Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War Interview: Creating a balanced PC port

We had previously caught up with Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War's developer Treyarch to discuss about the game - especially on multiplayer and the maps featured. This time Activision Blizzard arranged for us to spend some time with Marc-Alexandre Milot, UI/UX Director at Beenox, the studio responsible for the PC port of Call of Duty titles, who shared with us details on the PC version of the highly anticipated game. Want to know what enhancements we can expect for the PC port? Or how can cross-play be kept fair between PC and console gamers? Read on.

HWZ: Hi, Marc. When did work start for the PC version of Call of Duty? Was it done simultaneously with the console versions?

Marc-Alexandre: We started working on this project about a year ago. It's super important that we start thinking about the PC version as early as possible during development. For instance, we would like to make sure that the UI is going to work with the mouse. We tried to work on it as early as possible, at least for the design part, just making sure that we all agreed on basic mitigation and also the same thing for the gameplay, making sure that all the mechanics are going to work with a keyboard and mouse.

HWZ: How do you decide on the graphics quality baseline? Do you use the next-gen console (XBSX/PS5) as a reference?

Marc-Alexandre: We take multiple things into considerations. First and foremost, something that's super important is we don't want to break the fairness of the game for console players. Because there is cross-play, so you can play with PC and console players. It’s super important that you are not allowed to turn off a graphics option that is going to give you some line of advantage that you are not supposed to have. Like if you are in a cave, you're only supposed to see like 10 feet in front of you. It’s super important that you couldn't break the game by turning off an option. So, every time we expose a graphics option, we always do target acquisition tests. Basically, we take screenshots into different stations to make sure that the game will remain fair. For the PC version, we have a lot of features that's specific to PCs, such as higher draw distance, or higher level of details. You may have higher level of details on the PC because you can have better outward that available on the PS5 and Xbox.

HWZ: I guess there are some difficulties with regards to balancing controls and gameplay?

Marc-Alexandre: That's a very sensitive subject and something that's who we really care. And we do investigations if necessary, at least for the PC part. And we also consider the keyboard and mouse to be super important, even if you play on console. That's the thing that we want to make sure that the game remains fair. What we do for that is every time we want to add in a new option for keyboard and mouse, we think it may be a bit unfair, but also less playful for gamepad players. So, we tried to push as many options as possible to the gamepad, like one option that was done was regarding the vehicle control. When you are playing with the keyboard and mouse, you use WASD to control your vehicle and your mouse as the direction guide. Now for most PC gamers, it's very easy to aim, shoot at something while driving at the same time. It’s a very natural control for PC gamers. But it's a bit harder to do the same on a gamepad. Yet we felt that it was important for gamepad gamers to be able to do the same thing. Every time we try to add a new games option, we think about how this can be exposed to a console gamer as well, just to make sure to game remains fair.

HWZ: Has the move to solid-state drives for next-gen consoles made development any easier for the PC version?

Marc-Alexandre: Mostly for the PC players themselves, because when you want to play together, you must wait for the slowest machine before the match starts. So, it's always beneficial for everybody to have the fastest loading time as possible. The new generation consoles is going to help a lot for all the loading times and to get people inside the game faster.

HWZ: The issue of the installation size is always mentioned with Call of Duty. What efforts are being made with the optimization, such as the pre-downloads, which is a be available ahead of November 13th?

Marc-Alexandre: We've heard a lot of feedback regarding the disk space. It's something that we take seriously. So there was already some effort that was made on the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare and Warzone. It's the same feature that we are pushing forward to be ready at launch. Let's say, you have finished the campaign and you want to play multiplayer or zombies, you will be able to uninstall the campaign package.

Adding this feature also brought us some new ideas, like why not support the Ultra HD texture for PC. This is something that we didn't have before. But now you can download the Ultra HD textures, so you can have 4K models and texture, and also for the UI, so that you can increase the quality. This package is optional. By default, you don't have the 4K textures pack. But if you have a 4K monitor and you want to have a very nice quality of the game, so that's an option that you can select on your Battle.net installation.

HWZ: Have the advancements in the areas of visual fidelity and other PC technologies in the years since Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, made developing Call of Duty Black Ops Cold War more challenging or less challenging? And how so?

Marc-Alexandre: The more awesome the games looks, the more complex is going to be to have the game run on minimum spec. We will try to support as many different computers as possible, so we have a wide specs of computer that we want to support. Every time we are pushing one end to make sure the game looks more realistic, more awesome and have the latest visual tech such as ray tracing, we also have to make sure that there is a way for people who do not have access to these new hardware or technologies to be able to play the game. It's all about making sure that we can offer them some options to reduce the quality of game, so that they can play with a good performance. It's all about balancing on what we offer for the players and to make sure they are able to enjoy the game.

HWZ: Will the game support native 8K resolution and NVIDIA's DLSS (Quality/Performance)? And how about wide-screen and ultra-wide screen resolutions?

Marc-Alexandre: First of all, we support multi monitors. One thing to note is that, with wider aspect ratio of the game, we automatically increase the field of view. If you're playing on the 32:9, the option to select the field of view will display a 4D value for the field of view. But we also correct it to make sure that the image doesn't look stretched on the screen to ensure the game always looks good with the default setting. That's something that was very important.

Regarding the 8K, if you have a 4K monitor you could try doubling the render resolution in the graphics settings. This will effectively give you an 8K resolution. You should be fine with the 8K monitors when they come out. And NVIDIA's DLSS, yes. The feature is supported.

HWZ: The game will support NVIDIA Reflex technology. Will this give gamers an advantage over gamers who use non-NVIDIA graphics cards in multiplayer matches?

Marc-Alexandre: Yes, there's going to be some advantages to have a Reflex because the input latency is lower. Similar to if you are playing with keyboard and mouse on the console, on the big TV screen the input lag that you can feel is bigger. The lower you reduce your system latency, the better the game is going to feel. In the end, I believe that having those features will help on the very high-end competitive level. I don't think most of us will feel the lag between having the NVIDIA Reflex and not having the NVIDIA Reflex. The gap is not that significant, in my opinion, as a PC player.

HWZ: Most modern games come with a built-in benchmark these days. Will Call of Duty Black Ops Cold War feature one? If not, why?

Marc-Alexandre: That a great idea! We do have some maps internally to test our performance, we’ve talked about having an official benchmark tool made available to players but due to our current priorities, it never made it inside the game. But I think eventually I would love to have one for the PC version, so that players can try it and to compare their PC’s performance with other players.

Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War will be released on 13 November on PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and Xbox One. 

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