Feature interview: World in Conflict

The gameplay of World in Conflict is but a small part of the development story. Massive, for each of its games, has designed its own engine technology, and WiC continues the trend.

‘We like to develop our own engines as we have some of the best tech developers there are,’ says Westberg.

‘What engine we’ll be using on our next project is still unclear, though, since it’s not even been decided what that project is. It’s very likely that we will keep developing our own engines, since we can respond quickly to the project’s needs.’

A possible advantage of purchasing a license to another engine, such as Unreal Engine 3, would be the ability to focus more on the game itself, rather than the chunks of code that make it work. Westberg is of the belief however, that designing the engine in-house has actually helped with the development of the core game.

Off for a smoked kipper after a bomb well dropped.

‘This way, we’re making sure that we get all the features that we want. The engine is tailor-made for our game, and we can use it to its full capacity. I don’t think World in Conflict would be what it is today if it weren’t for the fact that we do use our own engine,’ he says.

Westberg does point out that whether to create technology in-house or to buy something pre-packaged is a choice that has to be made on a project-by-project basis.

‘It all depends on the type of game you’re making and what your focus is. If you save time and money, and can reach the same results as you would with your own engine, then there’s no reason to build your own engine just for the heck of it.’

Previously we mentioned that World in Conflict would be one of a new breed of games stamped with the ‘Games for Windows’ brand. We’re pleased to say that this moniker wasn’t included simply because WiC is available on PC. Massive has worked hard to include DirectX 10 support in its new game. A DirectX 9 renderer is available of users of Windows XP, but if you own Vista and a DX 10-compliant card, additional visual splendour and performance awaits.

WiC has excellent visuals for an RTS

‘We’ve worked on some DX 10 features for a time now, and we’re going to have it available in the retail version,’ says Westberg. ‘DX 10 is just a natural development of the graphics, and we have some features that make the DX10 version of World in Conflict look absolutely amazing.’

Part of the ‘absolutely amazing’ is the particle effects engine, which, with the help of both the coding powers of Massive’s programmers and the delicate hands of its artists, really makes WiC one of the most gorgeous real-time strategy games to arrive in recent years.

‘They’ve worked very close to each other and have really pushed the envelope of the technology. We can’t wait to see what they can do with the next-gen tech,’ says Westberg.

According to Massive, the average shader program in WiC is ten times longer than that of Ground Control II, and the algorithms for adjusting levels of detail on-the-fly are about as smart as they can get.

Naturally, the game will be optimised for multi-core systems – a must for the Xbox 360 and a growing concern for the PC. WiC’s engine is intelligent enough to divide numerous workloads, including a few graphics-related ones.

‘The main thing is that we run physics on a separate core, but we also run smaller tasks like particle updates, shadow volume extrusion and tree updates on separate cores, if available.’

Another nail in the coffin of the PhysX processor, we suppose, considering WiC also makes use of Havok.