Bringing Back Superpower Rivalry

Just when you thought the Cold War was over, veteran PC game developer Massive Entertainment brings back the superpowers for nothing short of an epic battle in their latest title World in Conflict: Soviet Assault—release date, early 2009. As Massive's arguably best real-time strategy (RTS) game to hit the shelves, World in Conflict moves away from sci-fi and into a "what-if" scenario of the Soviet Union invading Western Europe and the United States. Including historically accurate weaponry, World in Conflict unleashes the ultimate arsenal of assault rifles, anti-tank weapons, H-bombs, nukes, armed trucks, tanks, planes, and more.

But that's not even the most impressive part. Everything in the game is 100 percent destructible—and I mean everything. "This was something that the designers really wanted in the game and we had to get several different aspects to work together to make it all work," said Massive's Technical Director Niklas Westberg. "The result is a mix of physics, pre-animated sequences, a custom solution for ground deformation, and amazing work by our artists. Another cool thing is that the AI reacts to the changes in the environment, so it's pretty dynamic and makes for an interesting experience." Interesting to say the least. With 360° of camera control, advanced lighting and physics, unbelievably realistic graphics, and the ability to blow absolutely everything to smithereens, it's hard to remember that it's just a game.

Not Your Mama's RTS Game

World in Conflict unfolded in the studios of Massive as one of the most ambitious projects they'd ever undertaken. "We had already done two Ground Control games, and we thought it was about time we did something a little different," said Massive founder and President Martin Walfisz. "We have a lot of people in the studio who are into the whole military thing, so it felt natural to make a game with a realistic and plausible military setting." Martin continued, "The game is an action-oriented strategy game where the player picks one of four different roles to take command of infantry, air, armor, or support. We've balanced these different roles so they all have their own natural enemies. So in multi-player, players are urged to cooperate with their teammates to win."

Okay—but the Cold War? For those of us who lived through it, the idea of World War III at the time was very real. Playing a game where it actually unfolds like an alternate universe before your eyes is nothing short of brilliant—scary—but brilliant. "The reason we settled for the Cold War setting was that we didn't want to fall into the same pattern of many other games, with World War II or Middle East conflicts," Martin explained. "We wanted to do something more unique and decided to jump back two decades to explore what an all-out war between the two superpowers of the time would look like."

And all-out war we got. As a strategic chess match of ultimate destruction, World in Conflict takes RTS gaming to entirely new and relentless heights. Martin explained, "The biggest differences between World in Conflict and other RTS games are probably our focus on teamwork and the fast pacing. Seeing that we don't have any base-building or resource management, we can have players go online and join a server in the middle of a match and have a great experience! The drop-in multi-player really sets World in Conflict apart from other strategy games. And in the single-player campaign, we have a very strong story and interesting characters that we get to know in much more detail than traditional strategy games."

Having been originally designed to be a multi-player focused game, World in Conflict evolved quickly to support both single-player and multi-player. "After considering what we could do to make a more interesting campaign, we decided to go all in and take RTS storytelling to a new level. While the two different modes might look alike on the surface, the single-player campaign takes away the collaborative demands to not cramp the player's own style. The single-player missions are heavily based around story and campaign objectives."

So the question is — what on earth goes into the development of an über game like World in Conflict? Everything and then some.

Massive Technology

World in Conflict was built using Massive's proprietary Masstech engine. Developed in 2002 for Ground Control II, Massive has worked on continuously improving their technology for the ultimate gaming experience. "We developed the engine ourselves and we know the purpose of every single line of code," said Niklas. "So when something breaks—and let's be honest, it does—we know how to fix it and we don't have to rely on anyone else's support. Also, all the features and functionalities of the engine have been tailored for the need of our own games, so our designers and artists have all the things they need to realize their ideas. It really makes things a lot easier for everyone." Niklas continued with pride as he discussed the Masstech engine, "With every iteration of the engine, we've come closer and closer to the vision of a scalable strategy game that people with both old and new machines can play."

Realizing the future of highly threaded games, Massive chose to take their Masstech engine to the realm of multi-core. "We added multi-core support to an engine that was originally built for running on a single-core," explained Niklas. "We used the extra cores for very specific tasks like physics, particle updates, tree animations, shadowing calculations, and VoIP. In the next revision of the Masstech engine, which is currently in development for our future games, the multi-core support will be rooted deep in the architecture, which will allow for a wide and more thorough use."

The graphics in World In Conflict are arguably some of the best you'll see anywhere outside of real life— and maybe then, even better.

No matter where you stand in the game (or run for fear of being blown up), you'll find a virtual and beautiful reality—and that's up close or from a distance. Smoke, liquid, light—it's all done so superbly, I wonder what Massive could possibly do next to trump it. Broadly developing their game to work with as many graphics cards as possible was critical to making the game stunning on just about any system. "Our ambition has been to optimize the game for all kinds of graphics cards and hardware and, in the case of Intel® Graphics, we have made an extra effort in testing and optimizing the game to make sure we get top performance," explained Niklas. "The integrated graphics cards are becoming more and more popular, so they are an important sector for us."

Also critical to the graphics experience was their choice of physics engine. "We're currently using the Havok Physics engine for World in Conflict and World in Conflict: Soviet Assault," Niklas said. "The process in choosing it was very easy. I had some prior experience with Havok from an earlier project and I knew that the quality of the engine and the support was world class."

Developing for multi-core without the right tools can be rough. "I could talk for hours about issues with multi-core development," Niklas said. "It's difficult to write efficient multicore code and it's difficult to debug it. It all comes down to data organization. Managing your data well and keeping the code straightforward becomes more important than anything else." To help get them through some of those painful areas, Massive developers used Intel® VTune™ Performance Analyzer to hunt for inefficiencies in code. "It definitely made our lives easier!"

We wanted to have a strong online platform to keep the community together, and we wanted a system that didn't get in the way for what most players really want—to quickly log in and play the game.

Martin Walfisz
Massive founder and President

The Massive Community

World in Conflict appeals to single-player and multi-player audiences. But multi-player mode provides a truly rich and integrated gaming experience as you game with fellow clan or community members. Enter in Massive's Massgate multi-player server system. "Massgate is the result of years of research, design, and coding," Martin said. "We wanted to have a strong online platform to keep the community together, and we wanted a system that didn't get in the way for what most players really want—to quickly log in and play the game. We wanted to ensure that players could chat, run clans, play clan matches and leaderboard matches, or just drop in for a quick casual game. With the great feedback we've gotten from the community and the press, it really seems that we've succeeded."

The strange and wonderful thing is—this game hooks you emotionally. The cast of characters in World in Conflict are disarming and may even bring an occasional tear to the eye. With an exceptional soundtrack, stunning visuals, and the amazing voice of Hollywood actor Alec Baldwin, World in Conflict draws you in mercilessly and keeps you coming back for more. "It's been incredible to see the community evolve around the game and be really involved in developing it further," said Martin. "With all the different mod tools we've released, it's really impressive to see how engaged and creative gamers out there can be."

So what could possibly be next for Massive? It's top secret of course. But I'll tell you this — after playing World in Conflict, I know it'll be nothing short of absolute brilliance.