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Jarek's Diary
[6th of May 2005] Tough Job Doing a Sequel
As Vietcong 2 is finally announced, I can tell you more about our hard job working on a sequel. First, I must admit that Vietcong did not achieve a great success in terms of business matters. The game was probably not as polished and balanced as it could have been. Perhaps the game was too focused on hardcore gamers and military fans, or maybe the support of the publisher's marketing department was not too great. On the other hand, Vietcong was very successful, seeing that there are still thousands of persons playing it. In addition, for many players, Vietcong is the best game they have ever played. I am also positively fascinated of the many unique features of Vietcong that other war game developers use in their games. These negative and positive facts have, of course, a big influence on the development of the sequel for Vietcong. We are still highly dependent on our business partners. Therefore, our game must reflect their requests and needs. However, we are still very fresh in terms of ideas and quite independent in what we are able to do. Additionally, even with the fact that many people in the team were not happy with the way Vietcong ended up, we still love developing games, and we are making our games with our brains and passion.
When working on a sequel, we want to make everything better. We want to have two times better graphics, much more detailed textures, far nicer characters, and weapons that are even more realistic. The engine has to be new, more advanced, and faster. All past problems must be eliminated. The missions definitely have to be much more epical, contain more action and be playable, and still be very authentic and atmospheric. Yes! That is it; I forgot to mention that it has to be done in half the time compared to the original game, and that it has to work on normal computers. That is what I call a tough job. When I have to direct such a development, on many occasions my dreams turn into nightmares, and I wish to have never started working on such a sequel.
Although we did not obtain much money from the original Vietcong, we have obtained incredible amounts of experience, and as time goes on, we are getting much more of such. With this experience and skill that is surely hidden somewhere inside everyone from our team, we can face the development and finish this tough job. You think that there are always bad moments, pitfalls, and dead ends during the creation of such a sequel, but you must carry on and finish the game in the quality you have planned. And when you hate your game the most, after dozens of months of work closed behind doors in the office, and you feel that the game looks bad and plays rubbish, you realise that the small ugly thing called "Red Dawn" (which you have almost already forgotten because it was left somewhere) is played and enjoyed by many gamers. Then you go back to the forum and see the constructive discussion about the game, and you realise that you have been captured by the dream of a perfect game similar to reality. You open your eyes and see that the dreadful game you are working on is in fact quite good. It just needs to add and enhance a few things. In the end, things are not as bad as they seemed before, and you feel good.
Therefore, I once again wish to thank you dear fans for your endless support and help. Now, our publisher has finally said the magic words, and the game is officially announced, which is great! Now we just have to finish this marvellous game.
[17th of April 2005] Never-ending Dilemma between Reality and Playability
Vietcong and the next Vietcong game are what I usually like to call documentary games, which means that we are trying to recreate historic environments, actions, and atmosphere as realistically as possible. "As possible" is a very important aspect of that sentence, as the most important thing about a game is playability. This means that even with an incredible amount of research, knowledge, and materials that we have obtained, there are often situations where we have to apply a solution, which is not correct according to the reality. A few of these decisions are easy to make; however, some of these reality changes are not so obvious, and followed by many arguments and discussions inside the team subsequent to the final implementation. I will now describe a few of the issues we came across. I think that this subject is interesting for you readers, and am also curious how you will react to the decisions below; therefore, please use our forum to comment the article.
Iron Sights
Aiming through iron sights is one of Vietcong's most unique features, although you are not actually aiming through the iron sights in the game. Nowadays, we have changed it so that you are really using the weapon iron sights. This is more real and gives a better feeling. However, some of the weapon's iron sights are in the way of the viewing angle, which means that you are looking through a small hole that, in the game, looks like you cannot see anything. Such weapons are then useless. Therefore, we are thinking of ripping off parts of the weapons that are causing these problems. Such decisions are not common, and maybe even unrealistic, but much more playable.
Obstacles Everywhere
Another important feature of Vietcong is the obstacles and how characters hide behind them. The more obstacles to hide behind, the better fighting experiences. However, if you compare it to the real world, there are not many one-meter tall obstacles around. That is why we have to add many objects in place of obstacles to the scenes of the game. In the urban levels, there are wide varieties of objects; however, crates and boxes are the most functional. Maybe it does not look correct with so many objects, but it plays great.
Oil Barrels
With well working physics (such will be described in another article), we are introducing interactive situations. One of the attractive things are blowing up oil barrels, which cause explosions with flying items, smoke everywhere, and killing everybody around them. Again, why would an oil barrel appear in the scene? It is not realistic. Nobody would place oil barrels anywhere but a safe concrete deposit. However, it is very rewarding to drop a few barrels somewhere.
Uniforms of Character Classes in Multiplayer
We want to have unique skins for each soldier class in the next Vietcong (you will be able to select your look by choosing a face and headgear). To create such a feature, we had a plan to introduce Australian infantries, U.S. Marine Corps, Military Assistant Commands (MACV), Special Forces, and other units. However, with the Vietcong having black or green uniforms too, we cannot create the above feature, as the characters would be too similar if seen in distances in the multiplayer mode. That is why we have to limit the US Army classes by using tiger stripes, duck hunters, and vests. This is not realistic, but it preserves no confusion in the multiplayer mode.
North Vietnamese Vehicles and Tanks
Another problem is the North Vietnamese vehicles, which did not exist. The Vietcong was only fighting a guerrilla war, and every North Vietnamese Army vehicle was instantly destroyed by American firepower. In the original Vietcong, we had a Russian GAZ, ZIL, and a T-34, which led to criticism of a few persons. On the other hand, is it not great to have the ability to destroy enemy vehicles, and North Vietnamese Army tanks, with your big weapon? Especially younger crowds love to do so. North Vietnamese Army tanks did not exist, except for a short incident at Lang Vei, which is near the DMZ. Nevertheless, adding North Vietnamese Army tanks to the story of the game is probably too much, even for a game. Perhaps we will add such to the multiplayer mode.
These were a few examples of what we are quarrelling with, and which decisions we are making that destroy our documentary approach. However, I still believe that the gameplay is the most important part of a game. Yet, do not worry: we are going in the footsteps of the original Vietcong game, so do not expect running around and shooting together with tanks, as seen in other games.
[11th of April 2005]
Dear PTERODON fans and Vietcong community members,
Today, I wish to speak about our upcoming and still not announced, but highly anticipated project. You probably know what I am speaking about: the next Vietcong game. I will not inform you of any facts, as Take-Two Interactive will market the game, and we have no rights to do something on our own. Therefore, for the official title and information about what the game contains, you ought to wait for the official announcement. Meanwhile, before Take-Two Interactive gives you all the facts, I will tell you about our opinions, joys, and dilemmas tied to working on this top secret project.
The project has already been under development for quite some time. In fact, our programmers were working on it since the release of the original Vietcong, and the rest of the team joined the production after finishing the official add-on, Vietcong Fist Alpha. Although a part of the team was quite tired of another long development for a game set in Vietnam, another part of the team, including myself, was enthusiastic working on the game, overcoming all previous problems, building the new game from scratch, using easier and better development techniques, and using our experience to make the game one step better. One of our focuses was to go through a proper pre-production phase in order to design and plan everything precisely. We have come up with great ideas for both the single player and multiplayer campaigns, have been collecting ideas from forum members, fan sites, and official reviews, and have gathered an incredible amount of material. With new technology, we started the development of the game with a lot of faith and motivation, and the results that we have had in small amounts of time have been surprisingly great.
Nevertheless, according to the original schedule, the game should already have been finished. However, we modern and inventive developers cannot create an average quality game, as everything has to be done properly with maximum efforts, which has taken longer than I initially planned. We are doing our best, and PTERODON is definitely not a game factory that would create a game without using a brain. Fortunately, our partners at Take-Two Interactive and Illusion Softworks helped us extending the schedule, so that we will be able to deliver a better game.
Unfortunately, because of the marketing policy of our partners, we are missing the support and feedback of the community and the public, which leads to the fact that some team members are losing their enthusiasm and motivation. On the other hand, the lack of information is stressing and damaging the community, which leads to the fact that many people are leaving the community. This is a very sad thing, as no one is able to realise how good the new game is, and will be, without a link between you and us. However, I am an optimist, and I hope we will work it out together.
Therefore, trust us when we say that we are doing our best, and that we are doing it for you.
Jarek Kolar, producer, team leader, and game designer.
PS. I have received unapproved signals stating that our partners will do something about these unhappy matters very soon.
[28th of February 2005]
There have been a lot of rumours and discussions about the situation in PTERODON. Therefore, I decided to write a short diary from time to time to inform you about the current events in our office in Brno. I ought to be cautious, though, not to mention things that I am not allowed to speak about. Due to our contracts, we cannot speak publicly about our projects. All public relations about our current projects are to be planned, organised, and performed by our publisher. However, as you may have noticed, the mentioned publisher keeps everything undisclosed, and does not inform the fans of our game projects.
Today, I would like to write about an unannounced and unreleased project named Vietcong Blue Dusk. The actual title differs from the mentioned one, but I expect fans to know what I am speaking about. We started working on this add-on in the winter season of last year, due to lack of assignments for our mission programmers for the next Vietcong game project. Vietcong Blue Dusk was roughly finished in May 2004; thereafter we beta tested and corrected game bugs during the summer, and consequently finished the project in the autumn of 2004, (it took this long seeing that we were also working hard on the next Vietcong project). Considering that the add-on was developed in the spare time of several PTERODON team members, it only features a slight addition to the original Vietcong game.
The original plan was to release the add-on for free to support the Vietcong community. However, our publisher convinced us to release it through game magazines as a main priority. I personally believed that the mentioned plan would help us promoting the next Vietcong game in the respective magazines, but unfortunately it also meant that our fans are currently not playing the add-on. I do not personally know the reason for why it is taking so long to release the product, but the following are my assumptions: the official release of the final product requires special actions from various organisations, such as an approval from the age rating commission in each territory. Additionally, a small and insignificant project similar to Vietcong Blue Dusk was not a priority in any of the numerous departments of our publisher.
The latest information we received is that the add-on will be released on CDs in the March issue of selected game magazines, and that an official online availability is due to be released in March. Currently, I do not know how and when the add-on will be announced; I only know that a game trailer and screenshots are prepared.
It seems like Vietcong Blue Dusk is nearing its public appearance. Therefore, dear fans, please keep the faith in PTERODON. We are on your side. Thank you.
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There have been a lot of rumours and discussions about the situation in PTERODON. Therefore, I decided to write a short diary from time to time to inform you about the current events in our office in Brno. I ought to be cautious, though, not to mention things that I am not allowed to speak about. Due to our contracts, we cannot speak publicly about our projects. All public relations about our current projects are to be planned, organised, and performed by our publisher. However, as you may have noticed, the mentioned publisher keeps everything undisclosed, and does not inform the fans of our game projects.
