---

Mobile Forces

---

 

Frag-girlie recently had the opportunity to chat with Colin Macdonald from the Mobile Forces Team, an upcoming FPS from Rage.

 

First tell me a little about yourself and what your responsibility is on the Mobile Forces development team?

CM:  My name’s Colin Macdonald, I’m 27, and am a producer at the Rage Scotland studio, which essentially means acting as messenger between management and the rest of the team. Once in a blue moon I get to steal the glory for something, but more often than not, I get ‘shot’ from one side or the other for delivering bad news…


Not much has been published about Mobile Forces. Can you give me a brief description and run through of the game?

CM:  Sure. Essentially it boils down to being a first person shooter with vehicles. And we’re not talking about the feeble attempts made so far to incorporate vehicles into this genre. Oh no. We’re talking wheelspinning away, skidding round corners, hitting ramps and jumping over other players, and all topped off with a little bit of jumping out whilst the vehicle is still moving, sending vehicles careering into some very confused opposition.

We’re all big Counterstrike fans here, and wanted to do something that would appeal to the same sorts of people. But we also recognize that Counterstrike is quite hardcore – it’s very punishing for people new to the FPS scene – so we’ve tried to hit the happy medium between having realistic weapons, settings and vehicles, but still maintain the focus on good solid fun when it comes to gameplay.


I noticed in the press release that Mobile Forces is a “working title,” do you think you’ll stay with this name, or has a new one already been chosen?

CM:  We’re honestly not sure! It was the name the team came up with, which normally means it has to change – hence the comment on the press release. However, this time it just seems to have stuck - it does sum up the game beautifully, but it comes down to how well it works in different countries etc, so we’ll have to wait for a decision.

What are some of the game’s objectives?

CM: It varies as you go through the game – we’ve got eight different game types in there, and you go through the different levels tackling whichever game types you prefer, or the ones that you’re best at.

One gametype that seems to grab everyone’s attention is Trailer Capture – here you have to race to take control of the bomb-laiden trailer stranded somewhere on the level, then using a vehicle, tow it into an enemy base and detonate it. All the while, the enemy aren’t exactly standing around letting you do this, so you’ve certainly got your hands full.


What are the primary weapons and/or vehicles? Which weapon/vehicle do you feel is the best?

CM:  The secret with weapons in games in balance. If you were the accountant type, you’d have a series of attributes weapons can have – power, range, accuracy, reload rate, amount of ammo, availability, etc - and although each weapon would score differently in each attribute, their totals should be the same. Otherwise you have an unbalanced game.

Having said that, in the network games of Mobile Forces we’re playing at the moment I have two weapons that I find myself going for repeatedly – the machine gun, and the laser trip bombs. The machine gun is a nice middle-of-the-road weapon, it’s got decent range and can rattle off quite a few bullets when you don’t have the time (or skill in my case!) to aim perfectly. With it you’ve got the choice of rapid-fire, but low accuracy, or lower firing rate, but higher accuracy. So it suits attacking as well as defending.

The Laser Trip Bombs are just such a laugh - I think I’ve killed myself with them as often as anyone else! Having the choice of either leaving them strategically placed Duke style, or dropping them on popular routes to be proximity activated means they’re pretty flexible. A nice tactic I’ve seen employed in the office is setting up a series of trip bombs, but making them very obvious – not with the intention of killing anyone with them, but if someone drives round in a vehicle, they have to come out on foot in order to get rid of the trip bombs – making them perfect sniper targets!


What tools did you use to create such beautiful detail?

CM:  Mobile Forces is based on Unreal technology, so a lot of the level design has been done in a heavily modified version of UnrealEd. For the finer detail on vehicles, terrain, and some very intricate parts of the levels, we use 3D Studio Max.

From where did you get your influence for this game?

CM: Everywhere! The most obvious influences would be Counterstrike, Unreal Tournament and Codename Eagle. But when you’re going through the design phase, you end up making references to hundreds of different things – many of them not First Person games at all.

Films also always make excellent reference material – the ones I can remember having to buy “for research purposes” include the Die Hard’s, the Mad Max’s, Leon, Godzilla and Dirty Harry.

It’s also amazing what you can find in the local area if you just look hard enough, so there’s been people from here out and about with digital cameras just getting as much relevant reference material as possible.


Did you run into any limitations with the Unreal Engine that caused you to modify or leave out features you had hoped to include?

CM:  It doesn’t seem to matter what engine you use, there’s always limitations that have to be worked around. Using Unreal gave us a great head start over writing a game from scratch, but it does mean you tend to have to do things in particular ways. It’s no secret Epic are currently working on the Warfare engine, and we’ve been making a conscious effort to take as many of the cool features as possible from this, but because our deadlines are pretty aggressive, we couldn’t commit fully to Warfare, so it’s more of a hybrid engine we’re using – the best of both worlds!


Are there any real-world locations or scenarios depicted in this game?

CM:  All the settings in Mobile Forces are at least based in reality, so for example, you can race vehicles down multi-story carparks, then do battle in the shopping mall at the bottom.

There are a couple of levels where particular geographical places were the main influence, but we’ve steered away from merely replicating these in game to prevent restricting gameplay by any perception of what something should look like.

How much of a realism factor are you aiming for with Mobile Forces?

CM:  Fairly realistic – early on we decided to shy away from anything too historical, or futuristic, but the key word for games is believability. If people don’t believe what they’re playing (settings/ vehicles/characters/weapons etc), then even the most realistic game in the world is going to be a turn off. I think we’ve got a good balance between representing the real-world, but still having enough artistic license to keep the focus on the fun and playability.


How long has this game been in development? Will you be releasing a demo?

CM:  The project’s been through a few twists and turns (as every game seems to!), but work actually began on Mobile Forces at the beginning of 2001.

We’d certainly hope to be releasing a demo, but at the moment we’re just concentrating on getting all the features in, and then we’ll sit down with the publishing people and discuss what sort of demo would be best to show off the game. But assuming we do release one, I’m afraid I can’t give you any indication of time scale.


What kind of system do you recommend to enjoy all that Mobile Forces has to offer?

CM:  The minimum spec machine is a P450, but we’d recommend having a P600 with a 32Mb graphics card.

What is going to make Mobile Forces stand out and be different from other first person shooters already on the market?

CM:  Great vehicles. Great physics. Great weapons. Great levels. And most importantly, great fun!


Is there anything else you can tell me about Mobile Forces? When will it be out and about what percent complete it is?

CM:  We don’t have a precise release date for it at the moment, but it’s penciled in to be released late April 2002.

At the moment we’re around two thirds complete – although now we’ve done most of the behind the scenes work, we get to see the game coming together at a tremendous rate – which is always the best part!


What do you think the state is of the gaming industry?

CM:  Wow – nice specific question there…!

As an ‘industry’, games are going through a bit of a tough time at the moment what with the technology stocks collapsing last year, and the transitions to the next generation of consoles.

But in terms of just the games that are coming out, things just seem to be on the up and up. Particularly with FPS’s, there was a lot of prediction that the genre was stale and it’d start dying off, but it seems just the opposite is happening! And similarly with PCs, everyone expected to only be playing games on consoles by now – but it looks like the First Person Shooter, along with Real Time Strategy games have kept the PC as a viable alternative to dedicated consoles.


Thank you for taking the time to do this interview with me today. I look forward to the release of this game.

CM:  It’s been a pleasure – so are we!

 

   MAIN