Developer Diary: Lead Combat Designer Viljar Sommerbakk

 

My name is Viljar Sommerbakk, and I am the lead combat designer at Starbreeze, currently working on Syndicate. I've been working in the games industry since 2000, with a particular interest in the action side of things. Being a fan of the original Syndicate, in particular the futuristic, evil corporate setting and the brutality of the 1993 game, this reimagining of Syndicate seemed like a perfect fit for me.

My daily work consists of directing implementation of combat encounters and boss fights in the single-player campaign. The general combat AI is of course a big part of this, and something we’re quite proud of. One of the main tenets behind the general combat AI we've developed was that it should be possible to drop enemy AIs into a level, without giving them any scripting or environment information and they should still behave realistically and believably. On top of that, we've developed a system where the gameplay scripters will give hints as to which positions to choose depending on how the player moves around in the scene. We achieve this with something called scene points. Scene points allow us to give hints about good covers for the AI, and how they best can get to the player. We can also specify ways the AI can enter and exit positions, giving dramatic flair to how they move around. We also wanted to make sure that when an AI announces that he will do something, he will actually do it. In addition, when it looks and sounds like someone is giving orders in a combat situation, others will actually respond to it. In other words, they shouldn't just shout things for ambience and movie realism-- they should be bound to their statements. To ensure that we deliver a complete and believable experience we ensure that the level design, enemy behavior, audio and visual appearances are all balanced against each other to provide the player with intense and engaging action gameplay. .

 

The end result is that you'll have challenging enemies that move and sound realistic and believable, looking cool as they run in and out of cover, working with each other to take the player down, in a believable and interesting context. The AI is tough, but fair.

 

As for the design of the bosses in the game, the biggest challenge is the fact that they have to be basically human, albeit augmented. They need to be challenging, while at the same time being believable, so no huge monsters or robots. We’ve solved this by giving the bosses unique powers, and having some unexpected twists during the encounters. The aim has been to make them challenging and a fun change of pace from the regular combat encounters. Syndicate fans are a vocal bunch, so I guess we’ll find out soon enough how well we’ve succeeded!

/Viljar Sommerbakk