Brian Holinka, Kaos Studios (Lead Technical Designer)

The gang here at Outpostgamez had a talk with Brian Holinka, Lead Technical Designer for Frontlines:Fuel of War. He talks about consulting with the US military, about how friendly the modding will be, leaderboards and a lot of other good stuff. 

OPG: For those that might not know who you are Brian, could you tell us a little about who you are and your position at Kaos Studios?

FFOW: My position, Lead Technical Designer, at Kaos is a fairly hybrid position.  On a daily basis, I perform mostly programming tasks, working with Ian Pilipski to build the general vehicle programming architecture and implement those systems.   But Frank and Dave have empowered me with a lot of creative influence over how the vehicles were designed and how they play in the end-game.  Fortunately, Ian is a very strong programmer and can handle all the background systems while I iterate with our designers on the general “feel” of the vehicles.  I also work with Dave Arata and Rex Hill on our characters and weapons, but that is primarily in an advisory role.  Before working at Kaos, I was a Captain in the Air Force, flying a desk in the 10^th Communications Squadron at the US Air Force Academy.  In my spare time, I worked with the likes of Frank, Joe and our vehicle artist, Brian Burrell, on the Desert Combat mod for Battlefield 1942.  I then moved to New York when Trauma Studios was formed, worked with DICE when they acquired Trauma, and moved over to Kaos shortly after it was formed.

OPG: How much did Kaos Studios get in consulting with the US military on certain areas of interest and could you tell us a little on what areas and why you had gone to the military for consulting on game play in Frontlines.

FFOW: We consulted with some past and present marines specifically about squad tactics and communication.  We were hoping to get a lot of the specific “how would people act in this situation” communication ironed out, but at the same time FFOW soldiers are not designed to be like modern day soldiers.   For the most part, soldiers in the armed services of modern day super powers are professionals.  Officers and enlisted troops are well-discplined and well-trained.  They know how to act in every situation because they’ve rehearsed in countless times, so this is reflected in very cool collected dialogue.  FFOW is set in a more desperate time, where soldiers aren’t necessarily willing participants.  They may have been drafted into service or joined the military in the hopes it would leave to a better life for them.  So this is reflected in their behavior and their dialogue.

OPG: What is Kaos Studios next project after Frontlines, should we expect perhaps a Frontlines 2 in the near future or any other titles other than Frontlines from Kaos Studios?

FFOW: Frontlines is a tremendous accomplishment.  Maybe that sounds a bit cocky, but when you look at where most of the core members of the studio were 5 years ago, no one would have predicted we could have or would have made a video game of this caliber.  We’ve made a number of mistakes but we’ve also had far more successes.  Frontlines is a fun game and we’re already making a list of ideas that could enhance the experience and add to the carnage.  I think once people play Frontlines, there will be a tremendous demand for another Kaos Studios production, and we’ll happily oblige.  We have our own ideas what that will be, but you’ll just have to wait and see for now.

OPG: As we know there is a lot of female players today, is there perhaps future plans or plan to place a female soldier in Frontlines or will you leave that to the modding community?

FFOW: Female soldiers was a feature we had looked at towards the very beginning of Frontlines but it was cut for a number of reasons.  With any console game, memory is a large part of the equation when deciding on what feature to implement.  As you may have noticed in your daily life, women are not built like men…thank goodness.  So basically, we either need to double our animation efforts and increase our animation memory budget, or allocate that memory to other parts of the game we felt would have a more pronounced effect on the gaming experience.  Of course, we value the contributions of women soldiers, but it just didn’t work for us on this project.

OPG: As your roots are from modding Battlefield 1942 into the Desert Combat Mod, what can you tell us about how friendly the modding will be for this game, will it be more flexible than most game we see today?

FFOW: This is a big issue for us based completely on our roots as modders.  One of the major factors in our selection of Unreal Engine 3 was the history that Epic Games has with their mod community.  We were hoping that Unreal’s tools would give us a jump start in ensuring our game could be modified to the player’s delight.  But, as you move forward in a game’s development, you have to prioritize certain features and modding has not been as strong a focus for us as stability and performance.  So, while our mod support will not be as robust as say, Unreal Tournament’s at ship, we’ll be working that support into post-release patches.

OPG: Following from the previous question, could you explain how you intend to address the issue of gaming servers, should we expect to see something along the lines of ranked and unranked? If so could you explain how this will work?

FFOW: We’ll be working leaderboards into post-release patches.  In addition to running our own servers, we’ll also release a dedicated server executable so people can run their own stand-alone servers.  Once our leaderboards come online, there will be ranked and unranked servers.

OPG: Could you tell us about if you will have some type of award system for obtaining upgrades like weapons for example? Unlocks etc, etc.

FFOW: Rather than persistent upgrades, we have round-based ones that allow the players to level up their roles in individual matches.  We’ve heard a number of complaints about how persistent unlock systems encourage selfish play, as many players become more concerned about their own individual rank than the team winning the match they’re actually in.  We wanted to give the players some progression but avoid telling players their own score is more important than their team’s.

OPG: question related to being with THQ, could you tell us how much flexibility you have under THQ on building Frontlines?

FFOW: Phenomenal.  They’ve never come down and dictated anything to us design-wise.  They understand we’re the ones good at making games and they’ve enabled us to do that 100%.  While that means we have to do our part to first, make the game awesome to play, but second deliver things to them in a timely manner.  They’ve been incredible in helping us develop the studio from the ground up (seriously we’ve grown about 800% since I’ve been here).

OPG: What type of environments will a gamer experience, examples such as sand storms, rain, wind?

FFOW: The variety in the landscapes that our level designers, lead by Richard “Iggy” Cowgill of Desert Combat fame, and environment artists have built is tremendous.   While we don’t have any in-game weather systems per se, they’ve been very creative in using environmental effects to build really immersive ambience.  Coupled with some really powerful and impressive sound (I’ll be blatantly honest, I feel our sound superior to many of our competitors that I’ve played recently), it makes you forget your staring at a screen and draws you in.  I’m really proud of what those guys have done and I’m just glad to have been associated with them on this project.

OPG: Could you explain what type of map sizes will FFOW support in Multiplayer, can you tell us how a map’s parameters will be determined?

FFOW: We felt like one of Desert Combat’s strongest points was its combat diversity.  You could play intimate urban battles like Lost Village and then next map be flying in the gigantic aerial dogfight of No Fly Zone.  Not to mention the total battlespace represented by Desert Shield.  So, we set out to create that same diversity in our maps.  We have maps ranging from Street, an aptly-named close-quarters infantry map, to Solar Farm, a huge map that features jets, helicopters, tanks, jeeps and pretty much every weapon of war we’ve brought to the party.

OPG: How will damage or death be represented in game, will there be a health bar of some sorts?

FFOW: We wanted to prolong the fights for people.  Since our game follows the fairly common die-and-respawn-after-a-timer mechanism, we didn’t want people to spend the majority of their time watching a timer tick down or running from one location to another.  So, people are able to recover from a few shots by ducking behind cover but if they sustain heavy damage in a short period of time, they will die.

OPG: For the flyboys out there, could you tell us a little about planes and helicopters and how they will work and what the community should expect from such vehicles?

FFOW: I’ve been working on helicopters in these games since the Apache in Desert Combat and if I’ve learned anything, it’s that you can’t please everyone…so at least please Frank.  In all seriousness, I’ve always been surprised at the wide range of opinions we receive about the helicopters and how popular they are.  I really feel like we could just be successful making a helicopter game.  They’re deadly.  They’re fun to fly.  They’re probably the vehicle we’ve iterated on most.  We feels it’s very important to get them right.  Desert Combat was our standard for everything in the air and that’s what we continue to work towards and improve upon.

OPG: How destructive will the environment be in FFOW?

FFOW: Destructive environments are a careful balance between environmental interaction and environmental beauty.  I think we’ve done a fantastic job in balancing the two.  The environments look incredible and there’s a lot of destruction.  While I won’t kid you and say “everything is destroyable,” I’d be lying if I didn’t say “most everything is destroyable.”  Objects that you feel should be dynamic are and it brings a lot of cool moments to the action.

OPG: Could you explain what type of anti aircraft/anti vehicle weapons will handle in game?

FFOW: We have two primary anti-aircraft vehicles in the game, one for each side.  The WC’s anti-aircraft is quicker and more nimble when moving around, while the RS side has more health and can withstand a greater onslaught from above.  Both are equipped with straight-fire proximity missiles that you can use to lead aircraft without locking on.  Since this is more difficult, it’s also more rewarding, delivering more damage to your target.  If you’re able to lock-on to a target (which is no easy feat mind you), the missile will track them down but it can be avoided fairly easily.  So, it comes down to skill in most instances.  If the pilot is well-skilled, chances are you’re not going to be able to lock-on to him/her, fire and forget.  You’re going to have to outsmart him/her. 

For the infantry, we have EMP missiles, that disable aircraft within a proximity of their detonation, and the anti-vehicle missiles, that can either lock-on or direct-fire.  The EMP missiles are very satisfying, as watching the helicopter that’s been tormenting you fall helplessly from the sky to it’s destruction would bring a smile to any gamer’s face.

We would like to thank Brian Holinka for allowing us to pry out some of the details on Frontlines Fuel of War, a highly anticipated First Person Shooter.

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Images of FFOW: outpostgamez.com/mediacat-2.html

Thank you,

Scott Murphy & Tim Jennings (Editor for Outpostgamez)

Frontlines: www.frontlineswar.com/index.php