World in Conflict Broadcast Tool

World in Conflict Broadcast Tool
Q&A with David Polfeldt and Daniel Wesslén

What is the Broadcast Tool?

DAVID: The Broadcast Tool is a tool that allows you to view WIC matches in a completely new way. The tool is like an über-spectator that sees everything that is going on in the match, and it works on live matches as well as on replays. It’s similar to how a TV network covers a sports event, with access to multiple cameras in the world, each one focusing on a different event. The tool requires dual monitors because it uses one of the screens to simultaneously display all the available camera-feeds (and there can be quite a few!), and the other screen is the “broadcast”, the live feed that people look at. The live broadcast can be projected onto a large screen if the tool is used at an event, or it can be recorded into an .avi if you like, there is built in support for that.

How exactly does it work?

DAVID: If you mean on a code-level Daniel will have to answer that, but if you mean on a functional level it is really easy to use. It comes with a point-and-click interface for all the features, and it’s self-explanatory really.

The default setting for each map creates automatic cameras on each command point and on the mega-map. By clicking on any one of them, that camera feed gets broadcast. Simple. As the match progresses, more cameras are introduced, for instance every time a players orders in a Tactical Aid, the tool generates a new feed overlooking the area of the impact.

DANIEL: Code-wise it’s conceptually simple – the tool is mostly identical to the spectator mode in the game, except the game UI elements have been replaced with camera controls, overlay toggles and such. Other than that, the main part is obviously the many camera views. Every frame from one of the extra cameras is updated and stored to a texture, and that is then used to draw the camera view. We only update one camera every frame so that the game can still keep a decent frame rate, even when there’s lots of action and you have 20 extra TA-cameras up.

What do you need to run it, and what hardware is required to use the tool?

DANIEL: As a bare minimum, you need Vista and a DirectX 10-capable graphics card. The tool is intended to be used with two screens though, and it’s not useful as a “broadcast tool” with only one, so you’ll want two screens as well. Additionally, both screens need to be able to show the same resolution. You’ll want the fastest graphics card you can get your hands on as the tool is more demanding than the game itself, but you’ll get by with any dx10 card. We recommend a GeForce 8000GTX for actual broadcast use.

Why dx10?

DAVID: To begin with, we already had the Dual Monitor support from our selection of dx10-only features that we developed in collaboration with NVIDIA. It was logical to base the tool on that and move forward. Then, we realized that the power of the new generation of graphics cards is necessary to make the tool run really smooth and without any hiccups. There are some extreme cases where the Broadcast Tool demands an incredible amount of work from the graphics card and to be on the safe side we decided to focus on high end cards.

DANIEL: There is an experimental dx9 mode that people can try, but it only works on one monitor. But it should work for making movies. Saying that though, I hope people understand that the dx9 version hasn’t gone through any proper QA testing.

What is the tool’s main purpose?

DAVID: The way we look at it, everything we do is ultimately about entertainment. The tool is to enhance the fun-factor of World In Conflict, and to allow gamers to play around with the game – maybe (and hopefully) by introducing their own creativity in ways we can not predict today.

On a more direct level, the tool was originally developed to support WIC in competition situations, such as event tournaments or when showing pro-matches on TV.

What role do you think it will play for the community? Will it mainly be used by clans and e-sport leagues?

DAVID: Although the Broadcast Tool is very simple to use, I suppose it is still pretty hardcore because it requires a download and an additional installation, plus a decent dx10 rig with dual monitors. That will limit the use of the tool, to some degree, but other than that I really hope that it will become widespread. Remember, you can make your own films with it too, so there’s plenty of interesting ways to experiment with it!

DANIEL: It was made for and will be used by e-sport leagues, but I don’t hesitate a second to say that the home movie-makers (including clans) will be the main users. Just look at the amount of videos on YouTube already!

DAVID: Yes, agree, and we also imagine that clans and more serious gamers will use the tool to analyze matches, to study successful tactics.

How long did it take to make the tool?

DAVID: The design process was really dragged out, and for a long time it was just an idea in someone’s head. And then, once we engineered the tool, every time we tested it live we realized we needed to add and change things. But this is typical for the games industry, you’ll want many development iterations and loads of sharp tests to get things right.

DANIEL: I don’t even know… looking at my calendar I had a deadline after 2 months, and I was working on it full-time for maybe a month after that. Since then it’s been on-and-off for another month or two when we got new ideas and feature requests.

Were all features set out from the beginning or did some come up during the development?

DAVID: The basic idea has changed very little, but there are loads of details that were added along the way. I’m not sure if Daniel perceived it as a very chaotic process, but I certainly felt that we knew what we had in mind, right from the start.

DANIEL: Well… chaotic at times perhaps, but the general idea of what is the broadcast tool has been intact from when I started working on it, so from my point of view it didn’t change in any major way. There were lots of additions though, for sure.

What were some of the difficulties you ran into?

DANIEL: The game wasn’t written with multiple simultaneous views in mind, so there were lots of optimizations that assume the camera can’t move all the way across the map and rotate 90 degrees in one frame, for example. Tracking all of those cases down was without a doubt the most difficult part of development.

What has the response been to the tool so far?

DAVID: So far so good. We’ll see what people think now that it is made available for everyone, but the tournament organizers have been in heaven when they got the tool in their hands. It gives you an amazing opportunity to turn a Strategy game into a large spectator event, something that has always been very difficult.

DANIEL: Everybody who sees it gets all excited, it’s incredibly fun to show it to people for the first time.

Is there anything that could be improved with the tool for future iterations for other titles?

DAVID: To be honest, if we had time, we could do incredible things with spectating. I think it is fair to say that we have only just began looking at this type of tools, and that there are many additional ideas and logical extensions that we have in our minds.

DANIEL: Our Lead Game Designer has a really scary list of features he’d like in the future, so there’s definitely things we could do. Also, I’m sure any future version would be better even if we made it feature-wise identical to this one (which we won’t!) since now we know what’s needed behind the scenes to make a tool like this work from the start.