Report In! - Interview with Miroslav Horvath, World Design Lead

Next up in our 'Report In!' series, a discussion with one of Bohemia Interactive's World Design Leads, some 'behind the scenes' images, and comparison pictures of real-life and in-game Seattle have been declassified and are ready for immediate analysis!

We're often asked to let some of our people talk about what it's like to develop a game at BI. 'Report In!' gives you a more personal perspective on our team, a more detailed look at the way we go about our work, and fresh information about our ongoing projects.

Plotting a course today is Miroslav Horvath, who talks about the scope of the new environments (which include a huge chunk of Seattle, WA, and an enormous slice of 'South Asia') in BI's recently released Take On Helicopters, presenting the new features which support it, and discussing the design of realistic worlds more broadly.

Tell the people a little about yourself. What's your role? How long have you been with Bohemia Interactive? On which projects have you contributed, and what is your favourite BI game or mission?

Miro: I started at BIS at the dawn of the Arma 2 (A2) (Chernarus, Utes map) project in the middle of 2007 as the junior environment (map) designer. Later on for the Arma 2: Operation Arrowhead (OA) (Takistan, Zargabad map) project I moved up to senior level and, finally, I became lead environment designer for Take On Helicopters (TKOH) (Seattle, South Asia map). As for my favourite, well, I gotta pick Seattle because of the degree of fidelity and object density compared to the map size, but, Chernarus is a beautiful environment.

And can you give us a random fact about yourself?

Miro: I can't work without headphones in my ears :)

Massive Environments

What’s the scope of Take On’s new environments? Should we expect them to be different from previous titles?

Miro: As we wanted to be successful and competitive with our new title, we definitely had to push the limits further. One of the first things that flight/heli simulator players will expect is a large-scale environment. When deciding how large the maps were supposed to be, we prepared few sample maps with different scales and just flew from one side to another and counted time. After few tests with terrain resolution, we finally decided to have 61x61 km environments with 15m per gridcell (between adjacent terrain vertices) and 1m per pixel satellite imagery.

Secondly, we had to decide about terrain types. After considering different aspects, we decided to make fictional US and Afghan-inspired maps. When selecting the location, I was searching for landscape which naturally has some interesting characteristics such as large water bodies, high mountains, valleys, and flat lowlands all in one. Seattle is the first map we've ever made that not only uses its geo-specific character but also the real name. We've been continuously falling in love with this city and all of its lovely elements during the design period, and finally we decided to leave the map as its real name.

Just how accurately has Take On attempted to replicate these new places? Would you say that these are 'geo-specific' or 'geo-typical' environments?

Miro: Geo-specific, in simple terms, means to be closely related to the specific location on the Earth. That's why we can consider both Take On maps as geo-specific, because they use real terrain and imagery data, Seattle itself and South Asia as the border between the states of California and Arizona.

Geo-typical says what kind of vegetation, structures, city topology, etc, you can naturally see in any given geo-specific location. That`s what had to be completely redesigned on South Asia map, as we wanted to achieve an 'Afghan-looking' environment. As the data comes from US land we had to replace the vegetation, structures, even the typical grid-based structure of cities had to be reworked to match more 'unsupervised city growth' characteristic of most South/South-west Asian cities. So now, at the final stage, both maps can be considered geo-specific as well as geo-typical.

Since Take On is primarily a helicopter game, are the environments as 'important' as in other BI titles?

Miro: After the many years that BI has spent on titles where players are mostly roaming on the ground, I`d actually say that, for Take On, believable large-scale environments are even more important than ever. For most of the time spent in Take On, the player will fly around different locations or just hover at one place and check what's going on down there. For all us it was a big challenge to see landscapes from a different perspective or better 'altitude'.

Of course, we knew that we simply couldn't achieve the same detail on the ground, like the fences, traffic signs, bins, etc of, for example, A2OA's Takistan terrain. The question was how to set a new level of detail. During the structures analysis, we concentrated on structures which were vertically and horizontally dominating in different parts of the map, so then it was easier for me to derive levels of detail for the whole map. With all of these different structures (as well as vegetation) and satellite texture, which can be considered as another level of detail, we were able to create the impression of a compact landscape.

New Features

What kind of new features can we expect from the environments?

Miro: Firstly, I`d like to mention the size of both maps - as we can consider it a new feature. Our programmers spent a lot of effort to allow us create such massive landscapes. Just imagine, the Seattle map is 16 times bigger than Chernarus (15360x15360 m) and South Asia is 4 times bigger than Seattle. Of course, we've gotta go down a bit with terrain resolution in order to have such huge maps, but this is where one of the cool new features, terrain normal mapping, comes to the show. It adds more details, which visually helps to mitigate the lack of terrain detail, particularly from the air. Unfortunately, though, the enormous scale presents several reasons why we can't go for higher resolution data. For starters, around ~70% of game data consists of terrain textures. Our engine must stream the huge amount of data in and out in effectively in real-time on a number of different hardware specifications. Our development tools have to be able to manipulate the data too, and then we've got to consider that the game still has to be distributed via DVD and average Internet connections.

Our programmers have also implemented support for big structures, which not only makes a map designer's life easier, but also significantly helped to achieve really compact look of the city. Players can now enjoy flying around big skyscrapers, multilevel highways or large warehouses. Another cool (and 'must have') feature is the ambient traffic. It came into my mind after having chance to fly in helicopter over a real landscape. It was fun to watch moving vehicles driving from town to town, like an army of hard-working ants heading towards a big sweet bonbon. After that experience, we realized that the ambient traffic is the best way of presenting the player with the impression that he's flying over a dynamic, living landscape.

Small ponds, rivers, water dams, all these are landmarks helping player orient himself in a huge landscape. We also decided to improve this part of our engine, implementing a new water surface, which provides the impression of a shimmering water body. Finally, one 'bonus feature' is what we call the 'night texture', which means after dark you can get a nice perception of the city at night, with all roads and streets illuminated by street lamps to better orient yourself in a dark landscape. It`s stunning especially in combination with ambient traffic's headlights, and again represents a new feature brought about by Take On.

And can you tell us a little about the vegetation - the trees, bushes, etc.

Miro: As with our many previous projects, we used the power of the Linda Tree generator. Honza Hovora, our tree guru, prepared for us over 30 unique species of trees and bushes which are typical of vegetation in the Seattle area and South Asia, and all of them match their seasonal characteristics (like the leaf`s color). We set both maps in the summer time so players will enjoy a nice green nature.

For the Seattle map, we had to solve the problem of how to populate such huge, vegetation-packed areas with trees while keeping in mind that our engine has a limitation for the final object count. In the end, we decided to prepare special 'tree pack' models, where each model contains 3-5 trees. Of course, each of the trees within the pack has different scale, rotation and even colors vary a bit to prevent repeated patterns.

What would you consider to be the special or 'stand-out' features of the environments?

Miro: I'm glad that we've had a opportunity to make such huge maps, because we could offer so many different areas of a large city. The variation is the strength of our terrains. Players will enjoy huge skyscrapers in Downtown, large industrial areas, construction sites, military bases and docks, huge harbours and marinas, international airports, massive suburban and forested areas, research facilities, long bridges inter-connecting islands and much more!

Designing Worlds

What is it about environment design that you find appealing? What would you judge to be the best bit about creating these worlds?

Miro: I`ve always enjoyed the freedom of designing a world. Of course, it's good to 'follow the guidelines' that the character of a landscape provides, but hey, why not to be a virtual god and say I want this grass field to be a city, carve a riverbed into arid land or just place few landmarks to improve locations visually ... as some of them might look bit boring in a real life! :p

How exactly did you get into designing environments, anyway?

Miro: At the time I started at BIS I was student of Geoinformatics, working on my diploma thesis; specifically, GIS data, 3D landscapes, automated objects placement - all the stuff you need to know when you want to create large-scale geo-specific landscapes. So it was a perfect starting point for this career and a great opportunity to sit at BI's design den with all of those professionals.

And would you consider your qualification to be vital for your job? Would you advise others, seeking to be involved in environment design, to follow a similar path?

Miro: Any knowledge related to maps, 3D modelling, game engines, designing levels is always highly appreciated, but what`s the most important is to be open to learn new stuff, be willing to spend hours with a new tools, new workflows and so on.

During my career, I've worked with many different people, with different skills, but also with different level of motivation and passion and that's what really matters. For BIS - known for their large-scale environments - it was worthwhile to have the guy with strong GIS background on board, but it's not only about the GIS. I've also needed to learn much about design of virtual worlds. As a player, most of gaming time you spend may be simply enjoying an environment around you, but as a designer you must think at least one step forward to be have a chance to surprise the player. So my advice to the future environment designers is to play & learn. Easy, right?

The earth has opened up, spewing forth enormous rivers of molten lava across Bohemia. The people, fearful of their future, offer up sacrifices of videogames to appease the fire-gods, casting them into the flames. Which game do you dive into the burning rivers to save?

That's a tough question, because I enjoy playing many different genres from stealth (Splinter Cell, Thief, Hitman) through to adventure, puzzle games and, of course, large-scale environments. Most of all, I love to roam around game world, visit exciting locations and try to memorize a new areas on the map, the same way I did it in my childhood exploring the neighborhood. It's perfect to get to the point when a detail knowledge of the map becomes your ally, especially when you need to get rid of your enemy! I guess, at a push, I'd have to choose something from the GTA or Just Cause series.

Unfortunately, in some games, it's right after you reach that point of familiarity with the environment, that the story ends without any possibility to benefit from strong orientation skills that player achieved playing the campaign. And that's why it's worth to play games like Take On or Arma series. As player, I have many opportunities how to re-play my favorite map using the mission editor or just download a mission made by the community. Without a doubt, this is what I do appreciate in BI's games.