Episode 0: Contact. Wait out.

Ryan 00:18

Okay, go get it, go get it.

Tom 00:24

Hello Zero, this is Bravo Four Three Alpha. Contact. Wait out.

Tom 00:59

That silence is basically what this game is all about, and this podcast. I'm Tom. This is Ryan.

Ryan 01:05

Hello.

Tom 01:06

This is Making Contact. So this is episode zero. This is all about introducing who we are, what the game is that we're making, and to see if it's something that you, as a listener, want to continue following us on the journey, learning more about, and hopefully helping us build something pretty incredible. So Ryan, where do we start? Do you want to introduce yourself?

Ryan 01:33

Yeah, sure. So yeah, I'm Ryan. I've got seven years in defence simulation and then a few more years in game development on the art side. Pretty much it from me.

Tom 01:43

I mean, classic underselling yourself. You co-founded Mercury Arts, which is a cool modding and games development company. You've helped build Post Scriptum on Unreal Engine, working with Offworld Industries. You've done so many cool things. And the best thing about you is the fact that you're all self-taught. You decided one day that you just wanted to learn how to do 3D modelling, and off the back of just watching tutorials you've managed to build this whole career in Unreal Engine and also in defence simulation. So kudos to you, mate.

Ryan 02:15

Yeah, no, thank you. Sometimes you've got to take a punt. Bless YouTube for having tutorials available.

Tom 02:22

Hundred percent. Well, myself, I'm Tom. I'm a former Army officer. I spent time in the reserves and the regulars as well. I deployed to Afghanistan as an ops officer, and we're going to learn what that actually means a little bit later on and why that's probably quite important. And I've also dabbled in Unreal Engine and built a cool bit of defence training simulation software. But crucially, neither of us has built a game from scratch, and this will be our first attempt at doing that.

Ryan 02:49

We feel like we know just about enough to take a stab at it.

Tom 02:52

Every day is a school day. But what I love about this is that you and I have been friends for a really long time now, and we've been looking for an opportunity to build a game together. We went through a load of permutations, and maybe we'll talk about that in later episodes, the different game ideas we had. We wanted to pick something that we were both equally passionate about, but something that was achievable with a two-man team. And with Contact: Wait Out, I think that's something we've managed to achieve.

Ryan 03:19

For me, it's unique. There's nothing else like it. And that's where I was always looking to get a game idea developed: something niche, something new. I didn't really want to rehash ideas, so I'm really excited.

Tom 03:32

Probably worth us then talking very top level. The next episode is going to be an in-depth look at the vision for Contact: Wait Out. Essentially, it's a simulation of an ops officer's role, or a company commander's role, sitting back in the ops room controlling assets on the ground. And it is this boiler room of pressure. You've got loads of feeds and information coming in from drones, from troops on the ground, from higher echelons. So you've got your boss trotting in saying, "What's going on?" And you are the person who's got to try and stay cool under pressure, bring in all the assets to help protect and support your troops on the ground, and be that voice of wisdom and support for the commanders on the ground. So we're trying to bring that realism, that pressure, to the gaming world and give you an opportunity to experience what that's like.

Ryan 04:20

Yeah, it's that classic fog of war, isn't it? So many games have a version of fog of war, but never really from the command room. So yeah, we're looking forward to it.

Tom 04:29

And this is different. We love military simulation games. We've played Squad, Squad 44, Arma, and we absolutely love them. So when we thought about what we wanted to build, we looked around at the teams that have built those, and even starting off quite indie, they've grown to be big teams. You need big teams to build these proper modern milsims. So we were like, what can we add? What value can we add with our game without building out a huge team? And it's that ability to build something ultra-realistic, something based on reality. And that's not just my background and my experience: over the course of this podcast we're going to be interviewing people who have done the job, and commanders who have been out on the ground, to learn from their experience and fold that into what we do, to make this as accurate a representation, and still fun, as we possibly can.

Ryan 05:19

So give me a little vertical slice of how it's going to look. Are we ever actually going to see the fighting? How's the game going to look to the player?

Tom 05:27

So for the proof of concept we're building out, the initial demo, you're in this Afghan compound. Your platoon has secured this compound and you're running your ops room out of this pretty much clay, mud structure. Inside that, you've got ad hoc feeds coming in on different monitors. And you're going to have your sand table, this map on the ground. So based on the radio reports, you can be moving your figures around that map to keep it updated: potential enemy positions and where your friendly positions are. But you've also got your UAV feed, so you can watch your troops moving in real time. You can also see the pattern of life, so what the civilian population is doing. And of course you can see potential enemy threats through that drone feed. You'll also have body cam footage. It's going to be quite grainy. We want to make sure you've always got a sense of what's happening out on the ground, some sort of connection to it, so you'll be able to switch between the body cam feeds of those individuals out on the ground.

Ryan 07:33

Yeah, so it's combining the chaos and the strategy. You've got to keep a cool head amongst all the carnage going on around you, doing your job, doing what you're there to do.

Tom 07:42

And for you, Ryan, your role specifically is going to be the environment, what we actually see. So what are you hoping to achieve with the patrol base, the effects and the ambience, and then beyond that, the actual environment itself?

Ryan 07:56

Yeah, immersion. For me, immersion. We really have to sell the realism, which boils down to many more things than just the art. You've got your sound effects, your visual effects, just really making it feel claustrophobic... that's the wrong word... a chaotic environment to work in. A lot of that will come from the events going on around you. But you've got to sell it visually, you've got to sell it audibly. It's all about getting the right feel.

Tom 08:21

I mean, it's a tough job for you, right? Because we're in that boiler room concept, the ops room. It's a small area that we're going to have to dress up and make realistic. But what I'm quite enjoying is spending time with you watching the documentaries of Afghanistan and Iraq, where we can start looking at real ops rooms and taking inspiration from them. Some of those documentaries really show the ops room working directly with troops on the ground, so some of that fog of war and the confusion that comes in. We're doing a lot of research and development there, and it's been really useful.

Ryan 09:45

I shall try. Let's nail the tension, the tense moments. As we said before, silence is key. There could be moments of silence and then all of a sudden you've got RPGs flying overhead. Like you said, Squad: I remember one of the first times I was playing Squad and an RPG went over my head, and I physically ducked at my desk because the audio and everything worked. That's the level of immersion and fidelity we want to achieve here. So yeah, not to give too many jump scares.

Tom 10:12

We talk about it a lot, and we'll talk about it in the next episode: the ops room being essentially another character in the game. That's what we really want to treat it like.

Ryan 10:21

So Tom, I believe you've played the first build recently. Want to give me a little insight into that?

Tom 10:28

Yeah, it's really exciting. We put together the first build. It's all grey boxes, and it's about getting the back-end functionality developed to set strong foundations to push forward. I created a little video, only about five minutes long, of me playtesting it. We'll put it somewhere, maybe in the Discord channel, or even on the website, contactwaitout.com, just saying. But already, the feeling that's being achieved and the layout of the room is bringing back interesting feelings and memories for me. It's also evolving pretty quickly, and I'm really gaining confidence. When you start off with an idea, you think it's going to be good, and then you start seeing it come to fruition: you're blocking things out, you're developing it. We've already got the radio working, with radio communication coming from the AI moving around the environment outside. I'm really confident we're going to be able to build something quite exciting from this.

Ryan 11:24

Okay, so you mentioned the personal element there, it bringing back a lot of memories for you. Is that one of the reasons why we're going down this route with this type of game, as opposed to just another milsim shooter?

Tom 11:34

I mean, there are loads of reasons why we're going down this route. You and I brainstormed loads of ideas and this was the one where we both went, yes, I want to play this game. So that's one of the major reasons. Clearly our mutually supporting experience, your work on the game side and my time in Afghanistan, helps bring that realism to it. And I do feel it's an underserved section of the market. It is specialist. It's a strategy-based command game set in roughly modern warfare. We're currently aiming at around 2010, but that doesn't mean in the future we can't change and add more technology, or even go back in time. But for now we're thinking around that sweet spot of 2010.

Ryan 14:00

Good question. Passionate people, which is typically what gaming communities are nowadays. Passion in the right sense, obviously. People who are interested. Myself, I'm massively interested in military history and all things military. So, circling back to your earlier point, I'm very excited to learn from you and the guests we're going to have on future podcasts about what went on and how things actually worked. That's one aspect of it. If you're genuinely interested in this kind of stuff, this is going to be the game for you. Particularly people who want to engage with us, be supportive, and follow us on this journey. One thing I learned from doing game dev on the Squad 44 side of things: you may have a vision as a dev, you collaborate with your team, and you think, yeah, this is where we go. But as we said before, no plan survives contact with the enemy. That's not necessarily how games work.

Tom 14:51

Who are you suggesting is the enemy in this analogy?

Ryan 14:55

Unreal Engine. No, no, no, that's probably inaccurate. Just mainly what we expect. You've got to talk to your players. You've got to talk to the community to get an idea of what they think. We don't have all the answers. It's a collaborative effort, right? Not just devs; it's with the community. So listen to feedback. That's a huge lesson I learned from my work on Squad 44. And try to be flexible. That goes both ways with the community as well. Sometimes there are limitations, and it's hard for people to understand when they don't have to get in amongst the weeds. It's on the developer to explain that clearly, but sometimes it's very difficult. And we're all passionate people. Everyone in this industry, so to speak, is passionate about these things, and gamers are obviously passionate because it's a hobby, it's a love. So yeah: people who are supportive, people who are engaging, people who are curious and want to come on this journey and see what could be done. Like you mentioned before, I'm self-taught. If I hadn't gone out and watched YouTube videos of other developers starting out, I wouldn't have taken the plunge myself. So if this is something where you're thinking, yeah, I could get into this, then come and join us for the journey and see how it goes.

Tom 16:08

Yeah, we're both a bit too old and bold. We've got kids and everything now. I've got no interest in building a toxic community. I want to build a community of people who are passionate and supportive of each other and of us as the developers. I'm not going to have any truck with toxicity. I think we're mature enough now to know the kind of people we want to foster in our community. So if that sounds like you, definitely get yourself involved. If you want to be surrounded by positivity and enthusiasm, again, definitely get involved.

Ryan 17:30

Yeah, absolutely. And the thing I'm most excited about for the podcast is the guests we're hopefully going to have joining us on this journey, and some of those incredible stories your average Joe Bloggs just may not be privy to. So I'm really excited for that.

Tom 17:46

So I planned for this to be ten minutes long. It's probably twice that by now, but I hope people have enjoyed hearing what we're doing. Just a shout-out to the website: it's contactwaitout.com. You've got the basic concept there as we speak. It's going to get fleshed out as we get more design and development done, more videos, and more high-quality renders from the work you're doing, Ryan. It's going to be a living document. You can sign up for the newsletter there, and there will be a link to the Discord channel as well. If you enjoyed this, there are two things I'd ask you to do. Obviously, subscribe on whatever platform you're on. And do feel free to share it into any communities you're involved in that you think would benefit from it. We want to get this nucleus of people behind the story. I think there are a lot of stories to tell through this, and it's going to be a really fun journey along the way.

Ryan 18:38

Do check out the website, because Tom did it all. Very impressed with it. It's really cool. contactwaitout.com. Make sure to check it out.

Tom 18:47

Perfect. Well, until next episode. Next episode is going to be a deep dive into the vision for the game, really going into the detail of the functionality we're hoping to achieve. The one little gem I'll leave you with: at the moment we're developing really high-quality single-player scenarios, but I do want this to get to a point where it's force on force. So multiplayer: you're fighting your mate, who's in their ops room with their assets, and there's the fog of war, and maybe the opportunity to send some friendly banter over the ICOM chatter, the radio chatter between the two ops rooms. But anyway, that's a little future gem.

Ryan 19:21

Friendly banter in the form of an 81 millimetre mortar round.

Tom 19:26

There'll be multiple ways you can show your love for your pals. Excellent.

Ryan 19:32

Thank you.

Tom 19:35

For your first ever podcast, Ryan, I'm impressed.

Ryan 19:37

Oh, really? Fucking hell, boy. I pissed that up so badly.

Tom 19:40

Well, until next episode, let's hear this Northern monkey swear some more. Let's go.