The F.A.Q.
The Unofficial Enemy Nations FAQ 1.01a
[last updated on Sept 12, 1996]
i. Introduction
I. What is Enemy Nations?
A. What type of game is Enemy Nations?
B. What is so new about Enemy Nations compared to other games?
C. Who is creating Enemy Nations?
II. What is the story behind Enemy Nations?
A. What is to be included in the story-line?
B. What races are available?
III. What does Enemy Nations look like?
A. How is the interface designed?
B. What resolution will the game be in?
C. What about sound/music?
IV. How is game play designed?
A. How is the computer AI designed?
V. What is the setting like?
A. What is the appearance of the levels?
B. What is different about the world?
C. How does the economy work?
D. What about combat?
VI. How is the multiplayer aspect of Enemy Nations implemented?
A. What about Direct-play?
B. What about Internet play?
C. How many can play?
D. How many maps/worlds are there?
E. More stuff…
VII. What kind of hardware does Enemy Nations require?
A. What does it run on?
VIII. When is Enemy Nations expected to be released?
*A. What’s the holdup?
B. Demo?
*C. “Any time Now” [demo]
*D. Please change this
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* - new info (ver 1.01a)
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* Introduction *
Welcome to version 1.01a of the Unofficial Enemy Nations FAQ! Within this document I will attempt to provide the most complete, updated, and correct information about the game Enemy Nations as is possible. Please keep in mind that this FAQ is in no way endorsed or supported by Windward nor Viacom Entertainment. Questions, comments, corrections, complaints or anything else are gladly accepted at the address zielin@escape.com, or visit the Enemy Nations web site around at http://www.windward.net/enemy.htm.
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* What is Enemy Nations? *
" The time is the future. The place is a rare, uninhabited planet, over which several nations are fighting for control. As the leader of your nation landing on this planet, you must build a city from the ground up, maintain it, and generate a powerful economy and military to defend it. Eventually, you will battle other nations for domination of the planet. But, it won’t be easy...countless other competitors are also vying to dominate the planet.." <From Viacom New Media’s web page>
Q. What type of game is Enemy Nations?
A. Enemy Nations is a resource management and combat game in the same genre as Serf City, Dune II, Warcraft, & Command & Conquer. However, it is a much more rich (and complex) model.
Q. What is so new about Enemy Nations compared to other games?
A. It compares to the real-time play of Command & Conquer or Warcraft II. You will take control of one of the colony ships landed on the planet, charged with establishing your race's colony, finding resources, building up a military, and then race to overwhelm all the other colonies on the world. While planets are generally Earth-like, they are random, with realistic mixes from twelve terrain types. Mountains may fade into plains, which may fade into deserts. Because of the randomness, you can end up with lovely, resource-rich worlds, or some pretty ugly planets which are a struggle to live on. The world-maps wrap, leaving players with no convenient "flat planet" map corners in which to build up a strong defense. Altitude as well as distance will matter for line-of-sight; no more seeing over forests or mountain ranges. Units will be able to move into forests and remain hidden, the better to fall upon an unsuspecting enemy. Because the worlds are randomized, the developers have had to create a strong, independent AI
Q. Who is creating Enemy Nations?
A. Enemy Nations is being developed by Windward Studios and will be released and published by Viacom New Media. Windward’s goal is to “create games that are enjoyable to play, time after time after time. Painless net play over all networks, aesome art and sound, and most important, killer game play.” Their site is http://www.windward.net/ and Viacom’s can be found at http://www.viacomnewmedia.com/
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* What is the story behind Enemy Nations? *
Q. What is to be included in the story-line?
A. Humanity reaches the stars, only to find the galaxy a pretty crowded place. Most of the
inhabitable planets are inhabited, and everyone's looking for more tentacle joint-room. A
human scout finds a wonderfully inhabitable little world, and scampers back to Earth with
the news. Of course, by the time the heavily armed colonization fleet arrives, just about
every other race in the galaxy has shown up too, all a-bristle with weapons. Instead of
duke’n it out with nukes, each side decides to send down a single colony ship, and may
the best man, woman, or thing win.
Q. What races are available?
A. There are 12 different races and they have significant advantages and disadvantages
But. the art for this game was phenomenally expensive and time consuming due to the
detail. Because of this Windward had to opt for one set of art. In a world of choices
Thielen thinks it was a good choice but in a world of no limits he would have had several
sets of art (and required systems with more memory because in a world of no limits you
would all own P/200s with 32M of memory)..
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* What does Enemy Nations look like? *
Q. How is the interface designed?
A. It's windows, but it doesn't look like windows. It will draw every pixel on the screen.
There is not a single menu. There are overlapping windows and buttons. The buttons act
like windows buttons but look like real buttons. The developers won't know for sure until
the game ships but they think they have a UI that is intuitive to a windows user, but
makes you forget you are in windows. David Thielen (the game's developer) and his team
all have extensive Windows 95 backgrounds (Thielen himself was involved in the
development of the OS), and this expertise shows. It has been said that the interface "is
one the first intelligent uses of the Windows 95 interface" – the ability to open multiple,
variable windows to keep an eye on the action wherever you want.
Q. What resolution will the game be in?
A. It will run at whatever resolution your system is set to. It is being testing at 640x480,
800x600, 1024x768, and 1280x1024 and everything lays out fine. Enemy Nations also
has the art stored at 8, 15, 16, 24, & 32-bits so it will run at the color depth of your
system. This is real 24-bit art, not 8-bit art rendered in 14-bits. In addition the game has 4
(may be 3 when it ships) zoom levels and can rotate (like SimCity 2000). So when you are
zoomed in a large building is over 400 pixels across. Basically 640x480x8 is considered
low-end low-res.
Q. What about sound/music?
A. There have both MIDI and digital music. If your system is low end (or you get a demo
version) your music is MIDI. If your system is high end you get digital music ( 22K, 16-
bit, stereo). If your system is middle-end you get digital music everywhere except while
the game is playing and MIDI while playing. The MIDI music is, in Thielen opinion, “
really good and the digital is simply awesome.”
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* How is game play designed? *
Q. How is the computer AI designed?
A. Because of random map creation, there can't be a "script" that AI actions can be based
on preset maps. Also, Thielen promises no AI cheating. The Enemy AI or computer
player, uses a network of cooperating intelligent agents, or managers that communicate via
messages, finite and fuzzy state systems and a database of goals and tasks. Functions such
as path finding are provided via a separate pathing manager based on the A* algorithm and
enhanced for four years. The routing and distribution of materials for the economics of the
AI and human players relies on a separate route manager which provides for discrete event
management of the economic and construction needs. Evaluations and map based
processes are performed by a separate map manager using a variety of specialized search
algorithms that include (but are not limited to): breadth and depth search of the map
space, directed and A* derived search of the map space, and a few very specialized search
of the map space. The AI uses a separate goal manager for strategic guidance and a low
level task manager to assign and manage the functions carried out by the units of the
game. The actual task functions operate as discrete intelligent agents themselves,
reviewing the local data specific to the task assigned. With guidance from the
goal/task/map manager state systems, these agents issue/receive messages to/from the
game which results in an underlying behavior that produces the complex behavior that
completes the tasks assigned. This collection of tasks performed for the goals as managed
by the goal manager results in the operational behavior of the AI players. Selected history
is maintained at the goal manager, player, map and OpFor (Operational Formation) levels.
The AI programmer (Eric Dysband) invites all comments and suggestions for any
enhancements to the AI and can be reached at edybs@ix.netcom.com.
In English: the AI has to react to events and then act accordingly. And when the AI goes to
attack, it has to take it's knowledge of the world into account because an attack across a
short plain is very different to attacking half way around the world where a mountain is in
the way in 1 direction. So, by necessity, not by choice Windward had to create an AI that
adapts to it's environment. This has a couple of bad points. The AI will sometimes hit you
a lot harder or easier than wanted. It will also sometimes do incredibly dumb moves.
People are used to playing an AI that provides a consistent challenge. Enemy Nation’s AI
will be a lot more variable. Again, people have been screaming for an AI opponent that
isn't so predictable.
(most of this is from Steven Woodcock’s AI pages
http://www.cris.com/~swoodcoc/curgames.html#EN)
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* What is the setting like? *
Q. What is the appearance of the levels?
A. While planets are generally Earth-like, they are random, with realistic mixes from
twelve terrain types. Mountains may fade into plains, which may fade into deserts.
Because of the randomness, you can end up with lovely, resource-rich worlds, or some
pretty ugly planets which are a struggle to live on. The world-maps wrap, leaving players
with no convenient "flat planet" map corners in which to build up a strong defense.
Altitude as well as distance will matter for line-of-sight; no more seeing over forests or
mountain ranges. Units will be able to move into forests and remain hidden, the better to
fall upon an unsuspecting enemy.
Q. What is different about the world?
A. Well first it wraps. The left end connects to the right end (like Civilization) and the top
to the bottom. So you can't put our back in a safe corner. Second, there are over 10
different terrain types and this affects movement speed, defense, spotting, etc. Third, the
world is rendered as a series of polygons with bitmaps laid on top. The world is contoured
so mountains go up and obscure vehicles behind it. I don't know of anything to compare it
to but it goes well beyond the stair-step effect of SimCity 2000.
Q. How does the economy work?
A. Raw materials include lumber, coal, iron, oil, and xilitium. Coal and Iron go to the
smelter to make steel. Oil goes to the refinery to make gas. Food and gas are global but all
other minerals remain local. Steel must be transported from the smelter to the weapons
factories. Coal/Oil need to be transported to the power plants, etc. In other words, take
out someone's supply line or critical building and you can really hurt them Losses to the
economy slow things down. If you run out of gas all your vehicles slow down - but still
run. If you are low on power buildings produce slower with buildings like farms being
slightly affected and weapons factories brought to a virtual standstill. Your food supply
and housing determine the number of colonists. If you do not have enough colonists to
staff all of your buildings then again, production slows down, but it does not arbitrarily
stop. Damaged buildings operate slower so a 50% damaged factory is less useful (and
therefore an attack that hurt buildings has a noticeable affect right away).
Q. What about Combat?
A. A lot of the same. A damaged vehicle has a slower fire rate and less accuracy. Combat
takes into account the attack and defense strengths of the units, armor, fire rate, accuracy,
damage, terrain type, and more.
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* How is the multiplayer aspect of Enemy Nations implemented? *
Q. What about Direct-play?
A. EN will not use Direct-Play for two reasons. First, it doesn't run on Win 3.1 or NT
3.51. Second it's pretty worthless. The network library has native support for TCP/IP,
IPX, NETBIOS, MODEM, Direct (serial port), TAPI, and Direct Play (treating Direct-
Play as one more protocol).
.
Q. What about Internet play?
A. You can play over the Internet. Viacom is looking into having a server so you can
create/join games without ever entering an IP address. But worst case, you need to enter
the IP address of the system the game is created on. In addition, EN can handle about 2
seconds of latency without the players noticing anything weird (unless you were watching
both computers at the same time). EN doesn’t send request to the server. No requests
means no round trip delay. There is no pause as the client player sends a message to the
server and waits for a response before moving.
Q. How many players?
A. There is no limit in the code on the number of players. However, too many will bog a
system down. In single player mode clock cycles are intelligence to the AI - the more it
can think the better an opponent it will be. So if you have 10 opponents on a 486/66 don't
expect the AI to do anything. In a network game the limit is not the network, it's the world
size. The more players the bigger the world (so you aren't all in each other's back yard).
The game needs to store several bytes of data for each hex of the world. Since the world is
stored on each system, the number of players is limited by the memory of the smallest
machine playing. Final play testing will tell what limits that will be suggested, and what
ones to impose (if you enter 1,234,567 AI opponents and we let you run your machine is
going to run till it runs out of memory - so you won't be allowed a number that high).
Q. How many maps/worlds are there?
A. There are no canned maps. We generate a random map every time you play. The size
is based on a setting you make (small, medium, large) and the number of players. So on a
large map each player still has about the same amount of elbow room. For a small world
it's a little smaller than a small Warcraft II map (2 players). For medium it's like a large
Warcraft II map. For large it's like a SimCity 2000 map with 4 players. This includes the
scenarios. The maps are randomly generated for the scenarios. This means that the
magazines cannot write an article on how to win scenario 6 because they played on a
significantly different map. Everyone has been saying they want something more real.
Something where, you can't nail the trick to each scenario and then walk through it.
Well... we'll see if people actually like it being a new challenge each game.
Q. Want more?
A. There is a complete e-mail system for multi-player games, the ability to set your
relations with a player, research that , while not as comprehensive as Civ, is a lot more
like Civ than what you see in Warcraft II, and more...
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* What kind of hardware does Enemy Nations require? *
A. The minimum system is a 486/66 with 8M of memory. THIS COULD CHANGE -
THEY ARE STILL MEASURING PERFORMANCE. The most critical items are, in
order, your video card, your physical memory (16M is much better), your hard drive speed
(for virtual memory), and CD-ROM speed. Even more critical is the resolution of your
video card for your system. If your video card is 1280x1024x24 on a 486/66 - forget it. By
the same token, a fast video card set at 640x480x8 on a P/90 will scream. The developers
have to rerender the screen 24 times a second and at just 1280x1024x8 that's 1,310,720
bytes that need to be rendered. And it's a lot more work in our game because mountains
can obscure buildings and vehicles, fog of war is affected by terrain, etc. So it's not a
trivial calculation to know what needs to be drawn at a given location.
Q. What does it run on?
A. It runs on Windows 3.1, Windows 95, and Windows NT (3.51 or later). It is a multi-
threaded Win32 application (the developers wrote a preemptive multi-threader for
Win32s). It uses DirectX if it is there but does not require it. Note: Viacom may not
"certify" it for Win/NT because it is a significant testing hit and there aren't that many
potential NT customers. But much development has been done on a dual P/133 running
Win/NT 4.0
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* When is Enemy Nations expected to be released? *
A. Like most games in development it is hard to get a release date. Here are the few
things that I’ve heard.
From Viacom (phone): 3Q
From Viacom’s web site: Fall 96
From David Thielen (developer): “Well, here it is a race between making it
better and the Christmas selling season.”
Q. What’s the holdup?
A. Most of the game is done now. The only thing left (other than working out little bugs)
is the final art in a couple of places. The game is ALMOST done.
Q. Demo?
A. Yes. There should be a demo “any time now.” The demo will be about 10megs but
have no full zoomed graphics, only 256 colors, and no digital sound.
Q. “Any Time Now” [demo]
A. It seems that time is upon us. The demo (stripped down beta ver of the game - (see
Demo?)) It should be out but the end/weekend of this week. I.e. sept 13-15. I’m every
much hope that it will include full internet play. 99% of what you’ll be seeing in the
demo is what will be in the box when it finally makes its way into the stores. You
will be able to find the demo/beta, when it is out, @:
http://www.viacomnewmedia.com/comingsoon/enemynations.html
http://www.windward.net/enemy.htm
The former is better because the link is much faster….
Q. Please change this.
A. So You’re playing the demo and you find something that REALLY bugs you, or just
doesn’t quite work. Well, Windward wants to hear about it. This is also your chance
to influence the game. If they get a lot of e-mails complaining/suggesting something
that is easy to change, it will definitely be considered. Windward may not agree with
you, but will listen. (Once u have the demo and want to make an suggestion you cab
e-mail the developer at: david@thielen.com or E-mail me and I’ll pass it on
zielin@escape.com)
Notes: If I get any more info I’ll update this FAQ. So help me out and pass any tidbits you
may have this way. (zielin@escape.com)
l8r
Jordan Zielin
* Thank you for using The Unofficial Enemy Nations FAQ 1.01a and have a nice day.