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    The fusion of technology and innovation can either be disastrous or epic. With the case of Splash Damage and id Software, the end product is nothing less than amazing with Enemy Territory: Quake Wars.

    Splash Damage, the creators of Quake 3 Fortress, and most notably Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory, have been working on great things. The UK-based company has been working furiously on the next generation of gaming. The setting is 2060AD, Earth: alien Strogg forces are attempting to invade Earth in the prequel to the Quake 2 and Quake 4 games. Players can choose one of two asymmetric sides in recreations of the prominent battles of the initial invasion across a variety of climates including desert, temperate, and arctic. Gameplay is comprised of three map campaigns, with each map having several unique objectives that keep players near the action at all times. As certain objectives are met, spawn points move to relocate spawning players to where they need to be.

    One of the advantages of working with one of the most influential gaming companies in the market is consultation. Though Splash Damage worked on most of the new technology for Quake Wars, id Software helped bring about the technology to fruition with the implementation of megatextures. A megatexture is a 32,000x32,000 image that determines the entire map. There is a great advantage to this: less geometry to render by using polygon independent texture analysis. By having one large texture to cover the entire map, a mapper does not have to overlay geometry to recreate fading of textures, IE as grassy hill that turns to sand before sprawling over a tarmac road. The problem with this technology would be that it would alienate the amateur mapper by forcing them to produce immense images for every map. With developing tools that will be available from Splash Damage either on release or soon after, one can import a file from a terrain generator and produce all of the attributes to each texture in the entire file. Afterwards, a mapper can easily go in and add the detail she/he wants to spruce up their map. The resulting image can end up in upwards of six gigabytes, but with the magic that John Carmack conjured up, each will only take up roughly eight megabytes of video RAM.

    After firing up Quake Wars and joining a game, you have the choice of joining the Global Defense Force or the Strogg. Splash Damage has improved on the unique gameplay first brought to us in the original Enemy Territory. Both Strogg and GDF forces are completely asymmetric. Unlike most games that have two equal sides that are simply reskinned to look different, Quake Wars provides a truly unique setting. If I had to describe the concept, I would relate it to StarCraft with its three completely different teams. Each team consists of five classes. Every class is outfitted with suitable firearms and skills, such as deployables, that encourage a diversified team.

    For the GDF, there is Soldier, Field Ops, Engineer, Ranger, and Medic. The Soldier has a general purpose machine gun (GPMG) and a LAW rocket launcher, both of which can be mounted on a suitable surface and used by any class. He also has fragmentation grenades and heavy explosive charge which can be used to dismantle vehicles. The Field Ops is a fire support specialist. He carries a machine pistol and can deploy a variety of artillery such as Field Gun Artillery, Rocket Artillery, Strategic Strike Missile and Air-Strike Uplink. These can be controlled by laser painting enemy targets. And engineer is a support/defense class. Carrying a shotgun, land mines, and proximity traps, he can repair broken deployables and vehicles and can deploy radars and defense turrets (that are dependant on radar). Rangers are the stealth class. Carrying a sniper rifle and smoke grenades, their focus is on infiltration. Rangers can use their PDA’s to hack and disable Strogg deployables. Finally, Medics carry an assault rifle which can be outfitted with a scope or grenade launcher, dispense medpacks, construct supply stations, and use defibrillator pads to revive fallen teammates.

    Though the Strogg have similar classes, playing as them is quite different. For one, the Strogg use stroyent, the life and munitions force the Strogg live off of, as health and ammunition, this enables a Strogg player to sacrifice ammo to heal themself, and vice versa. The Strogg classes are Tank, Oppressor, Constructor, Infiltrator, and MediTek. The Tank class carries a hyperblaster, obliterator bosonic orb weapon, several types of grenades and charges, and can deploy a remotely controlled drone. The Oppressor carries a lightning pistol and can deploy a plasma mortar or a rail howitzer. The constructor carries a nailgun and EMP charges and deploys anti-personnel, and anti-vehicle turrets. He also can dispatch a repair drone to repair deployables and vehicles which repairs the most needed parts first and returns to the player. Infiltrators carry railguns and can stun players with a bio-electric pinch bomb which enables him to “possess” GDF players, and can use their corpse as a disguise to infiltrate GDF bases. MediTeks keep teammates alive and shooting by replenishing their stroyent. He can create spawn hosts out of fallen GDF players a la Sroggifying them. Though similar in theory to the GDF player classes, the Strogg classes differ just enough to keep things interesting. A player proficient as a GDF Medic will not be as proficient as a Strogg MediTek.

    Another interesting game artifact is the use of vehicles. Vehicles range from one man bikes to multi-person helicopters. Vehicles have damage specific portions that can affect how they operate, and what they can provide. You can shoot the wheels off an APC and as long as there is traction and the correct drive train wheels attached, it will function as it should. You can knock off supplies from an MCP and players will not be able to refuel provisions. Vehicles were designed around the gaming engine instead of just being scripted models. The six wheeled GDF APC had trouble maneuvering with only the front two wheels being able to turn, so the first four had to be programmed to turn to make it work. Vehicles were designed to extend the character level area purpose. Also, Splash Damage didn’t want to have every player clamoring over the vehicles, so each map has sections where being on foot really is the best mode of transport. Player classes are also given a variety of ways to dismantle or destroy enemy vehicles, such as a GDF Soldier can stick an explosive charge to a Strogg Goliath and blow its leg off.

    GDF vehicles represent Splash Damage’s vision of what military vehicles might look and feel like in the next 50 years or so. Strogg forces employ vehicles from a different technology caliber. Among the GDF vehicles slated for release are the Husky Quad Bike, Badger Truck, Trojan APC, Titan Tank, Anansi Hover Copter, and Mobile Command Post. The Quad Bike is a one man, weaponless and armorless vehicle that can traverse slim footpaths and perform jumps over obstacles that block bigger vehicles. The Badger is a 4x4 truck that fits a driver, passenger, and gunner, think Warthog from Halo. The Trojan APC is a 6x6 armored bully that is also amphibious. It’s designed to carry four foot soldiers and a driver, with only a machine gun as armament. The Titan Tank is your standard tank with driver, tank gunner, and machine gunner. The Anansi Hover Copter hosts FAFF rockets, anti-armor HAW missiles and a chin-mounted machine gun. To help with the learning curve of flying vehicles, Splash Damage has included a newbie-zone of limited control after take off to prevent someone from tipping it over and killing everyone so quickly. The MCP is a slow and cumbersome vehicle which mounts a radar and anti-SSG turret. Once deployed, GDF players can change their class in the field and resupply.

    Strogg vehicles are the more imaginative ones. Having alien technology means having greater creative control over what can be made. Icarus Hoverpacks are one man jet packs a lot like the ones used in the Tribes games. Hog Trucks can host two Strogg players and has a devastating ram attack and machine gun. The Goliath is one of the more innovative vehicles. A bipedal machine that can crawl over almost any surface houses a driver and a gunner. The gunner has 360 rotation independent of the driver and features anti-armor and anti-personnel weaponry. The Hornet Flyer is a flying contraption set afloat by four anti-gravity repulsors. It carries a plasma cannon, anti-vehicle rockets, and a rapid-fire lacerator. Though similar to the Anansi Hover Copter, the means of flight are physically different, yielding a different feel to flight. The amazing thing with all vehicles is that they can be controlled by a single pilot, but with limited firing capabilities. The true power of each vehicle is achieved through teamwork and communication.

    Quake Wars was built from the Doom 3 engine, not the Quake 4 engine. This has a lot of advantages in itself. By starting with a base engine and developing a multiplayer game specifically for multiplayer, Splash Damage has been able to integrate some very intriguing things. Each map has a latitude and longitude as well as a time attached to it. This will put the sun at the correct spot in the sky, the stars, moon and other celestial objects are in their correct place and the lighting from them is congruent with what it should be. These can be changed on the fly to create different maps altogether. A map played at noon will have quite different shadows than if it were 6PM. Third and first person animations are synced up perfectly so that what you see happening is what others see happening. Is that enemy who’s shooting suppressive fire stopping to reload or to make you think he is? To help draw the player to the action, the server monitors gameplay and assigns missions to specific classes automatically. Of course, you can ignore these and go deathmatch if you wish, but it’s a neat perk to bring people who are new to the game into the action. Also, distant explosions sound distant and are directional which helps players hear where the action is. Other features include in game voice chat, absolute Linux support (though may not be 100% done at the time of shipping), Punkbuster for anti-cheating, and stopwatch mode for tournament play.

    Overall this is an exciting game that I will be frothing at the mouth to get. The game is much more amazing than the E3 trailer shows or that I can write about. To be honest, I haven’t been this excited about a multiplayer game in a very very long time.

Pictures of outside and inside Activision's Headquarters where ET: Quake Wars was previewed.

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