Developers' Journals Andre Roy Producer NEW  08.04.2003 « Chadi 'Leviat' Lebbos Producer   12.03.2002 « 7.25.2002 « 5.06.2002 « 4.29.2002 « Eric 'Arsenic' Bégin Lead Programmer   12.03.2002 «

08.04.2003 - Live Team Producer's Update Welcome to our first Live team update. This week on the front with the Live Team: Last week we released patch 1.31 (but you already knew this). The team has already worked extensively on the 1.4 patch which will help the Milan Studio in their efforts to get optimize Athena Sword so it get shipped in a timely manner. The final release will be sent out on August 4th or 6th to the Italian team. Patch 1.4 will hit the public release cycle next Thursday August 7th and be out the door Thurday August 12th. The content of the patch is listed below. The patch is already being tested internally and externally (yes it's true we have a group of players under NDA that help us out - more on this later). Soon, you'll get a formal introduction to the live team. We're putting everything together right now but expect something shortly. Mynarski is progressing well. In December we will be releasing the Raven Shield SDK along with Mynarski to help illustrate it. What is Mynsarski? In short, Mynarski is kind of survival and combat based extreme team sport/action game. We'll get you more detailed info on it soon but for now, let your imaginations run wild :) Starting next week, we will put out a short - mid and long term list describing basically everything the team is working on. What to expect in 1.4... Well the list is rather extensive but this should give you a good idea of the things we're working on: Bug Fixes Sometimes, after throwing a grenade, players stay stuck in the throwing motion. This is being fixed. Getting stuck on a ladder...being fixed. It was possible to change the camera pitch while in-between round menus. This has been fixed. Some players would not revert to the "not ready" state when a round was restarted. Also when an admin changed some settings in the server options while a player was set as "ready" the server would reload and everyone would reset to "not ready" but the checkbox in the GUI would still be checked. This is fixed. The TK penalty box was not displayed if the console (or chat, map, etc) was open. This should no longer happen. Note that the console should automatically close. Zoom mode became messed up when switching from operative to operative with zoom on. Zoom mode should no longer get messed up. In the "Tab Menu", after a selection has been made (Play/Spectator/Green Team/Red Team), a player couldn't press Tab to return to the menu screen. If a player played a round with CMAGS and then the CMAG were restricted between two rounds, the player would have kept his CMAGs. This has been fixed. When an administrator crashed, killed his client, or lost connection while in the server options or kit restriction screens, the pre-round countdown would stay paused indefinitely. This is now fixed and the countdown should resume as soon the server detects disconnection. When the sound volume is set to zero, the sounds are not played anymore. This may help speed the game on slower computers if the player is willing to sacrifice sounds for overall performance. Fixed some message pop-up boxes that would either freeze specific menus or the game as a whole. Fixed a few incorrect messages. General Improvements Firing animation, sound and muzzle flash should now be completely synchronized with trigger pull. Additionally, the network code for firing bullets has been reworked and less information is now sent for each bullet fired. This will hopefully result in a performance improvement in heavy firefights in restricted bandwidth situations. We're introducing a spam filter which is configurable in the server.ini and supports a voting option. The following is a description of the new variables in the server.ini to configure the spam filter: SpamThreshold (default value = 5): If you use "say" or "teamsay" three (3) times inside the SpamThreshold period (5 seconds), the chat on your client will be disabled for a while. ChatLockDuration (default value = 15): Duration of the chat lockdown if you trigger the SpamThreshold. VoteBroadcastMaxFrequency (default value = 15 seconds): If you vote (to kick a player) more than once inside the VoteBroadcastMaxFrequency (15 seconds), additional messages won't be sent to the other players to inform them of your choice. We tweaked the silenced weapon damage to hopefully make the silencer a real option in Raven Shield. Silenced weapons should now do a minimum of 50% of the damage their noisy counterparts do. Additionally, the silenced SPP pistol should now be even more "silent". Drawing tool is now accessible between rounds. Players will now automatically switch to their primary weapon when they've thrown their last grenade. Two buttons have been added to change the map order in the "Create Server" menu. The admin now has the ability to change/add/clear the game password without needing to restart the server. The commands are: lockserver true newpassword (this will set or change the password to newpassword). lockserver false (this will clear the password). Ok that's it for now. Andre Roy, Producer, Raven Shield Live Team 12.03.2002 - Lead Programmer's Update This is the first of a series of exchanges between the dev team and the fans. Unfortunately, we can not answer every message sent to the fans' forums. It's not because we don't want to, but imagine the number of messages we would have to answer. Just answering those messages would delay the game until next summer. Hmmm, I don't think anyone would want that... So the dev's corner is the way we have found to communicate with you. Time goes so fast... Already 3 weeks since we released the multiplayer demo. The response is incredible. On File Planet only, we got more than 90 000 downloads. Of course, this will force us to work harder to be sure to surprise you, again, with the final release. It also shows us how the Rainbow Six community is still huge, even if the last complete game, Rogue Spear, was released for Christmas 1999. Our team is proud to work on this title, and we will do everything possible to make the best Rainbow Six ever. We saw the interest in the different fan's forums that exists out there. And for people wondering if we really read the forums, be sure we do, we are often forwarding the best posts on to the team. One of my favorites... Click Here. Well, don't know if it's all real, but it's a good entertainment... I leave you on that, folks 'cause there is much work to do before the full release!!! I'll be happy to meet you on some servers. Eric "Arsenic" Bégin, Lead Programmer, Raven Shield 12.03.2002 - Producer's Update Hello everyone, I am glad you are enjoying the demo. Thank you for all your feedback. I would like to let you know that we are reading over your posts. The same goes for all of you who have sent feedback via the e-mail address found with the demo. Unfortunately, we cannot answer all your questions individually, but we'd like to give you guys a general idea of where we are. Part of the team is working up a patch that will solve the majority of the bugs you've encountered. We still don't have all the required elements to give you guys an official date (which will be in the upcoming days), but once we do, you will be the first to know. As for the rest of the team, we are still debugging and optimizing. We would like to collaborate with you on a certain topic. We have read posts recently, stating that people are able to cheat. We want to deliver a fun and cheat-free multiplayer experience. For those who have info on how people managed to cheat in the demo, please provide us with as many details as possible here (r6mpdemo@ubisoft.qc.ca). Thanks and talk to you soon, with the patch date and other juicy details. :) Chadi "Leviat" Lebbos, Producer, Raven Shield 7.25.2002 - Producer's Update For a number of business and technical reasons, Raven Shield will not be playable on the Microsoft Gaming Zone. All of the Ubi Soft studios, including Red Storm, are committed to providing multiplayer features through the ubi.com game service. As a part of our ongoing commitment to bring a high quality on-line gaming service to our customers, we'll be offering a number options to Raven Shield. One of these options will be playing Raven Shield through the ubi.com game service (which will continue to be improved upon). However, we feel that the majority of players will take advantage of the in-game server browsing technology that will be available with Raven Shield. This feature will allow fans to access hundred, even thousands, of servers world wide. Multiplayer features built into Raven Shield also include a ladder system on ubi.com which will track basic statistics and rankings. In addition, log files generated by Raven Shield will let the host players produce their own rankings for their servers and matches. Players will be able to use the parser that will be released with Raven Shield (which will parse the log file and generate basic statistics in html format) or they can access the log file directly which contains a great deal of data. The log file could also be parsed out by a community-built 3rd party tool. Since Ubi Soft is committed to continually improving the ubi.com game service, we are all striving to make Raven Shield multiplayer a great experience for the on-line gaming community. As always, we appreciate your input. The development team will be talking about Raven Shield multiplayer in future on-line chats. Visit Raven-Shield.com for more information. Thanks, Chadi "Leviat" Lebbos, Producer, Raven Shield 5.06.2002 - Producer's Update Q: Busy? Oh yeah! The Raven Shield team is "pumped" to reach the next development milestone: the Alpha and I must say that we are very proud and excited of how the game is evolving! Currently, our main goal is to complete the core development of the features and gather all of them in the same build. The challenge is to make sure that features selected will provide a good balance between game play and graphics, according to the priorities we've settled for the game. Two key words on which the team is putting emphasis "Realism" and "consistency", never forget those words ;). Some features may remain and some of them will be left out. It's all a matter of balancing it out. Once everything is implemented we will be able to start calibrating the AI for all characters, Rainbow, Terrorists and Hostages. Don't get me wrong, it will be quite a challenge, as our main goal is to provide the players with an AI that is not only good, but it must be perfect! Q: Tell us about the levels? The levels...hmmm! One word: AWESOME. The level designers really exploited all the resources available to them to make the levels in Raven Shield! The development of the levels is near completion and we're getting ready for the tweaking and debugging period. "Realism" and "consistency": every single inch, each object and each part of the layout has a reason to be there. The forums are booming, the previews of Raven Shield are everywhere, E3 is coming and we are ON FIRE!!!!! Chadi "Leviat" Lebbos 4.29.2002 - Producer's Update Chadi 'Leviat' Lebbos, the Producer for Raven Shield. 1.) You´re a member of the Ubi Soft development team in Montreal, Canada: What projects have you worked on in the past and what exactly is your job as a producer for Raven Shield? My first big responsibility at Ubi Soft was in 1997, where I was asked to start and manage a localization studio. This gave me experience in project management, dealing with 3rd party developers, marketing, human resources … you name it. 4 years later, I was asked to be an associate producer on RAINBOW SIX - RAVEN SHIELD, I jumped at the opportunity and became involved when the game was nothing more than a sheet of paper. I can’t believe the amount of work that has been done to it since then. A couple months later, I was promoted to producer. You can imagine what my reaction was! Being a producer on Raven Shield, I always need to keep in mind that we’re not dealing with any old game here….it’s Rainbow Six. I need to make sure the standards of quality in terms of gameplay remains consistent, and combined with graphics and sound, everything needs to be balanced perfectly and of the highest quality in order to bring the best possible experience to our fans. As the manager of the project and the development team, I need to make sure everyone has everything they need to work efficiently. Working closely with Red Storm, I provide all of the proper guidelines that will help us achieve our goals. Finally, marketing and PR rely on me to provide them news on the progression of the games development! 2.) Continuing the Rainbow Six-Series is a major challenge - Red Storm set very high standards with their products – Is this the source of your motivation or is it simply one of many challenges you face with Raven Shield? Developing the next in the Rainbow Six series is a privilege. This franchise, along with Half Life, is probably the most popular within the FPS market so the pressure is onto make Raven Shield a unique experience! We need to make good decisions to preserve the authenticity of the franchise and add innovations that will surprise Rainbow Six and FPS fans. So in answer to your question, yes, it is definitely a challenge for us. However, it’s also a source of motivation for us. The development team is made up of Rainbow Six fans so we definitely started on the right track! 3.) What is the story/environment that Raven Shield is set in? We’ve picked mission environments in interesting locales. Each map needs to be “unique” in terms of graphics, game play and sounds. There will be a variety of environments such as snow, desert, mountain, day, night, rain, outdoor… mostly in Europe and South America. Of course, locations have been selected according to the story line and the major plot. 4.) Use of the new Unreal Warfare engine gives you new possibilities. Do you think Raven Shield will remain true to the Rainbow Six-Series by advancing the game to the next level? What are the advantages of the new engine? Do you think it will allow you to set new standards? The Unreal technology needs to be adapted to our own needs – We’re not developing Unreal… we’re developing Rainbow Six 3. However, this engine is a great start for us because, while we work towards adapting the engine, our editors can begin work on the layout. Because the game content alone is a big developmental challenge, I thought it would be more beneficial for us to put our efforts towards optimizing the game play and basic features rather than the engine itself… the Unreal engine is a powerful tool for both 3D rendering and script AI. It will surely contribute to the quality of the game. The basic Rainbow Six AI is huge compared to any other FPS on the market; which takes up a large chunk of the memory budget… Even if the graphics are outstanding, I think (wish) that Raven Shield will set new standards with its controls and its AI. 5.) Are you supported by Red Storm? If so, how? Do you receive any consultation and/or support by members of the US Elite Police Teams? As we did with Black Thorn, we constantly work with RSE. The storyline is mostly managed by RSE and the game design is supported by RSE. Also, many of our decisions are discussed with RSE first. They know the franchise better than anyone and it’s important to have feedback from them on any and all parts of our work. We want this game to be the most realistic Elite Police tactical simulator out there. To better achieve this, the development team leaders have been trained by the GTI SQ team (elite hostage-rescue team in Montreal, Canada). Moreover, we are working closely with a member of the LAPD Tactics team. His advise has been helpful in the design of certain gadgets, tactics and character reactions in the game itself. 6.) Producing such a major title means a lot of creative work and fun for everyone in the team, but it also means stress and the need to make difficult decisions. What were the biggest problems and challenges you’ve had to face so far? Aside from the many technical challenges, one of the biggest obstacles is the selection of the features (choosing from hundreds!) that will make Raven Shield not only the next great game in the series, but also an awesome title with many innovations that would please both Rainbow Six fans and FPS gamers. 7.) What is your favorite game feature and why? I really like the new peek & crouch controls which are quite ground-breaking. It doesn’t affect the way I’m accustomed to playing Rogue Spear, but if I need more precision and more control, it’s useful in helping me discover ways of shooting the enemy that I couldn’t do in Rogue Spear.