Red Faction Developer Diaries


 * 9-02 update
 * by Jeff Farris, lead programmer

We're finally entering the home stretch. We've spent the last week or so taking care of those little detail items that inevitably come up near the end of a project, such as polishing up the installer, getting the editor ready for release, and getting those last few bugs squared away. The Todolist is looking mighty short these days, and that familiar end-of-project frantic feeling is back. The programmers are being extra careful making changes, so we don't inadvertently break something. The level designers have spent their time coordinating focused playtesting sessions on all of their levels, gathering feedback and making their final tweaks. The past few days have also been great fun -- we've been doing plenty of playtesting and a spirited rivalry has developed between the QA team and the development team.

Certainly a hectic week on our end of things. Got the Red Faction Multiplayer Test download out on the Internet and am awaiting all kinds of feedback now. We're hoping it's well received -- I think Geo-Mods are shown off a lot better in multiplayer since there's really absolutely nothing that's scripted. In single player, we could kind of "convince" players to deform certain areas. Now, it's in there hands entirely. It's been fun to hop on servers and play against people other than Volition and THQ employees. Sometimes the chat comments you see going back and forth are just as helpful as the emails we get.
 * 8-17 update

Also getting lots of feedback from the single player demo that made its way onto the internet. We have everything at that support mail address go right into our newsreaders so we can sort and go through the messages in an organized fashion. We've gotten a lot of really informative reports so far, and a good mix of praise and constructive criticism. Implementing what we can based on feedback will help make this a stronger game. We're getting closer and closer to release, and the public has finally gotten a taste of the PC version.

Had a lot to get done this week -- THQ sent us a boatload of testers to work with us out here and multiplayer has gotten some pretty serious attention because of it. QA is finding lots of areas the game can be improved with just little adjustments and fixes here and there, and overall that means the game is shaping up really well. Each day that passes is another one we use to stamp out a few more bugs here and there, so every time we all join in and test things feel closer and closer to completion. We've still got some tweaks to do with weapon damage values and item placement throughout the levels, but the game is getting a lot of testing and I'm confident we'll be able to get these done.
 * 8-03 update

We've also been busy doing a lot of single player balance work. I adjusted some of the movement of the AI to make things feel a little less sporadic, and it seems to have made a big difference. Things "feel" a lot better now, but the enemies are still tough to take down which is good.

Another thing we've been working on is the kind of stuff that typically comes up at the end of a project, like making sure our installer and launcher are good to go, and handling a lot of the stuff that goes into documentation for the game. As we get more and more of this done, it reminds me that we are indeed close to finishing this project and getting it on shelves.

We've Been working a lot on multiplayer Red Faction -- everything's starting to come together and it's beginning to feel more and more like a finished product. It seems like every time I run the game, there's something shiny and new replacing our old hacked debug stuff. There's new HUD art, new interface, better-looking levels, and a lot of the general polish that feel more complete.
 * 7-28 update

One area we have been focusing on lately has been multiplayer balance. We've been tweaking the weapons and adjusting the levels to take care of any problems that playtesting flushes out, etc. Our daily play sessions have become quite popular, and the competition has been fierce.

Optimization work continues, especially in the rendering engine. Obviously, every bit of performance counts, so we're devoting significant time to profiling and tweaking.

Up next, we wll be addressing balance in the single player game, making sure it's not too easy and not too hard. There were some things that we did in the PS2 version that don't really apply to the PC, like auto-aiming, so we'll be making a few adjustments to get the feel of the game back to spec.