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March 15th, 2005 - World at War is ready . . . (Page 1/10)

It's finally done! After 34 months in development, Gary Grigsby's World at War was finally finished two weeks ago and is ready for action. It's in production now and I've been told that it's likely to start showing up in stores in North America the last few days of March and/or the first few days of April. At that time, it will also be available for digital download from Matrix Games. Sometime later, it should be available in stores in Europe and localized into many different languages. It's been a long road so I thought I'd take this opportunity to point out some of the milestones of its development process.

In the Beginning

When Gary first proposed doing a fast playing game covering all of World War II, we hoped it would be something we could produce within two years. If my memory is correct, Gary started on this project in May 2002 just after we completed Uncommon Valor. By the end of that summer, Gary had 95% of the rules of the game finished and we had a paper map and basic scenario data. By the end of 2002, I remember playing Keith in a PBEM game using programmer art. Even then the game felt special, as Keith started off as Germany going for Gibraltar and the Mediterranean, while researching his German bombers into ship killing machines.

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The flexibility and variability of the system quickly became apparent. At the time, I didn't realize it, but it would be another 22 months before I'd get to play another game via email.

In April 2002, we were lucky enough to be contacted by Jorgen Vasshaug. A web programmer by day, Jorgen contacted us to volunteer to be the webmaster for our website. He also had a talent and an interest in computer artwork, so we soon put him to work on the GGWaW map. That turned out to be a great opportunity for Jorgen and a great find for us. Jorgen would spend a lot of late nights over the next 2 years working on the map.

By early 2003, we were ready to find artists to work on the interface art for the game. A good friend, Louis Saekow (the artist responsible for 90% of the box, manual, and advertising art in SSI's 20 years of existence) said he would give it a try with some of his art students from the art college where he taught classes. Louis had produced tons of artwork, but had never worked on a computer game. Although most of the artwork done by Louis and his artists didn't survive to the final version of the game, he was very helpful in getting us enough artwork to allow the game to be very playable and to enable us to mock up the layout for most of the screens and buttons.

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Enter the Matrix

In May of 2003, at E3 in Los Angeles, we showed David Heath of Matrix Games GGWaW. Although the art still had a long way to go, the basic game was fully functioning. David could see that the game had the potential for being a crossover product that would appeal to grognards and casual wargamers alike. We felt that if we could provide an onscreen tutorial, the game would be fairly easy to pick up and play out of the box. It was at this point that we committed to provide an onscreen tutorial, something I had never done before (and I don't think Keith or Gary had either). We signed our contract with Matrix late that summer, and at the time thought we were one year from being finished. Matrix was going to provide Marc Schwanebeck to complete the interface and unit art, as well as providing the sound, music and video for the game. Marc's an outstanding artist, and we were glad to have him signed up to work on the game.

Unfortunately for GGWaW, we were also working on War in the Pacific, the mother of all monster computer wargames. In September 2003, I realized that if we were ever going to get WitP finished, Gary and I would have to focus most of our time on it (along with Mike Wood who had always been working hard on WitP).

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While Keith continued working on GGWaW and Marc began to upgrade our graphics, Gary and I wrestled with the WitP beast. By early 2004, we could see the light at the end of the tunnel on WitP, while GGWaW was ready to begin widespread alpha testing. In April, we put GGWaW out for alpha testing, although there was still a lot of artwork left to be done. At the same time, we were in the final beta stages of WitP. We finally finished WitP in early June and could focus on GGWaW. When we started alpha testing in April, we still thought that we had a chance to finish by September/October if everything went well. In the end, at least 3 things kept us from finishing GGWaW in 2004. First, WitP had continued to take more time and effort from all of us. By the time it shipped, many of us were exhausted. Second, the artwork for GGWaW was delayed, both due to Marc's ongoing work on WitP and by the changes that we requested in the interface based on comments from the testers. Maurice Buttazoni had come in as Matrix's lead tester, and he made many good suggestions regarding how we could alter the GUI to make it more user friendly and easier to navigate between screens. This, of course, added more art and programming time, but in the end, we think it was well worth it.

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Third, as always happens during testing, we kept coming up with things we wanted to add to either balance the game or give it added flexibility. The number of preference and game options attests to the work added during this time to give player's more choice on how the game would look and play. It was sometime in late July/early August, just after WitP had started selling, that we realized that we would not be able to finish GGWaW in time to publish it before the Christmas rush of products would prevent it from reaching store shelves. We just saw too many things we still needed and wanted to add to the game to complete it before Christmas. At that point, we started shooting for a February release.

Although 95% of the game's rules were laid down back in 2002, that didn't keep us from adding a few new ones that were critical as we developed the game. Two examples of this were the rules on Surface Naval Combat and Interdiction Points. In 2003, as we did our own testing, we determined that it was too easy to see large surface battles where entire navies were destroyed. Although it costs a lot of supplies in the game to move fleets long distances (something we specifically intended to cut down on naval activity), it was still possible to form a massive fleet and destroy your opponent's fleet.

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So we created a mechanism that limits the number of surface fleets that can engage in a surface action. Since all aircraft get to attack, but only a limited number of surface ships will engage (although the exact number is somewhat random), aircraft carriers and patrolling land based airpower suddenly became much more important (as they should be). This rule existed when we started alpha testing.

Interdiction Points was added during the alpha testing as a way of making it more difficult for fleets to move long distances past enemy territories in order to engage enemy fleets. Now, you suffer a combat penalty for each of these enemy areas that you move past during your turn (after the first area moved). This made it more important in the Pacific and the Mediterranean to capture enemy territories instead of totally ignoring them while moving vast distances to crush a relatively weak area. These two rules, along with the fog of war rules, have gone a long way toward getting the naval part of the game to play out more historically.

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There were other smaller changes made during testing, along with some nice features like a report of all units damaged and destroyed in the game to date (suggested by a tester), but these were two of the biggest I can remember.

Finally at Beta

By December, we were playing a game that was near beta. We were still working on some art improvements, but the game played well. One of the more interesting additions was the need to create additional art for the Western Allies to represent the British forces. We had been using US equipment and US stars with green backgrounds to represent the Western Allies. Since the WA consists of British and Commonwealth forces, not just American, we thought it was important to allow the British to be presented graphically (after all, this game will be sold worldwide). This led to the introduction of preference options to choose between British or American graphics or to mix the two depending on the regions and forces involved. In addition, the combat animations and sounds and music were being finished.

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Of course, there were always bugs to find and fix, but all things considered, the game had been in pretty good shape for many months.

The last major items to be completed were the manual and the two tutorials. Mike Eckenfels dove into providing an informative and graphically pleasing manual using all of the design notes we had generated over the years. Thanks to some of the testers, especially Oleg Mastruko, we were able to include a 10 page strategy section. Mike even added a detailed 12 page WWII timeline in the electronic version of the manual. You should find the manual (printed in the retail version of the game) a great read. The tutorials had to be saved for last as there was no point in making a tutorial as long as the game was changing. Luckily, in the summer of 2004, Luke Mason contacted us and asked if he could help out in some way on the game. Since he had some programming skills, we put Luke to work writing the script for the tutorial. Luke's 400 line script became the basis for the movement and combat tutorial. He saved me hours of effort and this also showed me how to create the production tutorial. Of course, Keith was the one that set up the tutorial script language in the first place.

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This was the first on screen tutorial I've ever worked on, and I'm glad we did it. I'm ashamed to say that almost all of the 50-100 games I've worked on could have used one.

So, as January turned to February, Keith put in longer and longer hours to insure that we got everything in the game that we wanted and got the bugs fixed. Although the game bears Gary's name, and Gary did design the original rules and the bulk of the AI, it was Keith's programming magic that made it come together on screen. The manual was finished in mid/late February, and the final code was delivered to Matrix on February 28. Now we're just waiting for the games to be produced and shipped to stores so we can see how the game is received by the public. I just read a review at IGN.com that stated: "Titles like Gary Grigsby's World at War are a welcome addition to the genre. It has the best of both worlds -- an endlessly sophisticated design based on some natural concepts that are easy to understand." If the public agrees with this reviewer, after 34 months we'll have succeeded in making the game we wanted to create.

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What's Next

So, what's next for 2by3? Work on our American Civil War game using the GGWaW engine has been going well, and now we'll be able to focus even more time on it. We should have something up and running in the next few months. This game shouldn't take three years to develop. Gary wrote the basic design last summer, and I'm guessing that it will take another year to finish (no promises). Our plan is for Gary to be the lead programmer on this game. Mike Wood is just finishing up the War in the Pacific 1.50 patch and we're hoping that, with Keith's help, he'll be able to focus on Russian Front by the end of March. Given the size and complexity of that game, it's a good bet that it will take at least 18 months, if not more, to finish. Keith has been working off and on for years on a space game design. We're hoping that in addition to helping both Gary and Mike, he can finally spend some quality time working on his space game. That should keep us all busy for awhile.

That's all for now. Hopefully, the next entry will report that World at War is in the stores.

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