Ghost Recon Retreat
ISLAND THUNDER INTERVIEW
October 4, 2002
The excitement around Island Thunder's release last week has been more than
justified as fans discover the substantial improvements this new mission pack adds to the
Ghost Recon experience. Many agree that the Island Thunder development team at
Red Storm has delivered more than what is expected from a standard expansion pack.
Our interview questions were submitted just before Island Thunder shipped. Our hope was
to get a glimpse behind some of the creative and technical aspects of Island Thunder,
and also how it fits into the overall development of the Ghost Recon franchise.
A big thanks goes out to the following dev team members who kindly took the time to
answer our questions:
Richard Dansky (Lead Designer)
David Hamm (Lead Engineer)
Greg Stelmack (Software Engineer)
Jeff Wesevich (Software Engineer)
Click on the image for a larger version
CREATIVE ASPECTS
GR Retreat: Island Thunder's future scenario of the United States dealing with
political change in nearby Cuba makes for a realistic and compelling story. When was this idea conceived?
Richard Dansky: The Island Thunder storyline
was originally developed around the same time as the original Desert Siege one, but it was
felt that the desert spaces and storyline would be a better match with the original Russian campaign
at that time. When it came time for a second mission pack, the story was already in place and ready
to go (with a few tweaks, of course. There's always a few tweaks).
When did the production of Island Thunder begin? Was it developed by the same team
that did Desert Siege?
Richard:
We didn't kick Island Thunder into production until after Desert Siege was completed - the core of
the team was the same on both projects, and I think a lot of the lessons we learned on Desert Siege
made for Island Thunder being an even stronger mission pack.
Mission packs often get criticized for pumping out "more of the same." How did you face the challenge
of creating new material seeing that Island Thunder is the fourth title based on the GR engine?
Richard:
The obvious challenge is simply not to give people the same old, same old. That means coming up
with new mission spaces and types, new objectives, new weapons that are actually appropriate and fun,
new enemies who can reasonably be assumed to be capable of giving the Ghosts a hard time - you get the idea.
That meant scrapping a bunch of mission sketches along the way, because they were too similar to stuff we'd
already done, and really working hard to come up with play experiences that are like nothing the
player's seen before. Missions 6 and 7, for example, I think really do that well - we've never had a GR mission where you started
under fire at the center of the map before, and we've never thrown the player an assault like the one you'll
see in mission 7.
Red Storm has always taken fan feedback into consideration. How did the dev team decide which fan
suggestions were incorporated into the GR patch that ships with Island Thunder?
Richard:
It's less a case of taking specific suggestions from individual fans and more a case of checking the
communities and reading the forums, and finding out what the GR community as a whole was looking for.
Some of the requests you get can be impractical, but if there's a good, strong sentiment for a useful feature,
we're going to look long and hard at incorporating that.
What are some specific examples of fan requests incorporated into Island Thunder?
David Hamm:
There are LOTS of examples - all of these features are based heavily on fan input ...
Binoculars are now standard equipment
Multiplayer kits now available in quick mission
Night vision no longer reduces effect of fog
Server option to disallow voting
Replays can be saved on dedicated server
Option for limited invulnerability after respawn
Ping indicators in multiplayer pregame
Added No Sensors kit restriction
Greg Stelmack: IP banning and the helicopter insertions are probably the two most obvious examples.
Click on the image for a larger version
Speaking of helicopters, astute mod makers noticed stray files in the original GR that
indicated helicopters were meant to be in the original game. Can you tell us the story behind why
helicopters were removed from the original GR, and why you can now add them into Island Thunder?
Greg:
The original idea for helicopters was for them to be an integral part of gameplay, including the ability to
shoot them down. They were cut for a variety of reasons, including scheduling to handle the myriad of details
(such as what happens if you shoot a helicopter down over a building?). The versions that are in Island Thunder
are much more limited: they can basically just follow a scripted path, and that's it.
TECHNICAL ASPECTS
Island Thunder benefits from having one year to tweak the original GR engine. What are some of the
improvements that you are most satisfied with?
David:
In terms of engine improvements, I'm very happy with our new detail shadow implementation.
Originally high detail shadows were too processing-intensive to be worthwhile for most players.
The feature was reworked to support Island Thunder helicopters, and ended up as a significant speed-up
for all the detail shadows.
We've also had a chance to tune the AI a bit, adding details like having the enemy drop a live grenade
if shot in the act of throwing it. We're proud of these improvements that don't always get noticed.
I'd also like to mention the server setup UI (User Interface) rework that was accomplished in Island Thunder.
It was somewhat risky to make such sweeping changes to the server interface on a mission pack, but we
feel the results have made the UI much more friendly. And it made it easier for us to add all
our new Island Thunder server options!
What has been improved with regards to graphics in Island Thunder?
Greg:
Detail shadows have been optimized, and some new effects were added to
support the helicopters (like dust blowing away from the landing). Most of the
remaining improvements came from the artists figuring out how to get the most from the engine.
David:
Here’s a brief list of some of the improvements:
Action UI scales with resolution, options for HUD and command map
Command map now shows look direction not torso facing
Dust/sand effect behind vehicles
Threat indicator waypoint tick will now flash on changes
Added grenade throwing and door opening reticules
Primary weapons now attach to characters when not in use
When GR first came out, turning up the graphics options to the highest settings with shadows on
often brought frame rates down even on the highest-end systems. What are the reasons for this and
how has this frame rate hit with shadows been addressed in Island Thunder?
David:
As mentioned above, high detail shadows have been completely reworked for IT and should perform
much better on most machines. However, we believe in giving users as much flexibility as possible
in tuning their graphics options and we want our games to be ready to take advantage of hardware
improvements down the road. It was never intended that maxing out all graphics settings would run well
on ANY system available at the time of release.
Greg:
There are lots of very technical reasons for the frame rate hit. Most of them
were fixed for Island Thunder ;-)
Ghost Recon was one of the first games released last year to require DirectX 8, which features include
pixel and vertex shader support. Does the GR engine take advantage of the hardware-supported pixel and vertex
shaders in graphics cards with GeForce 3/Radeon 8500 chips and above ?
Greg:
No, there is no vertex or pixel shader support, although the engine does take advantage of hardware T&L
(Transform & Lighting) where available. One big advantage of the Xbox version is that we expect to be
able to bring the vertex and pixel shader support from it back over to the PC for our next iteration of the engine.
How has the development of the Xbox version of GR influenced the engine updates for Island Thunder?
Greg:
Lots of bug fixes went back and forth between the PC and Xbox versions. The feature sets are pretty
different though, so not many gameplay improvements made the transition.
David: We have tried to keep the lines of communication open across teams at Red Storm
so that all projects can benefit from bug fixes and enhancements to the GR engine. That is more challenging
dealing across platforms, but has paid off in IT. A few of the AI improvements are straight from the Xbox
team, but I don't think you will see any real change in gameplay as a result of the code sharing.
If anything, the IT team has moved GR further away from console-related game concepts.
Click on the image for a larger version
GR features one of the best sound environments we have ever experienced in gaming.
What further sound enhancements have been implemented in Island Thunder?
Jeff Wesevich:
Thanks! There are a number of additions: helicopters, outboard motors, new weapons, and of course,
lots of new birds and bugs and things. It was a real pleasure to work on the campaign missions because Cuba
offers such a wide range of environments - much more so than Desert Siege, and even the GR release.
Best yet - it rains! :-) It took two mission packs to do it, but it's been a real treat to see the
work we put into rain effects in GR come to life during a tropical downpour. Did I mention lots of tin roofs?
Jeff, you gave some excellent reasons in the official GR Forums
(click here
for the link) why weapon sounds in GR are purposely not as loud as in other games. Have weapon and
environmental sounds been further balanced in Island Thunder?
Jeff: I think you'll find that Island Thunder's gunfire
is as "loud" as any game out there :-) For this one, I extended the range at which gunfire was audible,
as well as upping the volume over the range. One thing we have done differently is to duck the volume just a bit
when you fire your own weapon. Doing this allows the player to set his speaker or headphone
volume at a comfortable level and still be able to hear other effects such as footsteps, etc.
I believe this strategy has worked well so far, but it's certainly something that could change.
Ghost Recon for the Xbox will take advantage of the Xbox's Dolby Digital support. Does
Dolby Digital support already exist in the PC version of GR? If not, will any of this technology
for GR Xbox be brought over to the PC version for people with hardware that supports it?
Jeff: I'm glad you asked this, because I'm seeing
some confusion in the forums between Dolby Digital 5.1 output (which you have on your home entertainment
system) and analog 5.1 output (which you have coming out of many game PC audio cards).
Both GR PC and GR Xbox play primarily 3D sounds - that is to say that they have a location in space,
and we expect the underlying hardware/drivers to apply the proper filtering for distance and angle
when we play them. In addition to this processing, the hardware should also route the sound to the
proper speaker in relation to the listener.
So, if one of my wing men is walking to my left rear, I would expect to hear the sound filtered and coming
out of primarily my left speaker on a stereo system. With a 5.1 system, I would look for it to come from
the left surround (rear) speaker.
Both the Xbox and a typical PC card, such as a Creative Live! 5.1 series will put the sound in the
proper position in a 5.1 system, but they do it in very different ways. The Xbox processes the sound,
and then encodes it into a Dolby Digital signal (which also compresses it). This output is fed to your
home receiver - which treats the signal just as if it were coming from a DVD - decompressing and routing
it to the proper place. The Live! 5.1 card doesn't need to do this, it simply sends the sound to the
proper speakers (which are directly connected to the card). This is simplified, but I think you get the picture.
One caveat is that while you have roughly-equivalent functionality between these two methods when playing a
3D sound in GR, what you actually hear can be quite different. Some card manufacturers like to treat the
center speaker in a 5.1 setup as part of the 3D field, while others only use the two front and two rear surrounds.
That is how I setup GR on the Xbox, saving the center speaker for things like radio messages that are 2D.
So, the long and the short of it is: you get Dolby Digital on the Xbox and Dolby Digital on the PC if you
run it on an nVidia nForce board. You get multi-speaker analog output if you have a card (most of the
current run of gamer-type cards) that support it. Oh yeah, and you need lots and lots of speakers like I do. :-)
Once again, many thanks for taking the time to answer all of our questions! A very special thanks also goes out to
Sam Copur, Community Manager at Ubi Soft, for coordinating this interview for us.
Check out our Interview Archive for
a comprehensive collection of links to more in-depth interviews about
Ghost Recon.
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