Mourad Majeri talks Field Ops

Mourad Majeri talks Field Ops

Feature

FPS? RTS? How about both? Freeze Interactive's Mourad Majeri discusses his game in depth with the HG staff.

It’s a first for the gaming world, and it looks like it might be a winner. ‘Field Ops’, a Digital Reality and Freeze Interactive creation expected to be released early in 2007, is a combination first-person shooter/real-time strategy game; something never before attempted in game design. It’s based on small, special operations squads with specific targets, or initiatives to accomplish: Conquest, Bombing Run (or, asset destruction,) or the rescue of a Very Important Person (VIP).

The game’s unique feature is the ability to switch perspectives from the two classic player views well-known to gamers. There’s the more distant group views with illuminated circles to define your team members, and the over-the-gun barrel view of the single combatant. Considering the difficulties involved in smoothly moving from one view to the other in a graphics-capability sense, ‘Field Ops’ is entering an arena of very popular and successful games which should make this entry’s place in that competition something more than interesting to see.

We recently had the opportunity to sit down with one of the major movers of ‘Field Ops’ for an interview about the game.

Hooked Gamers: Please, tell us who you are, and what your position is at Freeze Interactive?

Mourad: My name is Mourad Majeri. I work at Freeze Interactive as Senior Producer on ‘Field Ops’.

Mourad Majeri talks Field Ops
Hooked Gamers: ‘Field Ops’ sounds like a very exciting game, and a very exciting enterprise in which to be involved. What was some of the thinking that went into creating the idea behind this game? What were the developers trying to accomplish via the already strong presence on the gaming market of both first-person, and real-time strategy games?

Mourad: We always enjoyed playing both military FPS and RTS games, but always felt that something was missing. In ‘Field Ops’, we want to give players the feeling that they are experiencing a modern global conflict, through the eyes of a Commander and a soldier. We decided that the best way to be a commander was to play in RTS, and the best way to be a soldier on the field was to play an FPS. So we decided to mix FPS and RTS, and ‘Field Ops’ was born, the Real-Time Strategy Shooter.

Hooked Gamers: Server-based multi-play comes in many varieties. There’s Age of Empires running on a single dedicated server, and Battlefield 2, where server space is rented to players in a ranked, and unranked configuration. What configuration and format can players of ‘Field Ops’ expect to see when they go on-line with it for the first time?

Mourad: The multiplayer side is based on peer-to-peer technology. There is no dedicated server in ‘Field Ops’ as each game starts when all players are ready. There is an in-game browser list hosted by GameSpy, which also stores all stats and track record (Ladder) on their servers.

Hooked Gamers: I understand from the ‘Field Ops’ Community site, the system requirements (to quote a moderator) ‘...will require average spec[s] to run. We are looking to make the game playable on 2-3 years old machines. (Obviously, you will be able to setup your graphical settings in order to get the best ratio Visual Quality/Frame rate…)’ Though this sounds good in a general sense, what are the system requirements to play ‘Field Ops’?

Mourad: As we have not made the compatibility test yet, it’s very hard to forecast what exactly the specifications will be. What I can tell you is that the game is currently playable on a PC equipped with P4 2ghz (or similar), 1GB of memory, 3D Graphic Card with 128 MB on board. This is a pretty common spec for PC gamers.