An entirely new experience
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Command & Conquer: Red Alert An entirely new experience |
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Westwood Studios has decided not to re-invent the wheel with their "not really a sequel, but a prequel" Command & Conquer: Red Alert. They're re-using the main game engine from the previous
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version of the program, thereby saving development time. Westwood is remaining coy about the specifics of Red Alert's plot, but the timeline and a few generalities are known (the only thing they'll be specific on is that the installation program will once again be an event itself). First, the battles in this game actually predate those of Command & Conquer, covering the 1940's up through the 1980's. The story will tie in |
to Command & Conquer and explain much of how that universe came into existence. It will also delve into Kane's origins, and in keeping with its mixing of real history and an alternate one, Albert Einstein will be a key character in the game. Designer Michael Lightner explains: "It's a bit like one of those Marvel Comic 'What If" series. We started with 'What if Stalin had risen to power and the Soviet Union, instead of |
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Germany, started the war that became World War II?' So it's Stalin and the Soviets rather than Hitler and Germany vs. the Allies." The missions for the Allies will be linked intrinsically to those for the Soviets, so when you're playing one side you may hear news about something happening to the other. If you eventually play the opposite side, you will then be creating its history, and hearing stories about things from the other side you may have remembered from previous games. Other missions will be tied together in ways which |
make perfect sense for a long, drawn-out war. Certain missions may find you completing one map, with the following mission then expanding on the same map. Overall, the missions in Red Alert are going to be more varied, with convoys, rescues, escorts, scouts, searches and terrorist activities. During the course of the missions, Westwood is promising more events on screen, to make the game world more alive and dynamic. Mid-mission video-clips should integrate the multimedia aspects of the design into the gameplay more |
effectively. Red Alert will feature two separate ways to play a solo game, as the Soviets or the Allies. When
controlling the allies you will command different countries' units (depending on the mission), as some are more adept at certain tasks than others. These differences between |
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countries tie in perfectly with the newly upgraded multi-player mode, which now
features support for up to six players over a network or the Internet via Kali (http://www.axxis.com/kali/). Each country (currently Russia, England, France, Greece, Germany, Italy, Spain and Turkey) has its own advantages
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with regard to building time, costs and unit skills, and this provides a number of variations to game play as well as building in an ability to better balance multi-player games. Tiberium hasn't appeared yet, but it's being replaced by different types of ore: copper, iron and nickel, all of which are worth different amounts of money. Some other new gameplay features include the ability for players to set up patrols with more than one waypoint, an improved path-finding algorithm and the ability to set up units in a formation, allowing each to move as a unit, all |
traveling at the speed of the slowest unit. Each side has new "ultimate weapons" that are more specialized and which, as Westwood designer Adam Isgreen puts it, "promise to generate some evil possibilities for extreme violence." With the game taking place in Europe, more diversity in available terrain types is inevitable. You'll have ice and snow in addition to the standard Command & Conquer terrain. Also present are actual beaches, making for some spectacular beach landings. Send in the infantry as cannon fodder and bombard |
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| the enemy with Cruisers. Bridges have been widened to accommodate more than one unit, and in Red Alert you'll also be able blow them up. Finally, the overall map size has more than doubled to 96x96, or some combination thereof (i.e., 128x64). This helps to eliminate the problem in multi-player mode when each player starts on top of the other. Westwood is looking into different ways to implement a sort of random mission generator.The computer AI (artificial intelligence) is receiving the most attention in Red Alert. |
Isgreen and Lightner are both excited that, at the highest difficulty setting, the computer is seriously tough to defeat. The plan is for additional settings for the computer AI to help tailor it to the player. The AI will now notice if it's being ganged up on and try to ally with other computer players to defend itself. The player can take on multiple computer opponents and set the AI for each of them. The newer AI does a better job of determining threats. Isgreen explained that "The computer can now calculate threat ratings for each confrontation and will |
send out a batch of units to counter that threat." Part of the beauty of Command & Conquer, and a key to its mass appeal, is its utter simplicity. Is the next game getting too complex? Lightner's response is, "As much as we've expanded, it's something we keep in mind. We won't go too far." |
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put it like this. "What we're trying to do is play around with the players who've developed proven strategies for Command & Conquer and are comfortable with them. They're going to find things that are familiar in Red Alert, but they're not going to sit down and go 'I've done this before.' It's going to be an entirely new
experience."
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experience." |
