Last week, Ubisoft invited us to come have a look at the final version of
Far Cry 2 as demonstrated by Clint Hocking, the game’s lead designer. The following day we sat down with Louis-Pierre Pharand,
Far Cry 2 producer to talk in-depth about what we’d just seen and also what we’d experienced playing the preview version.
It’s a long conversation, but we think it’s a really meaty and interesting one. We start by asking Louis-Pierre about the multiplayer map editor.
Was it a challenge to design the map editor interface for the consoles? During the demo it looked surprisingly intuitive.
The tool itself is a version of the tool we have for our own level designers. We created the tools and it was easier to port to the PC interface that we have. On the console side it was more of a challenge, but we just iterated, iterated, iterated until we got it right. It’s not the same thing – a mouse and a keyboard is intuitive and we wanted to make the interface on the console just as intuitive and not feel as if you’re always in a menu. The fact that you can always go in your map at all times and test, we took the approach that we need to give people the ability to iterate all the time. You know, do something, test it, do something, test it.
We took two years of trying multiple versions until we got it right. We got the tools in the hands of consumers and focus tested because after two years there comes a point where we’re not good judges of that sort of thing. So focus testing, we do it for the game, we do it for the map editor, we do it for everything. That way we can get the consumer feedback and that’s the best way we have of knowing we got it right.
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Does the UI change between console and PC at all?
Completely. The backbone is the same thing, but what you have in front of you is completely different. We had people dedicated to the shooting mechanics on the PC and people dedicated to the same thing on the console. And the same goes for the editor. That way you can have the best of both worlds.
You know, a lot of shooters are made for consoles and ported to PC very quickly, and you’re playing it and it feels like crap. But we took the time to make specific SKUs the right way.
Is there any tutorial with the map editor?
No, there’s no tutorial. You can always get help and information from it, but it really is that easy to use. I gave it the ultimate test the other, I gave it to my 11-year old niece and it took her a few minutes and she was making a savannah. So it’s that easy. At some point what’s going to stop people is not the tools but the creativity that goes with it. Some people have a hard time transposing an idea in their head to something… that’s not in their head. That’s why we have a wilderness generator to give people something to start with. A lot of people are afraid of the blank page, you know? So basically, you can start with a random jungle or savannah or whatever you want, that way you have something to start with, your canvas is not empty and you can start making rivers, changing the terrain and putting everything on it.
Can you import the existing multiplayer maps that ship with the game?
No, you can’t do that, but you’ll be able to take a map from anyone that’s been uploaded and re-modify it. We know that’s what’s going to happen. Some people are going to make maps that are visually really impressive but maybe gameplay-wise not so exciting. We know that other people will take those maps and remake and reshape them. The original creator will always get credited and then there’ll be a second credit once the map has been modified by someone else. We feel it’s important that if you make great maps you’ll always get the credit for it.
We also have a validation tool to make sure you’ve made all your things proper to the map, like spawnpoints and all the gameplay elements need to be done properly. And if the validation tool comes back and says your spawnpoint goes through the terrain, it’ll get the camera to that position so you know exactly what your mistake is. It’ll list things that are missing as well, so you get direct feedback about what you did wrong so you can fix it.
So we made sure it was really intuitive. That was the key thing we wanted to make sure of.
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Can you tweak any of the mode settings in multiplayer?
No. We have Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, Capture the Diamond and Uprising, which is kind of like a capture-point or VIP type mode, but you can’t modify those. We had a list at one point and that was one of the options we had, as well as wanting to give people the ability to import their own assets and stuff, but we had to cut somewhere down the line. It still is a big tool to create and make it really intuitive, and we had to cut at some time. I’m sure we’ll iterate on it later…
Is that something we could see in terms of DLC?
Ha, unfortunately I can’t talk about DLC at this point…
Would you like to do it?
Hmm, for DLC I think that will probably be a little bit too complex. But for the next Far Cry I’m sure we’ll build on the map editor because it’s really a great tool. We see people’s reaction to it when Clint [Hocking, Far Cry 2 lead designer] is demo-ing it, they’re like “Did he just build that in ten minutes?”
And it’s not just a tool for creating Far Cry 2 maps, or for only creating maps that are typical African settings. I hired an intern for three months and I told to go do whatever you want, and he made Paris, the Eiffel Tower and all around there. He made Normandy Beach. He made some really crazy stuff...
You can see the Eiffel Tower in this Crazy Map Editor Trailer
So I expect people to be making homage maps to like Counter-Strike maps, Quake maps in the first few weeks. We think it’s cool. We think it’s really fun that people are going to make these maps and then play them with the elements and weapons we have in Far Cry.
I’d personally love to do see the ability to make single-player maps.
Now, that’s another challenge…
What sort of challenges?
It’s technical. The thing that we don’t support at all is the “nav-mesh”, creating the pathfinding for the AI which is extremely heavy on memory and heavy on performance, and all the issues you have to wrestle with the nav-mesh. Making sure it fits perfectly, it’s just a huge technical challenge. We don’t have a tool that generates a perfect nav-mesh on terrain that we don’t control. If I give you the ability to create you won map, we’d have to create a counter-intuitive tool that forces you to create maps that respect the nav-mesh.
That’s interesting. A lot of people would have assumed it’s just automatically generated with the geometry of the world.
Yes, but it has to respect the physical constraints of the world. I mean, it was thousands of bugs for the single-player that we had to find in the nav-mesh in the last few months. You know, for the last month we don’t even touch the nav-mesh for fear of creating more bugs.
So you auto-generate it and then you have to go in and tweak it by hand?
Yeah, we tweak it by hand. I’m talking about touching tiny single points and moving them. And on a 50km2 map! So just imagine that’s twelve level designers doing that every day. It would’ve been a nightmare and it would’ve made the tool less interesting in the end because we would’ve had to create constraints.
We’ll see if we’re able to build an automatic nav-mesh generator that’s kick-ass, but that’s not the case so far. Cos it’s true, it would’ve been cool to be able to create co-op maps and things, but honestly I’m happy with what we’re shipping, which is 50 hours of gameplay, multiplayer and a map editor. I think it’s the right step to build on and make the tool more and more complete as we go down the line.
Keep reading, there's more on Page 2!
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