Command & Conquer 4: Tiberian Twilight Interview

Bringing it internally allows us to control it all the way and especially when we’re trying to tailor our performance that’s just one less factor we have to deal with. The main thing is that our backend and all of our networking is all internal to us right now, and it’s kind of a delicate dance – being able to control how the servers are managing the games makes it that much easier for us.

Elevation doesn't seem to play much of a role in combat.

VGD: What’s the rationale behind obliging players to login to the server in order to load up the game?

Joshi: What that allows us to do is to have a persistent profile, so you play at your computer, you go to your friend’s house, you load up the game, you sign into your profile, and all your data’s right there. We’re storing everything on the server so that nothing’s stuck on any one terminal. This is especially good for gaming cafes. If you just want to go and play – you want to invest 20 or 30 minutes playing, then sign out, and go on your way, maybe hop into a friend’s place or internet cafe, you can just sign straight back into your profile. Everything that you’ve done – your single player, multiplayer, against the AI, that’s all stored online.

VGD: Do you think the advantages of mandatory logins will outweigh the disadvantages?

Joshi: We’re hoping so, because people don’t always react well to that, they want to do LAN play or play offline. And I understand that, but the benefit of having all your stuff up on the server – we’re hoping that appeals to people more than the perceived drawbacks.

VGD: Were you involved with the team which brought Command and Conquer 3 to Xbox 360?

Joshi: Yes, it was me and another subset of the team.

VGD: What did you learn from the experience of putting an RTS on a console?

Joshi: It’s a pretty broad question, but we started with Battle for MiddleEarth 2, and that was more of a direct “how do you get a PC RTS onto a console” question, how do you get all that functionality in there. We basically just tried to emulate as much as possible how the PC version worked, but in doing that it turned out pretty well and the reception was good, and we got a lot of people turned onto RTS that would never have played it otherwise, because a lot of people are solely console players.

But when we came to C&C3 we kind of wanted to get away from the linear build order where you had to use the D-pad to scroll through things, so we started developing the radial but it wasn’t quite there for shipping, so we stayed with that. We were able to refine some of the controls, little things like clicking the stick to jump back to your MCV… Little shortcuts on the D-pad, grouping and stuff. So we started learning how to utilise all the different controls on the controller, which is actually pretty robust, there’s a lot of unique things you can do with it.

A GDI base takes a pummelling.

And then finally when we went to Kane’s Wrath it finally gave you the radial interface, and that was really where RTS had to go on a console. Because we were actually able to – towards the tail end of C&C3 we had the radial outlined but we weren’t ready to implement, and you can actually build and control your forces faster on the PC, because you got quick through muscle memory. So that was some of the stuff that we learned how to refine.

RTS is all about micro-management, about being able to click all over the place and jump anywhere on the map – we were trying to figure out how to make that easier, porting over to the console, that’s what we kind of learned. And along the way learn areas that you could refine. And not take away user control, but limit it – maybe there are some areas where it’s not really even that important anymore, and see what people would miss and what not.