Dev Blog - AI

Wednesday 03/28/07 -

 

 

 

 

 

Name:                                                              Cristian Hrisc

Current Job:                                                  Alexandru Gris

My Job in the SH IV Project:                      Ubisoft Bucharest ROMANIA

 

Date of Birth:                                                 April 8^th, 1980    

 

Languages Known:                                       ENGLISH

 

 

 

 

What can I say? From my point of view, the AI rocks!

 

Intro:

 

We have started developing the new AI features for SH4 based on the rock solid AI from SH3. Our task was to improve even more on the existing code and add enhancements like planes firing torpedoes, the adversarial mode, tuning the enemy tactics according to the battle of Pacific, etc. Together with the guys from the design team, we have established a list of "must have" features that would enhance the game play and the overall game experience. We have focused on adding the realities of the Pacific WW2 into the game together with making the game more appealing on the network-game side.

 

 

How did we do it?

 

Planning was done in a series of meeting (more or less formal) between the design and the development teams. The outcome of these meetings was a better understanding of the requirements for both sides and a series of specifications on which to write the code. These meetings were extended during the whole AI dev time to ensure that the new stuff is correctly understood and implemented and that each of the enhancements successfully improves the game experience as desired. During these meetings, the design team provided great feedback so that we could accomplish all the milestones we have set, according to our quality and time requirements.

 

The first days were rather difficult. We had to take ownership of the existing code, which was quite a lot. Luckily, Cristi Mihalache, the previous "AI-master" from SH3, provided great help and assistance to smoothly pass through this transition phase. I have to thank Cristi for patiently answer all my questions! The next step was to make some architectural changes and refactorings to ensure that we could easily add the new features. This was quite tricky since we had to make sure that we don't break the code in the process. Then, the new features came one by one, as desired and as planned. Continuous feedback and reviews ensured that we could surpass each challenge that we faced in the process.

 

The first impression is one of success, as everything appears to work fine; the first tests show it J

 

By,

Alexandru Gris 

Dev Blog - Multiplayer

Friday 03/16/07 -

                              Name: Ioan Manea                                          

 

Current Job: Ubisoft Bucharest ROMANIA

 

My Job in the SH IV Project: Lead game programmer

 

Date of Birth: June 1^st, 1981

 

Languages Known: ENGLISH

Nationality: ROMANIAN

 

 

 

 

What is the game providing?

 The Multiplayer system is very important as it allow the players to experience another dimension of the game.

Silent Hunter 4 allows the players to hunt together (Wolfpack mode) in a LAN or Online game or even to play against each other (Adversarial mode).

The wolfpack mode is similar to the one from Silent Hunter 3, where the players go together to sink the enemy ships around them.

The new Adversarial mode allows the player playing on the Server machine to issue commands to the enemy fleet; the mission of the other players will be to sink as many ships as possible while the mission of the Server will be to prevent the others from achieving their objective.

 

 

How is our multiplayer system built?

 In every existing game the multiplayer allows the synchronization of elements (like ships, planes, cars, etc.) between different computers in a network or over the Internet (of course, we’re talking about games that HAVE multiplayerJ). But in Silent Hunter 4 this system is used for some other things also. We are using it to implement the Save, Load and Replay features of the game, so it is a system that functions event when not playing a multiplayer game (Single Mission, Career Mission).

Every time an object in our world (by object we understand any ship, plane, weapon on a ship, etc.) does something on your computer it sends a message to all the other computers so that the same object will do the same thing everywhere.

This information is also saved in files on the local disk. Depending on the game type and length these files can have sizes between a few KB to a few hundred MB.

The messages stored in these files are used to implement the Save, Load and Replay.

 

 

What else is the game providing? J

 You will be able to view a replay of what you have played in a single, career or multiplayer game.

When viewing a replay, the game will load the initial map (the map when starting the game) in its initial conditions. The game will be put in multiplayer mode, but you are actually alone there. Then multiplayer messages will be taken from the files previously saved and pumped into the game. So, when viewing a replay is like playing a multiplayer game, except that the network input is not coming from the actual network but from the files on your hard disk.

 You will be able to increase/decrease speed, jump to the future and so on. You will even be able, by just pressing a button, to stop the data streaming from the files, switch back to single player game and just take control of your Sub! So, if you have done something that you don’t like you will just have to start a replay, go to the bad decision point and do something else! And all that through the multiplayer moduleJ!

 This system is also used for loading. Actually, the loading of a game means that a replay is executed with fast forward speed (of course, in order to meet performance needs only the most important messages are taken from files in this case, all the others will be discarded).

 

By,

Ioan Manea

Dev Blog - Navigation Map

Friday 03/16/07 -

 

 

Name:                                                                   Dragos Mihailescu                        

 

Current Job:                                                         Ubisoft Bucharest ROMANIA

 

My Job in the SH IV Project:                             Game programmer

 

Date of Birth:                                                      April 20^th, 1980

 

Languages Known:                                              ENGLISH

 

Nationality:                                                          ROMANIAN

 

 

 

 

 

 Around the world:

 

In SH3 the world was kind of flat and the ships were very stubborn in not crossing the line when reaching the end of the map by turning 180 degrees. The Pacific Ocean was split in two beyond recognition. The first thing to do was to put everything on a cylinder so that the map scrolls, fish from both sides of the Pacific are reunited, the first AI trip around the world is actually possible and second if we have time, to fix all the tools and game maps.

 

At some point the cylinder was spinning but something looked kind of wrong, same blue map and boring land. The look and feel of SH3 map was a compromise then, but now things could get much better with the new minimum requirements of the game. Pixel Shader 2.0 was going to solve the blue and sad map in which most of you spent days and years in time compression, probably turning your face blue J (except for the night watch, but probably you already have red light in your room if you’re reading this).

 

The first game map design proposal looked good but there were lots of things to do to get there. First we’ve introduced the location editing system to put on map the 3D locations much easily and also to put 2D images and notes and started tuning things up. In short time the 2D aspect of the map was a great leap forward. The game designers were quite happy … which is kind of unusual because most of the time they like to torture me with all kinds of game feature requests that frightened some other programmers too J.

 

 

 

 The game had a lot of old code that had to be sand blasted, repaired and repainted. The map scaling on multiple resolutions forced us to compromise for speed. In other places like the editor the situation looked much better and now one can edit easier than before and with new features included: the campaign, missions, map aspect and mission logic.I hope that the new capabilities will allow you to put in the game everything that we forgot or didn’t have a priority for it.

 

By

Dragos Mihailescu

Dev Blog - Harbors and Cities

Friday 03/16/07 -

Personal Details

    

Dev Blog - Interface Files

Friday 03/16/07 -


Silent Hunter 4 – Interface

Silent Hunter is a special type of game, in which the player makes great use of the 2D interface by using the mouse and the keyboard. You just can’t play Silent Hunter with a joystick. This means we had to work heavily on the game interface.

New additions

The interface is very scalable and can run in any resolution greater than 1024*768. Basically, the available screen resolutions reported by DirectX are only a restriction to the game. This means the game can run at any aspect ratio, on any monitor: 4:3, 5:4, 16:9, 16:10 etc. So, go ahead and buy the HD monitor you want, Silent Hunter 4 will make full use of it. We tested the game and looks great on 37" HD monitors.



The 2D menu engine now has integrated animations that allows for auto hiding (in the HUD, museum and periscope). The player can now configure the interface by hiding the unnecessary items:



The resizing of items (for the dials in the HUD) is used to provide more information to the player when is needed. When changing the submarine’s course, the dial increases in size to clearly see the bearings written on it. This is even more useful when playing in HD resolutions:



More complex, in game windows-like controls

The new interface makes use of lists that can contain any 2D object, including combo boxes that each one has a new list of its own. The designers can create HTML like mission descriptions displayed directly in the game, containing texts and images that can be scrolled. You can’t see this in many games. These features allow the designers to imagine interfaces not possible before and eliminate cluttered screens that damage the gameplay.



Customizable interface

Parts of the interface are created at runtime, based on text files that can be easily modified by designers (and by the players, to create MODS ?):



By Mihai Maerean