of themselves to average gamers, their behaviors contrast against their once in a while good thing.