Secret Service 58a/secret_service_58a01.iso/Utils/FAQ/enemnafq.txt

Text File | 1998-04-18 | 21KB | 578 lines

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The Unofficial Enemy Nations FAQ 1.01a

[last updated on Sept 12, 1996]
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..,-*'^'*-,....,-*'^'*-,....,-*'^'*-,..TABLE-OF-CONTENTS
..,-*'^'*-,....,-*'^'*-,....,-*'^'*-,...

i. Introduction

I. What is Enemy Nations?

A. What type of game is Enemy Nations?

B. What is so new about Enemy Nations compared to other games?

C. Who is creating Enemy Nations?

II. What is the story behind Enemy Nations?

A. What is to be included in the story-line?

B. What races are available?

III. What does Enemy Nations look like?

A. How is the interface designed?

B. What resolution will the game be in?

C. What about sound/music?

IV. How is game play designed?

A. How is the computer AI designed?

V. What is the setting like?

A. What is the appearance of the levels?

B. What is different about the world?

C. How does the economy work?

D. What about combat?

VI. How is the multiplayer aspect of Enemy Nations implemented?

A. What about Direct-play?

B. What about Internet play?

C. How many can play?

D. How many maps/worlds are there?

E. More stuffà

VII. What kind of hardware does Enemy Nations require?

A. What does it run on?

VIII. When is Enemy Nations expected to be released?

*A. WhatÆs the holdup?

B. Demo?

*C. ôAny time Nowö [demo]

*D. Please change this
------------
* - new info (ver 1.01a)

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* Introduction *

Welcome to version 1.01a of the Unofficial Enemy Nations FAQ! Within this
document I
will attempt to provide the most complete, updated, and correct information
about the
game Enemy Nations as is possible. Please keep in mind that this FAQ is in
no way
endorsed or supported by Windward nor Viacom Entertainment. Questions,
comments,
corrections, complaints or anything else are gladly accepted at the address

[e-mail], or visit the Enemy Nations web site around at
http://www.windward.net/enemy.htm.

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* What is Enemy Nations? *

" The time is the future. The place is a rare,
uninhabited planet, over which several nations are
fighting for control. As the leader of your nation
landing on this planet, you must build a city from the
ground up, maintain it, and generate a powerful
economy and military to defend it. Eventually, you
will battle other nations for domination of the
planet. But, it wonÆt be easy...countless other
competitors are also vying to dominate the planet.." <From Viacom New
MediaÆs web
page>

Q. What type of game is Enemy Nations?

A. Enemy Nations is a resource management and combat game in the same genre
as Serf
City, Dune II, Warcraft, & Command & Conquer. However, it is a much more
rich (and
complex) model.

Q. What is so new about Enemy Nations compared to other games?

A. It compares to the real-time play of Command & Conquer or Warcraft II.
You will take
control of one of the colony ships landed on the planet, charged with
establishing your
race's colony, finding resources, building up a military, and then race to
overwhelm all
the other colonies on the world. While planets are generally Earth-like,
they are random,
with realistic mixes from twelve terrain types. Mountains may fade into
plains, which may
fade into deserts. Because of the randomness, you can end up with lovely,
resource-rich
worlds, or some pretty ugly planets which are a struggle to live on. The
world-maps
wrap, leaving players with no convenient "flat planet" map corners in which
to build up a
strong defense. Altitude as well as distance will matter for line-of-sight;
no more seeing
over forests or mountain ranges. Units will be able to move into forests
and remain
hidden, the better to fall upon an unsuspecting enemy. Because the worlds
are
randomized, the developers have had to create a strong, independent AI

Q. Who is creating Enemy Nations?

A. Enemy Nations is being developed by Windward Studios and will be
released and
published by Viacom New Media. WindwardÆs goal is to ôcreate games that are
enjoyable
to play, time after time after time. Painless net play over all networks,
aesome art and
sound, and most important, killer game play.ö Their site is
http://www.windward.net/ and
ViacomÆs can be found at http://www.viacomnewmedia.com/
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* What is the story behind Enemy Nations? *

Q. What is to be included in the story-line?

A. Humanity reaches the stars, only to find the galaxy a pretty crowded
place. Most of the
inhabitable planets are inhabited, and everyone's looking for more tentacle
joint-room. A
human scout finds a wonderfully inhabitable little world, and scampers back
to Earth with
the news. Of course, by the time the heavily armed colonization fleet
arrives, just about
every other race in the galaxy has shown up too, all a-bristle with
weapons. Instead of
dukeÆn it out with nukes, each side decides to send down a single colony
ship, and may
the best man, woman, or thing win.

Q. What races are available?

A. There are 12 different races and they have significant advantages and
disadvantages
But. the art for this game was phenomenally expensive and time consuming
due to the
detail. Because of this Windward had to opt for one set of art. In a world
of choices
Thielen thinks it was a good choice but in a world of no limits he would
have had several
sets of art (and required systems with more memory because in a world of no
limits you
would all own P/200s with 32M of memory)..

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* What does Enemy Nations look like? *

Q. How is the interface designed?

A. It's windows, but it doesn't look like windows. It will draw every pixel
on the screen.
There is not a single menu. There are overlapping windows and buttons. The
buttons act
like windows buttons but look like real buttons. The developers won't know
for sure until
the game ships but they think they have a UI that is intuitive to a windows
user, but
makes you forget you are in windows. David Thielen (the game's developer)
and his team
all have extensive Windows 95 backgrounds (Thielen himself was involved in
the
development of the OS), and this expertise shows. It has been said that the
interface "is
one the first intelligent uses of the Windows 95 interface" û the ability
to open multiple,
variable windows to keep an eye on the action wherever you want.

Q. What resolution will the game be in?

A. It will run at whatever resolution your system is set to. It is being
testing at 640x480,
800x600, 1024x768, and 1280x1024 and everything lays out fine. Enemy
Nations also
has the art stored at 8, 15, 16, 24, & 32-bits so it will run at the color
depth of your
system. This is real 24-bit art, not 8-bit art rendered in 14-bits. In
addition the game has 4
(may be 3 when it ships) zoom levels and can rotate (like SimCity 2000). So
when you are
zoomed in a large building is over 400 pixels across. Basically 640x480x8
is considered
low-end low-res.

Q. What about sound/music?

A. There have both MIDI and digital music. If your system is low end (or
you get a demo
version) your music is MIDI. If your system is high end you get digital
music ( 22K, 16-
bit, stereo). If your system is middle-end you get digital music everywhere
except while
the game is playing and MIDI while playing. The MIDI music is, in Thielen
opinion, ô
really good and the digital is simply awesome.ö

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* How is game play designed? *

Q. How is the computer AI designed?

A. Because of random map creation, there can't be a "script" that AI
actions can be based
on preset maps. Also, Thielen promises no AI cheating. The Enemy AI or
computer
player, uses a network of cooperating intelligent agents, or managers that
communicate via
messages, finite and fuzzy state systems and a database of goals and tasks.
Functions such
as path finding are provided via a separate pathing manager based on the A*
algorithm and
enhanced for four years. The routing and distribution of materials for the
economics of the
AI and human players relies on a separate route manager which provides for
discrete event
management of the economic and construction needs. Evaluations and map
based
processes are performed by a separate map manager using a variety of
specialized search
algorithms that include (but are not limited to): breadth and depth search
of the map
space, directed and A* derived search of the map space, and a few very
specialized search
of the map space. The AI uses a separate goal manager for strategic
guidance and a low
level task manager to assign and manage the functions carried out by the
units of the
game. The actual task functions operate as discrete intelligent agents
themselves,
reviewing the local data specific to the task assigned. With guidance from
the
goal/task/map manager state systems, these agents issue/receive messages
to/from the
game which results in an underlying behavior that produces the complex
behavior that
completes the tasks assigned. This collection of tasks performed for the
goals as managed
by the goal manager results in the operational behavior of the AI players.
Selected history
is maintained at the goal manager, player, map and OpFor (Operational
Formation) levels.
The AI programmer (Eric Dysband) invites all comments and suggestions for
any
enhancements to the AI and can be reached at [e-mail].
In English: the AI has to react to events and then act accordingly. And
when the AI goes to
attack, it has to take it's knowledge of the world into account because an
attack across a
short plain is very different to attacking half way around the world where
a mountain is in
the way in 1 direction. So, by necessity, not by choice Windward had to
create an AI that
adapts to it's environment. This has a couple of bad points. The AI will
sometimes hit you
a lot harder or easier than wanted. It will also sometimes do incredibly
dumb moves.
People are used to playing an AI that provides a consistent challenge.
Enemy NationÆs AI
will be a lot more variable. Again, people have been screaming for an AI
opponent that
isn't so predictable.

(most of this is from Steven WoodcockÆs AI pages
http://www.cris.com/~swoodcoc/curgames.html#EN)

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* What is the setting like? *

Q. What is the appearance of the levels?

A. While planets are generally Earth-like, they are random, with realistic
mixes from
twelve terrain types. Mountains may fade into plains, which may fade into
deserts.
Because of the randomness, you can end up with lovely, resource-rich
worlds, or some
pretty ugly planets which are a struggle to live on. The world-maps wrap,
leaving players
with no convenient "flat planet" map corners in which to build up a strong
defense.
Altitude as well as distance will matter for line-of-sight; no more seeing
over forests or
mountain ranges. Units will be able to move into forests and remain hidden,
the better to
fall upon an unsuspecting enemy.

Q. What is different about the world?

A. Well first it wraps. The left end connects to the right end (like
Civilization) and the top
to the bottom. So you can't put our back in a safe corner. Second, there
are over 10
different terrain types and this affects movement speed, defense, spotting,
etc. Third, the
world is rendered as a series of polygons with bitmaps laid on top. The
world is contoured
so mountains go up and obscure vehicles behind it. I don't know of anything
to compare it
to but it goes well beyond the stair-step effect of SimCity 2000.

Q. How does the economy work?

A. Raw materials include lumber, coal, iron, oil, and xilitium. Coal and
Iron go to the
smelter to make steel. Oil goes to the refinery to make gas. Food and gas
are global but all
other minerals remain local. Steel must be transported from the smelter to
the weapons
factories. Coal/Oil need to be transported to the power plants, etc. In
other words, take
out someone's supply line or critical building and you can really hurt them
Losses to the
economy slow things down. If you run out of gas all your vehicles slow down
- but still
run. If you are low on power buildings produce slower with buildings like
farms being
slightly affected and weapons factories brought to a virtual standstill.
Your food supply
and housing determine the number of colonists. If you do not have enough
colonists to
staff all of your buildings then again, production slows down, but it does
not arbitrarily
stop. Damaged buildings operate slower so a 50% damaged factory is less
useful (and
therefore an attack that hurt buildings has a noticeable affect right
away).

Q. What about Combat?

A. A lot of the same. A damaged vehicle has a slower fire rate and less
accuracy. Combat
takes into account the attack and defense strengths of the units, armor,
fire rate, accuracy,
damage, terrain type, and more.

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* How is the multiplayer aspect of Enemy Nations implemented? *

Q. What about Direct-play?

A. EN will not use Direct-Play for two reasons. First, it doesn't run on
Win 3.1 or NT
3.51. Second it's pretty worthless. The network library has native support
for TCP/IP,
IPX, NETBIOS, MODEM, Direct (serial port), TAPI, and Direct Play (treating
Direct-
Play as one more protocol).
.

Q. What about Internet play?

A. You can play over the Internet. Viacom is looking into having a server
so you can
create/join games without ever entering an IP address. But worst case, you
need to enter
the IP address of the system the game is created on. In addition, EN can
handle about 2
seconds of latency without the players noticing anything weird (unless you
were watching
both computers at the same time). EN doesnÆt send request to the server. No
requests
means no round trip delay. There is no pause as the client player sends a
message to the
server and waits for a response before moving.

Q. How many players?

A. There is no limit in the code on the number of players. However, too
many will bog a
system down. In single player mode clock cycles are intelligence to the AI
- the more it
can think the better an opponent it will be. So if you have 10 opponents on
a 486/66 don't
expect the AI to do anything. In a network game the limit is not the
network, it's the world
size. The more players the bigger the world (so you aren't all in each
other's back yard).
The game needs to store several bytes of data for each hex of the world.
Since the world is
stored on each system, the number of players is limited by the memory of
the smallest
machine playing. Final play testing will tell what limits that will be
suggested, and what
ones to impose (if you enter 1,234,567 AI opponents and we let you run your
machine is
going to run till it runs out of memory - so you won't be allowed a number
that high).

Q. How many maps/worlds are there?

A. There are no canned maps. We generate a random map every time you play.
The size
is based on a setting you make (small, medium, large) and the number of
players. So on a
large map each player still has about the same amount of elbow room. For a
small world
it's a little smaller than a small Warcraft II map (2 players). For medium
it's like a large
Warcraft II map. For large it's like a SimCity 2000 map with 4 players.
This includes the
scenarios. The maps are randomly generated for the scenarios. This means
that the
magazines cannot write an article on how to win scenario 6 because they
played on a
significantly different map. Everyone has been saying they want something
more real.
Something where, you can't nail the trick to each scenario and then walk
through it.
Well... we'll see if people actually like it being a new challenge each
game.

Q. Want more?

A. There is a complete e-mail system for multi-player games, the ability to
set your
relations with a player, research that , while not as comprehensive as Civ,
is a lot more
like Civ than what you see in Warcraft II, and more...

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* What kind of hardware does Enemy Nations require? *

A. The minimum system is a 486/66 with 8M of memory. THIS COULD CHANGE -
THEY ARE STILL MEASURING PERFORMANCE. The most critical items are, in
order, your video card, your physical memory (16M is much better), your
hard drive speed
(for virtual memory), and CD-ROM speed. Even more critical is the
resolution of your
video card for your system. If your video card is 1280x1024x24 on a 486/66
- forget it. By
the same token, a fast video card set at 640x480x8 on a P/90 will scream.
The developers
have to rerender the screen 24 times a second and at just 1280x1024x8
that's 1,310,720
bytes that need to be rendered. And it's a lot more work in our game
because mountains
can obscure buildings and vehicles, fog of war is affected by terrain, etc.
So it's not a
trivial calculation to know what needs to be drawn at a given location.

Q. What does it run on?

A. It runs on Windows 3.1, Windows 95, and Windows NT (3.51 or later). It
is a multi-
threaded Win32 application (the developers wrote a preemptive
multi-threader for
Win32s). It uses DirectX if it is there but does not require it. Note:
Viacom may not
"certify" it for Win/NT because it is a significant testing hit and there
aren't that many
potential NT customers. But much development has been done on a dual P/133
running
Win/NT 4.0

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* When is Enemy Nations expected to be released? *

A. Like most games in development it is hard to get a release date. Here
are the few
things that IÆve heard.
From Viacom (phone): 3Q
From ViacomÆs web site: Fall 96
From David Thielen (developer): ôWell, here it is a race between making it
better and the Christmas selling season.ö

Q. WhatÆs the holdup?

A. Most of the game is done now. The only thing left (other than working
out little bugs)
is the final art in a couple of places. The game is ALMOST done.

Q. Demo?

A. Yes. There should be a demo ôany time now.ö The demo will be about
10megs but
have no full zoomed graphics, only 256 colors, and no digital sound.

Q. ôAny Time Nowö [demo]

A. It seems that time is upon us. The demo (stripped down beta ver of the
game - (see
Demo?)) It should be out but the end/weekend of this week. I.e. sept 13-15.
IÆm every
much hope that it will include full internet play. 99% of what youÆll be
seeing in the
demo is what will be in the box when it finally makes its way into the
stores. You
will be able to find the demo/beta, when it is out, @:
http://www.viacomnewmedia.com/comingsoon/enemynations.html
http://www.windward.net/enemy.htm
The former is better because the link is much fasterà.

Q. Please change this.

A. So YouÆre playing the demo and you find something that REALLY bugs you,
or just
doesnÆt quite work. Well, Windward wants to hear about it. This is also
your chance
to influence the game. If they get a lot of e-mails complaining/suggesting
something
that is easy to change, it will definitely be considered. Windward may not
agree with
you, but will listen. (Once u have the demo and want to make an suggestion
you cab
e-mail the developer at: [e-mail] or E-mail me and IÆll pass it on
[e-mail])

Notes: If I get any more info IÆll update this FAQ. So help me out and pass
any tidbits you
may have this way. ([e-mail])

l8r
Jordan Zielin

* Thank you for using The Unofficial Enemy Nations FAQ 1.01a and have a
nice dayà

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Enemy Nations is a trademark of Viacom New Media. All trademarks, products,
or
copyrights contained within this document are owned by the companies who
market or
license those products. The author assumes no responsibility for any errors
in the above
document. Please feel free to reproduce/post this FAQ! Any modification
without the
expressed written permission of the author is prohibited.