When we last looked at Joint Operations: Typhoon Rising six weeks ago, the team at NovaLogic was dead-set on having its large-scale multiplayer shooter finished and released in time for this week's E3. Delays happen all the time in games, however, and NovaLogic recently announced that the game would be pushed back a little further to an "early summer" release. In search of answers, we made another trip to Novalogic's Calabasas, CA headquarters to see how things are shaping up in the game's final stages.
The biggest reason for the delay became clear shortly after seeing the latest build in motion: there's still a lot of cleaning up to do. Unlike a lot of PC developers and publishers, who often ship games before they're finished and prepare "Day One" patches instead, Novalogic is doing their best to stamp out every bug they can, as well as put an extra layer of polish on things before the game comes out. A lot of it is small cosmetic stuff, like extra shooting animations or the way your character raises his binoculars to his eyes in the field. Other things, like boats occasionally hovering in the air, are obvious technical glitches that need to be address before the game goes gold.
All told, the final version of Joint Operations should include about 30 unique maps, 20 of which will be used for "Advance and Secure" mode, which represents the heart of the game. Most of the maps are absolutely huge, which puts a huge emphasis on teams working together, even it's just giving each other rides from one point to another so players don't get stuck wandering the fields on their own. Most of the maps should be used in two or three different game modes (team deathmatch should be the most popular of the rest), so there shouldn't be plenty of content for players to dig into.
Although it will represent a very small portion of Joint Ops, we had our first chance to try out the game's training missions, designed to help players get the hang of the various weapons and vehicles. Unlike most tutorials, these play out like brief single-player missions, complete with their own scripted sequences. The first one teaches players how to handle the rocket launcher, as you attempt to take out a fuel truck in an enemy convoy heading towards your base. It might sound simple, but you'll need to spend some time getting the hang of how rockets fall at long range, and even though the mission might only last five minutes, it's still entertaining to play through a few times until you've got the hang of the weapon.
Another fun mission was the sniping tutorial, which places you on the side of a hill and allows you to snipe a huge rebel camp at long range. Like most everything in Joint Operations, sniping is a skill far more intricate than point-and-shoot; for faraway targets, you'll need to use your binoculars to figure out the range, and then make the appropriate adjustments with your rifle. There are nine training missions in all, teaching the basics of the Stinger homing missiles (shooting down incoming choppers), grenade launchers, satchel charges and (of course) flying helicopters.
Along similar lines, we were curious what Joint Operations would offer along the lines of co-op support. There will be 12 co-op maps in all, and the team at Novalogic has opted to keep things pretty simple -- there won't be any storylines or scripted sequences or special objectives, just a series of waypoints and a ton of enemies to kill. It's clear that Novalogic is putting all their efforts into the multiplayer aspects of the game; rather than spend a lot of time working on enemy AI and crafting scripted events, these co-op missions will act as a way for you and your buddies to shoot it out together.
With our tour of the game out of the way, we finally got to get in some multiplayer action on two maps we hadn't seen before - "Pulau Raya Volcana" and "Padang River Basin." Both maps were played in Advance and Secure mode, with the second having an accelerated time-of-day setting - we could see the sun moving through the sky and shadows shifting around the map after just a few minutes. As happened with our previous playtest, we got slapped around pretty hard by the regular beta testers - you can't expect to run around recklessly like you can in the Battlefield games, and there will probably be a significant learning curve for gamers as they learn the ins and outs of the maps and how to stay out of harm's way. On the other hand, we had plenty of chances to look at the new motion blur effect when you get injured and eventually killed.
One of the biggest goals Novalogic has been working towards with Joint Ops is getting huge games up and running smoothly, and at the moment it's looking at massive games of up to 150 people fighting it out, even over a dialup connection. Players will be able to set up their own servers of up to 64 players, with Novalogic handling anything over 100. Only PlanetSide has attempted anything on this sort of scale… and Joint Ops won't require a monthly fee.
At the moment, Novalogic is getting close to locking down code for Joint Operations, and should spend a few more weeks squashing bugs following E3. A demo for the game is already out, and hopefully we'll see the full game by the end of June.
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