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Do you know Czech games?
Do you know what Czech developers are working on?
If not, there is no reason to worry -
in new, and for Czech Internet unique series
we will introduce you the new and most interesting Czech game projects.
Our first stop was the studio of Bohemia Interactive
who's employees are just finishing the continuation of Armed Assault
and it was ArmA 2 that become the target of our attention.
What changes can players expect from the first game?
How much are the developers inspired by the community?
And will there be a working food chain in the game or not?
You will find the answer to these and many other questions in the following minutes.
And if you will be still hungry for more gaming knowledge
we shot especially for you an interview about motion capture technology.
The role of a host was enthusiastically taken by the lead PR, Jan Pražák.
Before the shooting started he showed us how realistically the game locations
are modelled after their real life counterparts.
But let's get to the game itself.
The player, in the campaign, will be a member of the Razor Team -
special forces team, so called Force Recon.
At the moment we're in the game, in the campaign.
In a part where the player has the ability to control his team.
He's the commander.
There are four characters.
During the campaign the player will also get the chance to control whole squads.
That's the hi-command mode, which I won't show you just yet.
Right now I'd like to show you we changed the interface a bit.
Among other things we have a context-sensitive command interface.
That means for most of the basic orders we don't have to click multiple times.
For example when I want all to return to formation or stop then
as you can see depending on where I point the cursor the list of commands changes.
At any time you can switch to the complex menu we know from the previous games.
Which basically wasn't changed, well, there are some improvements.
But it is still similar to the original menu
in which I can completely change their behavior and so on.
Now I gave them the command of "Danger".
Another difference between Flashpoint and ArmA is that the AI units
are really trying to be effective.
If I tell them "Danger" they really try to take cover.
Well, they don't really have where now...
If you send your soldiers somewhere in the "Danger" mode
it will take them much longer to get there
then if you tell them it's clear and to be just aware.
"As we could see the environment is really huge, so there is a lot of work with it"
"and the release date is quickly coming."
"Is there anything that didn't make it into the final game,"
"which you didn't have the time to add and will appear later in a patch?"
A huge load of things...
In the first place tens, hundreds of objects...
You could be adding objects all the day.
The boys who do the landscape and environmental design
still have loads of ideas.
The time is really pushing us forward
and thanks to that we're not able to get everything into the game.
Then there is lot of things the players, our fans, are calling for on the forums, etc.,
because of the experience from the previous games.
So we tried to implement as many new things and improvements
the players wished for as possible.
We got climbing over obstacles to work - it was not possible to get over low obstacles
in our games before.
It wasn't possible to use more gun positions on vehicles.
All these little things, AI behavior, was improved dramatically.
Indeed a lot of things just won't make it in.
For example you can't fish, mushroom in the forests, the food chain and
many other less important things don't work.
If there will be anything new in some patches, updates and so on
I really can't say at this time.
"Did you make any step towards the mainstream players in the development?"
"Or are you trying to have mainly a simulation?"
We always tried to have a simulation. To have things behaving like in the real life.
Of course, with certain things you have to tone it down a bit.
For example it doesn't take you half an hour to start a helicopter and so on.
But because we of course want the game to be played by
as many players as possible we had to simplify something.
So in case the player chooses the easy difficulty...
...Ups, I just crashed 'cos I wasn't paying attention...
In case the player turns on the easy game difficulty
he gets a lot of gadgets in the game.
Various enemy indicators, easier aiming, various hints, external views and similar.
So we chose the approach that the game itself, the simulation or anything else
doesn't change, but on the easier difficulty the player gets a helping hand
to finish the game.
"What was the hardest nut to crack in the development cycle?"
There are a lot of these, but if we spent a huge amount of time on something,
and we're still trying to improve it, it's indeed the AI.
It's not that hard to make an AI that works precisely and can handle anything,
but then such AI is completely artificial and doesn't behave like a human at all.
So to teach the AI to behave like a human - to make mistakes,
had problems detecting the enemy because it can't see or hear him...
Well, quite often if you play a game with bots on the hardest difficulty
you know the computer is cheating.
It knows where you are, it has faster reflexes and such.
We tried to avoid this.
But because the game is so complex, because AI, just as the player,
can control all the vehicles - cars, tanks, motorbikes, planes,
now the VTOL aircrafts such as the Osprey or F-35...
It is very hard to control all this to make sure the AI behaves like a human.
I think we were successful.
We implemented a lot of new things for the AI.
For example the Micro-AI we like to talk about.
Thanks to that the AI can navigate through towns or near obstacles
with the precision of centimeters now and really uses cover.
It's not like with other games where you have a corridor
with marked places so the AI knows it can hide there.
It knows you'll be coming from a certain direction so it's easy to script.
Our AI has to check where the enemy is, if he's shooting, where he can shoot
to determine which object can actually provide any cover.