Our Descent Into 'MadDoc-ness'

Mokon: It was Friday the 27th when I got up early to make my way down to the Mad Doc Software's studio. I had left early because I was expecting the heavy Boston traffic but fortunately, I did not hit much, so instead I arrived early with some time to spare. After waiting around for a while I finally made my way to the big old brick mill building. I went to the lobby, up to the fifth floor, and out into a nicely refinished hallway. As I walked towards Mad Doc’s Offices, there I met the first person from Mad Doc who showed me into their studio. Here I met the Public Relations specialist, Sandy O’Toole, who would lead us around for the day.

ODA: I had to drive to Lawrence, MA from Toronto Canada, so I started my journey on Thursday, the 26th. It was 9 hours trek crossing along the long axis of New York State. The drive was pleasant for the most part until I hit Massachusetts state, where I hit a bit of bad weather, but things cleared up by the time I got to Lawrence. I checked into my Hotel for the night.

The next morning, I set off for Mad Doc's office, looking forward to asking a lot of questions and seeing the innerts of the game. Not being too familiar with the roads and parking around Lawrence. I drove around a bit looking for the Mad Doc office and a place to park. Finally I decided to just park right at the road at the front of the Mad Doc Office building, and hoped that I wouldn't get my car towed away! It's a brown brick massive building and really has that old school university campus feel to me. I gave Sandy a call to make sure I got the right place from the front of the building and whether or not it was ok, where I parked. After I got the ok, I proceeded up stairs to the Mad Doc office where I was met by Sandy and Mokon already there. So after a little bit of settling in, we were ready for our descent into 'maddoc-ness'.

Mokon: First things first we were given a tour of the facility. Being that they have around eighty people working there it was a decent sized work area. It certainly was an interesting place, there was Mathew Nordhaus, aka Mr. Game, sitting there enjoying his duel monitor set up (which also had three computers connected up to it), and than over in the art department there were two people diligently discussing some of the finer points of hmmm, perhaps 3-dimensial vertices. Anyhow moving on we went back towards the main room where we would spend most of the day grilling these developers with panoply of questions.

The first person that we meet was Steven Nadeau. He was there to show us the database files, a job which he most certainly did. For the next hour, he barely took time to breath as he spewed forth a wealth of wonderful knowledge. In fact it almost scared me because he said he was rusty on it, I cannot imagine how much knowledge he could have given us if he was at his EE2 prime. By the time we walked out of there we certainly knew the database files like the back of our hands.

After the mind boggling experience going through the database files we than moved on to Tara Teich and Dan McClure. This meeting was also a very interesting one, in it we learned a ton about the artificial intelligence of the game, and how advanced it really is. By the time I was done here I already had some ideas on how to make an Uber AI, alas I have yet to touch the AI system since the trip, but it is certainly something I would now like to look into.

ODA: Here's a picture of Tara Teich (with Dan Mclure looking on) striking a kung fu pose, threatening to beat us to a pulp if we didn't believe human like intelligence evolved from the AIP file, called "Apes" by the folks at Mad Doc. Just kidding about the beating us up part of course, but they do indeed call the files "Apes" for convenience. Kung fu just happens to be what she likes to do for fun. But gotta like a woman who can kick ass in AI code and kick some ass in real life.

Mokon: Matthew Nordhaus, the designer in charge of balancing was the next person we met. Here he taught us how the Auto balancer worked and showed us the different things he would do to balance the game. We even learned how he was ranked 400th on one of the Warcraft III ladders, not that bad of a feat if you ask me.

ODA: He hinted that he will be eagerly waiting for the fan community balance mods to be finished so that he can run it through the auto-balancer himself to see what kind of results he gets.

He told us about all the delicate situations that could tip a balance of a unit way to one side or another simply from increasing the hitpoints of units just by a few points. While increasing the blast radius of some units by 50% didn't have much effect, but after a tipping point like an extra 10% could change the unit to be very devastating. So unit balancing isn't as easy as it sounds.

Mokon: Moving on we than had a lunch of Indian foods, while discussing secret black market transactions. Ok, maybe not, but anyhow we had good time and learned quite a bit about Mad Doc. ODA: We were given two choices about lunch, I had to admit that I was the one who picked Indian food cause I love the stuff and can't get enough of it. Hope you didn't mind that Mokon? LOL!

Mokon: One overall impression that I did get however, is that they are going to be here for the community for the long run. It seemed to me they want to be one of the best community relation studios in the business, a goal that I think they have already gone a long ways towards.

The next person that we meet with was John Cataldo, the person responsible for the Korean Campaign. He went through much of the functionality of the scenario editor and showed some of the tricks of the trade. The one thing I did notice however was that some of the key bindings he showed us do not work in retail, do not worry though for I think we can get them to work. Now he was not able to show us the script system at that time, but perhaps in the future.

ODA: John Cataldo was also in attendence at Empire Earth University in March to show us the game and the scenario editor. As a result, I got a double doze, the "post-graduate" program so to speak on the Empire Earth 2 scenario editor. So we will be doing a separate article specifically on the scenario editor to cover all the great features it has, from the basics to its its advanced features to its current limitations. Oh and of course, some of the tricks and tips John told us about.

Mokon: Than we meet with the lead artist, John Carbone. This interview was a bit different from the rest, for at this one we had many people coming in an out trying to help us, including Hugues St. Pierre and Chris Lane from their development team. Unfortunately the graphics are currently locked in the Gamebryo format which can’t be edited, its just another one of those things we might have to wait for. Anyhow, we learned how to change the graphics and such of units, this of course will be covered in out overview of modding.

ODA: One of the areas I am particularly interested in modding is the graphics, so it is something I eagerly anticipate. Mad Doc assured us that they will be doing everything they can to facilitate the community with some kind of tool to export 3D models into the Empire Earth 2 format, so that we can incorporate our own artwork into the game. 3DS Max is still a bit out of the price range for much of the community so I also put in a word for the poorer saps amongst us that if possible, it would be great if they could support shareware/freeware 3d Modelling programs like GMAX and Milkshape with their exporter. Probably too much to ask, but I would be truly impressed if they managed to pull it off.

Last and certainly not least, we meet with the Mad Doctor himself. He certainly had a busy schedule so we got around 45 minutes with him. We ran the gamete here, from questions on what he wants to see in people, who want to work in the industry, to questions on his love, Artificial Intelligence.

ODA: We also basically threw in as much community requests and concerns as we could also during this session. It's not often you get the head honcho at a game development company to listen to the fan community, but they were taking notes literally. So the community concerns are definitely being heard.

I have a personal interest in AI as well, so I really enjoyed this session especially. Dr. Ian Davis gave us some good perspective on how he see's game AI in general, how he'd like to see the technology develop in the future, and his work to pull the academic world into the computer game industry and vice versa. As Mokon mentioned we also talked about what qualities he'd like in someone who want to get into the gaming industry. In fact we asked everyone who was generous enough to give us a one-on-one interview if they had any advice for the aspiring game developer. So look for an accompanying set of personality interviews of various members of the Mad Doc development team and get personal advice from those who are doing what many in the community thinks is dream job, and find out what makes them tick!

Mokon: So, with that the day was over. We learned quite a bit, but beyond everything, the one thing I would have to say is that Mad Doc truly has impressed me quite a lot. From what I can see, and alas I cannot say all. *wink* They are willing to and working on supporting this community for the long run. Empire Earth II has some bright sun ahead!