At E3 I got a chance today to speak to James Parker, a producer at TKO Software, and to take a look at their real-time strategy title currently in development, Heaven vs. Hell.
The backstory places the game in the 25th century, after mankind has developed technology to the point where we're able to tinker with the fabric of reality itself. This prompted God to declare that his grand design isn't working quite as well as it should, and thus should be replaced. He unleashed the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse upon the Earth, and began to bring the souls of the living humans up to heaven.
This move angered the forces of Hell, who have traditionally laid claim to a good proportion of the souls of the deceased humans. Hell therefore responded by launching an assault upon the Earth, thus setting the stage for the game's campaign and providing the three playable factions: Heaven, Hell and the Humans.
When I watched the demo, the first thing that struck me is that it's a very pretty game, especially for a RTS title. Both the units and the terrain are fully 3D, with the units sporting large, detailed models. The engine is designed to make use of DirectX 9 and Shader Model 3.0, with an eye to an eventual port to the Xbox 360 and other next-generation consoles.
From what I saw, TKO has made good use of the buzzwords. Water displays ripple and reflection effects, for example, and various lighting and shader effects have been applied to the units. TKO is aiming to take the graphical abilities of the current first-person shooter engines, and apply them to the RTS genre, and what I was shown displayed significant progress towards that goal.
To show all this off, the camera is quite flexible: it's possible to zoom, pan and rotate, offering considerable freedom over the view of the battlefield. The zoom allows you to go very close, showing off both the artwork and the capabilities of the engine, whilst the lower levels of zoom are closer to a traditional RTS view. We were told that the engine should be able to cope with 80 to 100 units on-screen at any time, allowing the large battles enjoyed by many RTS fans.
We were shown examples of several of Hell's units. Standard natural resource harvesters exist, collecting brimstone and requiring protection, but much more interesting are the succubi. These demons exist to tempt the sub-human dwellers of Earth to willingly enter Hell's service... where they generally find that life is not quite as they were promised. These minions, once bound to Hell's will, function as another resource consumed by the buildings. We were also shown two combat units: the pit worm, and a winged demon. Both were nicely modelled and animated, but it's too early to talk about the strengths and weaknesses of each.
One of the more interesting aspects of the game is the dynamic terrain. When an area is built upon, the ground begins to reflect the faction building upon it: Hell-controlled areas morph into twisted, lava-covered landscapes, whilst Heaven-controlled ground becomes lush and verdant. Terrain will retain its faction affiliation even after the buildings have been destroyed, leaving a record of the areas colonized by the factions over the course of a game. Additionally, Hell's fiery terrain has the ability to damage the units of heaven, and the player can upgrade to increase the damage dealt.
Currently, TKO is aiming for a 60-hour single player campaign, along with a co-operative multiplayer mode and several competitive modes. They mentioned capture-the-flag, and a variant where one unit per player is designated as a Hero, and imbued with great power. The loss of a Hero would result in the loss of the game for the player concerned, though.
Multiplayer games support up to 16 players, and TKO plans to release the editing tools to the public and fostering a mod-making community. We were given a short look at the editing tools, which seem very comprehensive. It's possible to replace or add almost anything to the game, including unit models, particle effects and AI scripts, as well as maps. As you would expect, the editing tools are still under active development, but what we saw appeared very usable.
What I saw today wasn't complete by any means, but I did see a very solid foundation for what seems to be shaping up to be a very interesting game. I'm excited by the mod-making potential alone, especially with the quality of the engine and artwork I saw... and if TKO can construct a good, balanced RTS on top of the building blocks being shown at E3, I'll be very impressed indeed. Playing with the forces of good and evil have never looked so fun!
As I'm currently living off a student budget, my recent purchases tend to be from the various budget ranges of older titles: I'm more likely to be found playing Quake II or the original Unreal Tournament than Thief III or FarCry. I'll probably make an exception for Doom 3, though. (For the record, I did try Doom 3, and wasn't very impressed. Thief III has made it to the budget range here in the UK, and one day I'll play it. Perhaps after I've updated this profile properly...)
I enjoy online games, but I prefer the persistent world offered by the MMORPGs to the competitive environment of the CounterStrike servers. I've a feeling too many years of leisurely RPG playing have ruined my shooter reflexes; needless to say, I tend to end up on the tail end of the scoreboards in online FPS games. That said, I enjoy the competitiveness of multiplayer gaming, but prefer the face-to-face encounters of LAN gaming to the anonymity of the public servers.
