Episode 1: Command what you cannot see.

Tom 01:43

And this is Making Contact. Welcome back. I say welcome back because some people have listened to the trailer. It's episode zero, and that's giving you an overview of pretty much who we are and what we're about. This episode is about going into a deep dive, for lack of a much better, less AI term, into what Contact: Wait Out actually is, what our vision is for it and where we hope it's gonna go. But Ryan, how are you feeling after your first podcast recording experience?

Ryan 02:20

Slightly more confident. Very aware that my microphone quality is awful compared to yours, but I'm determined not to swear nearly half as much as I did in the last one. Hey, it's gotta be gritty. Swearing's okay. We're gonna be viewing soldiers and officers. It'll come out at some point. It's involuntary. It's northern. I can't help it.

Tom 02:38

I had to leave the last little bit in, the editing, um, because it's just it's just you. People gotta get to know you as you as Ryan, the northern monkey.

Ryan 02:46

Yeah, most candid in real natural as we want.

Tom 02:50

So let's just step back, assuming people may not have listened to episode zero. Ryan, could you just give us an overview of who we are? Why we as in you and I are making this game and maybe you know I could then go into what the game is.

Ryan 03:03

A couple of fools with a grand idea, I guess.

Tom 03:03

You mean we're friends who have got complete trust in each other's ability? Is that what you're saying?

Ryan 03:03

That's the one. That's exactly what I mean. Words out of my mouth. Yeah, so we uh both independently have game ideas, I guess you could say. And for a while, we've been wanting to put something together. We're both quite passionate on the military history side, especially you as you served. I've got a little experience with Game Dev, and we thought, let's go for it. Let's put together an idea. And this is what we'll come up with.

Tom 03:26

Yeah, we've both got backgrounds in defense training and simulation and specifically working on the Unreal Engine. You've obviously got more experience on the gaming side, having co-founded Mercury Arts and helped reinvent Post Scriptum all the way up to Squad 44. But we've never built a game from scratch before. We've known each other for almost a decade now. And so we've always been bouncing ideas off each other. And I definitely think we should talk about some of the crazy ideas we've had in the past. But we just settled down one day and said, right, let's find the one that we want to do. And as soon as one of us mentioned this concept of ops room command game. It really fulfilled so many needs of ours, didn't it? It was the, I want to create something that we're both passionate about. So military history, milsim, definitely both in our kind of DNA. But there are lots of good milsims out there, and they've got big teams and they're doing a good job. So we're like, well, how do we add to the conversation? Not just try and compete with the conversation. And obviously, there's just two of us in this. So it's like, what do we do that we can have? Depth in gameplay. Be limited in the kind of RT the kind of design side into the environments and stuff, the thing that takes the time. To really put it together.

Tom 04:42

Building something off the back of those concepts and the Contact: Wait Out as a premise really felt like the right thing to do.

Ryan 04:49

Completely agree. It had to be something achievable. We're a small team. The work that goes into a game is often overlooked. There's so much that has to go in, even just from your planning phases. That's why typically AAA studios have whole departments, like even I'm going a bit nerdy here, but like even UV unwrapping. Every artist kind of knows it. Every 3D artist. Knows that process, but even in triple-A studios, they will have people that are specifically UV unwrappers and texture artists and animators, and then you'll have like certain types of animators. So, yeah, when we were coming up with game ideas, a lot of it. Lent on is this feasible? Is this actually something we could achieve? Not necessarily with just the two of us. Maybe the team could grow, but it was definitely from the off, it had to be us two. So.

Tom 05:35

And they say, right, you know, necessity is the mother of innovation. And I think that giving us that constraint has made us go, well, how do we build a real game that has real depth? But is clever about it. So, if you just think about the old school games that really work, that still work to this day 20, 30 years ago, they've got depth, they had to innovate and solve problems that modern games don't need to because PCs are now so powerful they can do a lot of that immersion for them. So, we're trying to kind of step it and go back old school. But bringing a little sprinkling of modern fidelity to the scenario.

Ryan 06:10

Yeah, uh well on that note, Tom, we've not really given an overview of what the the game is yet. Do you want to delve into that?

Tom 06:16

Yeah, I do, but maybe I should start off with what the actual job of an ops officer is in kind of modern warfare. And then we can then go from there to the game that we've kind of derived off the back of that. Does that sound good?

Ryan 06:18

Yeah, let's do it.

Tom 06:29

So, an ops officer or an operations officer is the person who is not on the front line, they are back. In the patrol base or back in the forward operating base, if we're taking a war zone like Afghanistan, for example, which is where I served. They would be responsible for the J3, so the current operations. They've got to have a kind of holistic picture of what's happening in the area of operations for that unit. And also neighbouring units as well. So they tend to be ideally, in a kind of inside a structure, so they've got some protection for indirect fire. And they'll tend to have lots of feeds plugged into their ops room. And they'll have a number of different people operating in the ops room. So you'll have maybe a watchkeeper, so that's a person who sits on the radio or manages the signalers and keeps the the logs up to date and can substitute for the ops officer when the ops officer isn't there. You've got the signallers who do who do man the radios. And there's often at least two radio nets. You've got the AO radio net, so the area of operations, so the troops out on the ground will communicate on that radio net. Then you've got the higher radio nets, that's the radio that goes back to rear echelons. Basically where your boss is, also where other assets are. In order to key them up and get them going. Then you might have a J2, so an intelligence officer or NCO. Have their own special sneaky beaky feeds and information that's coming in, and they'll be feeding that to you as the ops officer.

Tom 07:48

You also might have a JTAC if it's not out on the ground. You have a UAV feed as well that comes in. And any other cameras, whatever, it might have set up as well. So there's a lot of information that's coming in. To the upstream. For the game. We've kind of taken a bit of creative license. So the ops officer and the company commander really a role is merged into one. You wouldn't necessarily always have ops officers making command decisions. Their job is to keep across everything that's happening. And to queue up things, but not necessarily make a decision for the whole company. That's kind of the company commander's job. So we're kind of merging them to allow you as an ops offer to have to understand what's happening the full battle picture, but also be the person making those decisions. And in the game itself, you will progress through from a senior captain. Let's say maybe the company commander's been injured and you're now stepping up. All the way through to your career to becoming a major. In charge of your company. Maybe all the way through to a lieutenant colonel, where you might become the battlegroup commander. So you get more toys, more assets, more units, and more complexity to deal with. In terms of my job, so I was working out of Task Force Jaguar, which is the Joint Aviation Group for Helmand Province. So, for the British Aviations, we were responsible for all of the essentially the helicopters, the rotary wing assets that were used there.

Tom 09:08

We were responsible for keeping an air overwatch over troops on the ground. If you would get casualties, we were responsible for sending and dispatching all of the CASEVAC helicopters, working with our partners, the Marine Aviation Wing, so the Americans, because they had a lot of assets in the area as well. So just basically k keeping the J3, the current ops picture where it pertained to aviation. And that was our responsibility. So that, you know, that got hectic. Ultimately, your job can make or break something. We're not door kicking, we're not suggesting that we were fixing bayonets and closing with and killing the enemy. If someone gets shot on the ground and you send your contact report or your um your nine liner and the troops on the ground have sent that to you. It is then your responsibility to get the pilots briefed, get them up in the air as quickly as possible, get them flying towards the unit on the ground as quickly as possible. But then, and this is the key thing. And I think, you know, what makes a good ops officer is thinking about what other things can I do, what concurrent activity can I be doing at this time. To basically give the troops on the ground the best assets, the best chance of success, or best likelihood of success for the mission. It is quite a high pressure job and there's a lot of information you've got to hold in mind, but it is current. It is basically taking data in and making data decisions out in real time.

Tom 10:26

Does that make sense?

Ryan 10:26

Yeah, sounds hectic. So a lot of following standard procedures, but also thinking on your feet, dealing with stressful situations. Trying to do your job essentially, isn't it?

Tom 10:37

Yeah, it's a weird mix of the two things. You could be literally, there could be nothing happening. There's no operations out and there's nothing happening and you sat there drinking cups of coffee. And, you know, there were times when we just put a DVD on in the corner'cause it was that dull. And then suddenly it would all change, and we'd have a down helicopter that got shot down nearby. We'd have to then obviously, the whole world needs to be informed. Everything, all the assets need to get moving at the same time. And that's when you need to be able to not panic. Communicate clearly. And make the right decisions at the right time. And often there aren't right decisions because the information you've got is out of date. And a great example of that was that, um there was a specialist unit going to do a high-risk arrest operation, and they landed on the point. The person who lived in the building they were going to arrest. Stepped out, sprayed the fuselage of the of the helicopter with with AK fire. No one was hit, but the helicopter couldn't take off. So suddenly you've got troops on the ground, they can't take off. They've had to go firm basically and become a sitting duck while reinforcements were sent, other aviation assets were scrambled. And then we were about to send a second helicopter to go and send the the the the reinforcements to go a quick reaction force to go and support them. And then we get a call out of the blue from.

Tom 11:54

The unit saying hold the aircraft we've got to get some more kind of radio batteries on the back of it and ammunition. So why hold the aircraft? I can't see anything. I don't know if the helicopter's been there. The helicopter's asking to take off. I don't know whether or not it's more important for the troops to be on the ground than it is for these radios. So you're trying to constantly make. Kind of low level decisions that could affect the more tactical operation. And I've got the signal that's turning to me: say, boss, what do we do? Do we send the helicopter? And I'm saying, no, hold the helicopter. It's just stress and you don't know what the right thing to do at the time. And luckily, yeah, we held it for another 30 seconds. The guys got their kit on and they managed to get out there and reinforce them with the troops and with the radios and with the ammunition, which obviously felt like the right decision in the end. But you could have easily gone, no, no, send the helicopter troops way more important. We can try and work out radios later. Anyway, that's just one little dip of how hectic it is. And I've got another couple that I might send over. Over the series of the podcast. Where I've actually recorded some of the super complex scenarios where we have to make some decisions, so I'll I'll read them to you as and when.

Ryan 13:02

Please absolutely do. I find it really fascinating. And what shouldn't be understated in that story you've told there is that. This is all while people's lives are at stake. Essentially, you are. Under this pressure, trying to make the correct call. From the information or little information that you have. Whilst knowing that potentially your actions or commands could cost lives.

Tom 13:21

And yeah, just to add more detail there, the senior officers who should have been in there at the time weren't because they were planning how they're going to lift this helicopter away. So I was the senior bod in the room. I had the Apache pilots coming in wanting to be briefed up on what was happening at the real time. We had all the other two radio nets going at the same time as well as all of this happening. So it wasn't just one decision. Oh, come on, Tom, just make it. Yeah. Six things you were doing that are all ultra important, that all have to be done well, and also try and make these critical key decisions that could affect tactical decisions on the ground. So it's like I say, no door kicker, but it is a cool important. Fairly stressful occasionally job that hopefully we're going to bring that into the game.

Ryan 14:02

That's a nice little segue. How how do we translate? Stress that pressure into a game, but also keep it fun and engaging.

Tom 14:10

The fun and engaging bit is the bit that the that's the fifty million dollar question that we're going to test and adjust and hopefully build out this team of testers that want to come in and help us do that because. There's a risk that you go too far towards realism. And it's just not fun. And there's obviously the risk you go too far away from the realism, and the time people we really want to bring on to enjoy this game are turned off. So that balance is going to be absolutely key. So let me take you to that kind of first scenario. I think it's gonna best to kind of talk you through that first scenario that I'm hoping that we'll release as like a demo. You're in your ops room, you've been given a brief that the one section needs to go out and patrol. Just a standard patrol around the out from your patrol base. That is it. That's your current brief day. They've got a checkpoint to go to, then they'll come back, assuming nothing untoward happens. So inside your patrol base, you've got your sand table, which is where you as a player. Will control your units, but that information is always out of date. Until you've received a sitrep from the troops out on the ground. So they'll occasionally every kind of five to ten minutes they'll send you a sitrep of their current location, what's going on. Their assessment of what's happening on the ground in terms of the civilian population, et cetera, et cetera. They'll help you build up your. Kind of situational awareness. So you're looking at your sand table. To your front left, you've got your UAV feed and all of these will be manned by NPC, so non-player characters. There's also helmet cam footage. That's a bit of a creative license that we've taken with this. The current time period of warfare that we're currently developing for is around about the twenty tens. And of course, we didn't have helmet cam footage giving live feeds back to PBs.

Tom 15:45

At that time? However again, back to that ensuring that it's still enjoyable to play. I think having that real-time information of what's happening, even if it's just giving you that stress, if you could see helmet camera footage of an NPC AI section. Providing first aid to their injured personnel or rapid rates of fire down into an enemy position or kicking in doors and throwing grenades, that just adds pressure to you queuing up everything else that's happening. Kind of UAV NPC will control UAVs and control the kind of helmet cam footage that could be brought up onto a big screen. In the far corner, you've got your local area watch keeper or radio operator. The other corner, you've got your higher net radio operator, then you've got the guys who sat down basically writing the communication logs on the ops net. That's like a chat room that everyone in the AO will be speaking on, again, to keep everyone informed as to what's happening. That's all that's going to be there for the demo, but later on you're going to have JTACs, they're the people responsible for calling in fire. And also you're going to have a number of different assets, maybe ICOM chatter. So you'll have an interpreter who sat in the corner listening to enemy radio chatter and will be feeding you J2, so intelligence as to what they're saying. Build up that again, complexity, but important information. So you're in this dark room with your sand table lit by lights.

Tom 17:04

And your first radio communication is one sections out the gates. Heading on patrol. Is that answer your question? I'm not sure. Maybe I've gone off off on one.

Ryan 17:13

No, it's that's a fairly clear description. There is obviously as well the devlogs on the website, contactwaitout.com. To give you a brief window into how that's shaping up.

Tom 17:24

I mean, that's really key. And I'm really, you know, we're making sure we keep that as up to date as possible. And we will do, we're not, this is not about polished devlogs. Like, there's no point doing that. We want this to be a transparent journey, don't we? Showing that what works and what doesn't work. So I'm, you know, when we get a build done. We're gonna record that essentially dev log. Play testing that build, even if it gets to the point where it just falls over. At least that can be we can be transparent with that because otherwise we fall into that trap of continually wanting to show polished content. Which is not a realistic journey of what we're trying to do.

Ryan 17:55

No, everything we've done so far is very early doors is started out as grey boxes and it's progressing rapidly, but it's it's not by any means the finalised polished product that we we have as a vision. And on the art side, we'll talk about that on a later episode, I believe, on how we want that to look.

Tom 18:07

Worth you talking on that now, mate. This is about giving everyone a fuller picture. And if they haven't listened to the previous episode, so. Where are you putting your efforts in terms of fidelity and where are you being slightly more creative with that?

Ryan 18:25

So right now it's mainly reference gathering. I have an issue in that I've never studied an ops room, I've never been to the Middle East, so I'm having to get a picture inside my head of what I want it to look like. And is this accurate? Is this a realistic representation of what it should look like. Because that's where we're going to build the immersion. That's where we're going to build that believability that adds to the tension and the pressure. So I've been doing a lot of reference gathering, some material studies. So just going through as many images as I can find. Okay, these are just certain types of stone walls that have like clay, dried clay built up on the side of it. Also like thatched roofing, there's a lot of thatched roofing, the wood, how dry it becomes, and then also then trying to source textures so that textures can be created in-house, but Megascans library has so many really high quality textures on there. It's it's always a good idea to try and source some of that as well. As I go through that, I'm getting a clearer picture in my mind. And it's okay. So, a good example would be: I saw an image from wasn't an ops room, but it was a compound in Afghanistan, some soldiers stationed there. And they had a doorway. And the doorway was cracked peeled painting all around the doorway and just some wooden. Timber frames that had been kind of painted blue. Really sunk, and that gave me that. It almost like it clicked in my head. It's like, okay, that's the kind of image I look, I want. I want the player to be walking through this going,.

Ryan 19:45

This is exactly what it would look like out there. And I know our setting is actually fictional. We're not basing it on a specific country, but the time period we're going for. Kind of lends itself to the Middle East. So that's that's my initial efforts. I've done a bit of modelling work. So started on some walls with the undulation going across the top of them because they're never just square. There's no right angles, really, in these types of things, or certainly not. Completely 90 degree right angles. And doing a bit of sculpting and making those look believable, and then some work on the material side. That's my efforts currently. I've got a way clearer image in my head now after doing that reference gathering than I did at the beginning. And that's starting to come to fruition now,.

Tom 20:26

But it's still a long journey ahead. You know, ultimately, the fidelity of the ops room is going to be the thing that sucks majority of your time because that's the bit the players are going to spend most of their time in. Then the battlegrounds, the environments, the AO, because we're one step removed. The fact that we don't we've got grainy helmet cam footage and drone feeds and that's what connects us to it. We don't have that stress or pressure of trying to create a call of duty level of fidelity for those kind of environments. It has to be realistic when it comes to the SOPs, the standard operating procedures for the troops and how the kind of AIs fight against each other. That has to be accurate, but then we can we can just pressure off the fidelity. We don't have to see every single grain of dirt. When it comes to the area of operation. So the times we spent in the PB, in the ops room. And the rest of it will come after that. So that's the thing that's allowed us to to scale back from any other kind of milsim you might have played previously.

Ryan 21:27

So the art and the gameplay are really only half the battle. How do we keep players so engaged? They've got that replayability, they want to come back. What's the next level going to look like? What's the progression?

Tom 21:39

Again, this is a work in progress and we're learning to go along, we will listen to the community and get feedback. At the moment we've designed the environments to be very much tile based that at the start of each scenario gets seeded. So each map theoretically will be different. And you and I, Ryan, we we kind of talk back and forth on this quite regularly because there's a lot of value to not having it seeded in terms of the ability to build out a well-balanced map. For the training, for the missions, and you put more time and effort into that, those pre-built. Environments but if it is seeded, that allows, like you say, each time you play it, the mission will play out differently. And I think there's value to that as well. So at the moment, it's seed based. We'll see where that takes us in the future. In terms of progression on the game, you start off as a promoted up senior captain in a small PB. And as you go through your tours of duty, like little payout five or six different missions, and those missions range from patrols to advanced contacts. To checkpoint securing of marketplaces, but then obviously things might happen, VBIED attacks. We're never going to run out of ideas and scenarios that will play out for those missions. So let's say you've played out those six to seven missions. You finish your tour of duty. You would then essentially get promoted and I'll move on to maybe a company commander's role, maybe back in a patrol in a forward operating base so slightly bigger, which therefore means you'll get more assets available to you. But that means there's more troops to control on the ground, so more complexity.

Tom 23:08

And that then might progress to a battle group commander with more assets yet again. And if beyond that, I want to then progress onto more tier one special forces operations. Again, we have to work out how we balance that because there'd be fewer assets in terms of troops on the ground. Maybe more complex. Scenarios. So we have to work out balance that. So that's how the game's going to progress. In terms of it's not just going to be a single player, we're definitely going to include co op very early on. If you choose a co-op game. The NPCs inside your ops room will then disappear. And then it would best be you with one, two or three of your friends. Discussing how best to do it. Some of you, one of you, will be operating the UAV feed, the other one will be operating the radios, et cetera, et cetera. But ultimately collaborating to win the battle. And then take that one step further, I then want to have multiplayer force on force. So either as an individual or as a group of friends, you then can fight against other people. So you've got the fog of war. You never see the full picture, but you're speaking tactically about how you're going to win the battle, I'm really, really excited by that. And if we do it right with the AI control troops on the ground, I think we can create something with real immersion factor.

Tom 24:23

Even though you're just fighting from the ops room.

Ryan 24:27

Yeah, I'm really excited for that too. Particularly co-op as well. I love the idea of communicating with essentially sometimes strangers, random people who you may meet in a game lobby to achieve a common goal. And that's one thing I've always loved from milsims is necessarily personally needs like a rank system or progression. I get my kicks off from basically working with people to achieve something like an ambush, for example, in like squad or armor, where. A little bit of coordination, and it suddenly something comes off and it looks spectacular and feels brilliant. And it's a big pat on the back for everyone around you. That type of stuff really excites me. But again, in terms of progression, we're having this level of persistence as well. So with the soldiers that you are commanding, they are persistent. So if you lose one of those soldiers, that's it, they're gone. Um actually, this is one thing we haven't discussed, Tom, which could be a good idea. Did these soldiers then have stats? So did he improve upon? Mission after mission.

Tom 25:23

It's that.

Ryan 25:24

Yeah, because then that's that gives the player a real desire to keep these guys alive. So they're going to think twice. The decisions they make.

Tom 25:32

Yeah, I really like that as an idea. Thank you. That sounds complicated in my brain already, Ryan. Sorry. Just to give you more stuff to do on some of your already heavy workload. Great idea. Put that as a milestone. I think that's, and that, like you say, it makes you care about your troops. That'll allow you then to. The later missions, when it gets more complicated, you're more likely to succeed. So, what games I used to play? It used to be an old Warhammer game on the PlayStation, and I can't remember. It wasn't, it was before like Warhammer Total War. But it was where you used to, it was, you were controlling mercenaries and units. And it was a fantastic game. I can't. Dark Omen? I think it's called Dark Omen. Don't quote me on that. But that was exactly the same thing. Your unit had. 50 horsemen. And if you lost one, then you'd have to buy them back, and they're really expensive. And eventually, your unit would take attrition, and eventually you'd lose the battles because you didn't have full strength. So you had to think really tactically about how you manoeuvred everybody and who you engaged when and why. So I think if we can bring that into this game, I think that will bring another level of realism.

Ryan 26:36

Oh mate, I absolutely love that nice one.

Tom 26:36

And one other thing we haven't mentioned. Is how the room acts as its own character in the game.

Ryan 26:44

Yes, yeah. So it's a living, breathing environment almost, isn't it? So there's going to be instances. Occurrences during your ops room command. Kind of throw a spanner in the works. We've mentioned like the generator dropping out. Could be indirect fire coming into the the base whilst you're trying to command. Live feeds can drop out from the helmet cams, etc. Yeah, so you're going to get a couple of curveballs thrown at you during.

Tom 27:08

We just don't want the players to get complacent within that space and feel like the war zone is somehow disconnected to them. That's not the case at all. And it really wasn't. Again, another dip from my time is that where our ops room was. Turns out there's not a lot of ambient light in the desert. So where we were, lights were left on, and obviously external lights as well were left on. From a security perspective. But all that meant was that the insurgents knew the range of their rockets when they leaned them up 45 degrees, they knew how far it would fly. So they just basically drove 45 kilometers or whatever it was away from our base. And then just fired their rockets. They didn't need any GPS guidance or anything more complicated than that. There was a massive ambient signature, light signature. From our operating base and they just fired it at the light. It's not sophisticated, but it worked. The rockets flew over where our ops room was. So it does work. So you're not safe just because you're in an ops room. So, if you hear there's a siren going off, you need to press the button to get your helmet and your body armor on as quickly as possible. Let's say they might get a direct hit and suddenly you've got to give first aid to one of your signalers, as well as still controlling the battle space that's out there. Maybe there's an insider threat and all the other stuff you've already mentioned. So, again, we're not lacking for ideas as to ways in which we can bring the battle into the ops room as well. So,.

Tom 28:25

Something to look forward to.

Ryan 28:26

Does that extend outside of the ops room as well? So. In terms of commanding pattern of life, there could be civilians you have to be aware of. Again, it's all about making the correct call. You have a duty of care for these people.

Tom 28:39

Yeah, and we haven't yet worked out how we if we want to do a scoring system for the end of a mission or not. But if we chose to do a scoring system, that would very much be scoring system is probably definitely the wrong term here. But if you, and it happens in war, if there is. Civilian casualties because you chose to drop a rock, you know, a mortar around on a compound you thought the enemy was in, but it turns out wasn't the case. And the pattern of life actually put some civilians in there. Clearly, it is bad, bad in every way. It's bad in the real world because that negatively impacts the civilian population, the way that they see you. Clearly bad for the family. And also, it then has a knock-on effect, then you're creating more likely that the civilian population will turn to the insurgency and therefore more enemy, and therefore more likely your troops will get shot, killed, and you won't complete the mission. So there's so many knock-on effects as to making the right call having a realistic pattern of life. And having the complexity of an asymmetric warfare, which basically just means the enemy could be everywhere. Again, that we're going to bring that into what we do. It's it's um you know when we said it was gonna be a small scope? Uh.

Ryan 29:47

Just this call alone has become one big brainstorming social helping make our lives harder. Yeah, I and this is why we're doing this, right? We're passionate about this. We want to get it right. But also we feel like we've got some good ideas that that haven't necessarily been added yet. Not only the pattern of life and having to manage that situation, but also your troops, you have a duty to care for them. We have to make sure that they're combat effective. What's our idea surrounding this?

Tom 30:15

Well we can't forget the platoon sergeant, company sergeant majors, 2ICs, right? They've got an important job to do, which is they're responsible for the numerous things, but definitely the administration of the troops and not just back at camp, but also out on the ground as well and doing the CASEVACs, dealing with casualties. So got we set it up already kind of rudimentary. Yeah. That one. We'll go with that. Where every single section or unit has their own combat effectiveness calculation based on how much water they've got, how much ammunition they've expended, and also. How fatigued they are, so how long they've been out on the ground. And clearly, if they've lost troops as well. So that all gets put together in terms of a the combat effectiveness calculations of that unit. And it will get to a point where. Either the 2IC's platoon sergeant needs to request a resupply, that's when you can push forward. Ammunition. Water, etc. Or they'll just say, look, one section is lost. Three out of the eight within that section. The rest are fatigue because I've had to help the casualty evacuation. They've also expended a lot of ammunition. They are pretty much combat ineffective. They need to get rotated out. And we just send in the QRF to replace them if we want to continue on the mission. Not just the tactical bit, but you've got that duty of care and that combat effectiveness piece to keep layering on.

Tom 31:33

There is gonna be depth in this, and I think that's the beauty of of what it is, and the skill. Will be having that depth. But be able to communicate that to a casual player in a way that they can understand and make decisions on.

Ryan 31:45

Yeah. M throughout any scenario, there'll be prompts, but we're going to kind of have not hand holding, but guiding towards the player. Tom, you alluded to the seeding of the environment before. What other procedural elements have we got here?

Tom 31:59

I'm just really keen because again it's a small team we've gotta be clever in the ways we make sure it's replayable. So I don't want any mission, even if you replay it again and start it, to be the same. The civilian pattern of life will be different every single time. Enemy locations and the way that they get positioned will be different, even though it'll be the same number of enemies. Trying to achieve a similar mission. They'll just start in different locations and always perform slightly differently. Obviously the events in the ops room would be randomised, some will happen more often than than others. And the compounds, the fields, the ditches, the tracks again will be different every single time. It's just absolutely crucial to me that that people can get more playability from this than just playing one really cool scenario. And then just never turn go back to this game ever again. I want them to be I want this to be kind of a go-to staple when people want to go and kind of disconnect from reality and do something a little bit different. The other thing is, we're going to have an after-action review tool, which will be played obviously after the battle. It replays exactly what happened in real time, and you'll be able to then work out where you thought units were, the enemy were, et cetera. Uh versus what actually happened. And it'd be a really good way of lifting the fog of war and and learning, yeah, seeing if what you thought happened was actually anywhere near accurate to true to life.

Ryan 33:18

Yeah, so all those variables that happened throughout the scenario that affected your decision making. You get to see how you did basically. It's uh it's a debrief. So to speak.

Tom 33:29

Okay Ryan, so we've talked about a lot of grand ideas and where we're at. Obviously, please, if you listen to this, get to the website, look at the devlogs. You can really see this might be, you know, you might be listening to this six months later, and we might be further forward than we currently are. It's worth looking at the videos to get an idea of where we're currently at. From your perspective, what are the threats to this coming to fruition?

Ryan 33:51

Yeah, that's a a good question. The technical side of it is probably the the scariest side for me. Luckily, that's not my responsibility. The NPC behaviours, how do how do we get them to function the way we want them to do and come across realistic? And just generally reception, but I think that's something that every game developer will feel. How is my game going to be received?

Tom 34:13

Yeah, I think that's definitely for me. Uh, obviously on the techie side, I'm confident I could do that. Funnily enough, my concern is on the art side,'cause there's just lot there's a lot of work to be done. Uh so it's I I know you're on it and it's just gonna we'll have to work how we can build up maybe, you know, I know you'll kind of get get into a modern community. So if we start. Building up something I think that gets interest by other people. Maybe they might want to come on board to help us kind of build out those assets. I mean, what do you think about that as an idea?

Ryan 34:40

Absolutely. I'm very lucky in that I've managed to work with some incredibly talented people who've taught me so much and just genuinely nice people as well. Really, really good to get along with. And that's the type of team I would love to be a part of again. So, yeah, I would have no qualms of that. But there is also your kind of Epic Marketplace, there is 3D. Yeah, this is also quite a controversial topic sometimes, actually. I don't know if you want to delve into this now or save this for a later podcast. Go for it. Asset flipping essentially. So, those who may not know, that's essentially taking assets that are available to buy. So this will be 3D models. Sound effects, visual effects, all all sorts, even blueprints for Unreal. Um via the epic marketplace or other platforms and then adding them to your game. I'm not against it. I always kind of feel like that. Did that for a reason and the reason is to help speed up development. Every single game developer wanted to make their game bespokely nowadays. It would take them forever, especially with the level of fidelity you get into with your AAA games. So I'm I'm kind of here for it, but I do understand why. Takes away a little bit of the prestige if it's not all bespoke.

Tom 35:51

Yeah, and so I kind of see it like, you know, we've done the gray boxing, right? We've done that already. We've moved on to. One level above gray boxy now. So there's textures on. Some sort of outline of the table and other places for the ops room, and it's and it's instantly changed the feel of it. And I feel like there's probably the next evolution, which is A mixture of custom assets and marketplace assets to build things out bigger to allow us then to focus on. Other areas that might be more important at this moment in time. And then there's the final polish, which is this go back through. If we feel like it is appropriate and replace the market assets. But that's assuming we've got traction, we've got interest, people are picking up what we're laying down for lack of a much better term. So it gives us a reason to do that. But yeah, I definitely, from my side, I see it as a stepping stone. To getting us where we want to get to.

Ryan 36:43

Absolutely agreed. Yeah, so th those are some of the challenges we fear, but say hypothetically, you had a magic wand. Where do you see the game going? What what's the ultimate success for this?

Tom 36:54

I will absolutely crucially, which is why we're doing the dev blogs and the podcast, is I want, and we've obviously got the Discord channel, which please join if you've got this far into the podcast and come and join us. I want to build a community of people that are excited about this. That's going to motivate you and I to continue to work as hard as we're working on it. And it shows a real signal that there's that if we do build this, then people will want to play it. So that's that's what I you know, kind of step one on this on this magic wand waving journey. Step two is: I hope with the podcast we get to interview some fantastic guests, not just on the military side. Of course, we need their experience to help inform us developing this game. But also on the game dev side, I really want to reach out to our contacts in the sector. Their advice. What are the steps we should be doing to launch this game? How do we get PR? How do we build a how do we stay true to our values? All that kind of stuff. So, I really want to start interviewing some people within the space to help learn from their wisdom and expertise there. And then in terms of success, assuming that the the launch of the game is a success, where does it go from there? Well you and I have been talking, but there's so many war zones that and scenarios that we could explore ranging from.

Tom 38:13

Or going the other way and looking at modern warfare, there's different challenges to an ops room in each one of those different scenarios. And also go a little bit crazy again. I'm happy to. Play with different ideas around uh zombie scenarios as well, I thought might be quite good fun and quite good.

Ryan 38:29

I love that. That's cool. I did actually, the other day, was thinking: why is there no games? Where the military in response to a zombie outbreak. Like you have to command your military to try and put down a zombie outbreak. There isn't uh it's always based on the individual and the idea that the world has already gone. You'll notice I didn't swear that.

Tom 38:50

I'm so proud of you.

Ryan 38:50

Thanks, mate. So something like that I could see working. The other day I was thinking we were watching the helmet feeds and the drone feeds, and it made me. Think of Aliens, the second Aliens film. When Ripley's watching the Marines. Come into first contact with the xenomorphs and they're like slowly watching the feeds get wiped out one by one. And I was thinking, yeah, that'd actually be a cool idea as well. Imagine being on a space expedition and you're just watching your team get annihilated by aliens. You've got to try and manage that situation. But pipeline dreams. It's pipeline dreams. And I think it's just the question is, is this a genre that people want to play?

Tom 39:31

And if it is, then let's stay true to what we want to build, not get distracted. Not that you and I are other types get distracted anyway, to be fair. But. Would then build this out and make this a success. And there's so many directions it could go if and when this game becomes a success.

Ryan 39:47

I really, really wanted to go. Sorry, Tom, what was that? And pretend to be distracted by that. And that is what we call a dad joke, mate. That is. Yes.

Tom 39:57

Look, if you've got this far on the podcast, we absolutely love having you along for the journey. I hope you're as excited about this as we are. Do check out contactwaitout.com. That's the website. We'll keep that as up to date as we possibly can. Crucially, you can click to join the Discord channel. Come and join us. Zero toxicity. I have absolutely, we have no time for that. We just want positivity and energy. Happy for you to bring your own experiences. And you can. Testers, and we value everything you can add to it, but it has to be given in a positive, constructive way. And that is enough for me from now. Anything from you, Ryan?

Ryan 40:28

Nope, nothing else from me. I really enjoyed that.

Tom 40:33

Until the next episode, let's get back to work.