blog: developer blog #5

Feb 06, 2009 Derek Smart

Development Status

Development on the game is coming along quite nicely and Sergio is almost done with the new Frontend GUI which looks – and feels – radically different from the version used in our previous games. This one is a total re-write and which we will at least get some mileage from in our next game (KnightBlade) as well as our last game (the Galactic Command Online MMO due out sometime in 2011).

We looked around for middleware GUI for games, but most were either rubbish or too expensive. There’s one that costs about $20K!!. Yes, you read that right. Crazy stuff that. So in the end, we just decided to do our own – and it has been well worth the investment.

Anyway, our new GUI engine also supports minimal skinning, so you can change the coloring scheme by editing an INI file. We’re of course not going to support this officially, but PC tweakers are welcome to go nuts. The shots above show a L4D (my recent favorite fps game!) type color skin. No conspiracy theories please.

The content guys are still a bit behind on the creation because it is a LOT of art and 3D content in the game. But we’re about 98% there. The new push is on wrapping up the remaining 3D cockpits (each of the 12 fighters and 6 gunships has its own unique cockpit since the game is played primarily in first person view mode), the new character animations set, as well as finishing up the fps weapons which will replace the legacy ones currently used as placeholders in the game. With twenty-two weapons, it is a lot of work.

The good thing about our game engine is that at this stage in development, no content is holding up the game dev itself. Any new content that comes in, just gets checked out, approved and dropped into the game. From that point on, it just works. This is due – largely in part – to the game engine design as well as the fact that earlier on, I decided that we would use legacy (from previous games) art assets in the game so as not to impact the development side. My guess is that we’ll be dropping content into the game right up to the last week before we go Gold on the PC version of the gamel.

Inbound Media

The next game movie, due out in March, will be an all fps movie in co-op mode. That movie will also, for the first time, reveal one of the Gammulan character classes: the Vanguard Assaut Marine. A total badass if I ever did see one. There are three unique Gammulan character classes – and this is their first showing in any of our games even though they are an integral part of the game world’s mythos. Even though the VAM are the pre-requisite “cannon fodder” (think Red Shirt), they are total badasses when encountered in numbers. Since the game is team based, there is no way in hell any gamer is going to survive an encounter on his own when faced with more than two of these guys. Its going to be awesome.

On Gameplay & Game Mechanics

So I was on this week’s Episode 18 of the Avault podcast (great bunch of guys!) where I talked quite about the game, how it plays, the direction etc. I also talked a bit about my reasoning behind the choices and sacrifices made with the game’s graphics direction and such. Of course, no Derek Smart interview is complete without the usual industry rant. My segment starts around the 09:00 mark. Go listen! :)

There is also a post=podcast Q&A session over here.

A lot of gamers just don’t understand what exactly goes into developing a game. Especially a large open world game. Done by a small indie studio with a budget that is just South of the $3m border. With a small environment, you can do all sorts of crazy things and go nuts in the graphics dept. But then, who is your audience exactly?

There are games out there with upwards of $50m budgets and kick-ass graphics, failing at retail. So it is not just about graphics. Sure cutting edge graphics are good to have because gamers are mostly visual types, but at the same time, a game with excellent graphics and so-so gameplay mechanics, is not going to attract – or retain – the attention of gamers who want more. It is those gamers who “want more” from their games, that we have catered to and attracted over the years. Sure with our low overhead and dev costs, we can afford to do that. But with larger publishers – who have all these crazy expenses, massive teams etc, the difference between a 50K unit seller and a 500K unit seller is – more often than not – how the game plays and feels. And sometimes, neither. So when these games fail, you see all these layoffs, studio closures and such.

Another thing about doing a massive open world game is that you can always extend and expand it. We’ve done this for many years over the life of our popular Battlecruiser and Universal Combat series – which we retired from active duty last year. This new game has a 400 sq. km game world (aka “map”). With only eight (heavily populated) bases that each cover about 20 sq. km. So just with the original world, we can keep adding bases, assets, new characters, careers etc. And thats before we even think of adding another map to the game world. Yes, our tech actually allows us to do that – seamlessly. We can keep stitching the game world until we get old and Grey. The world will just get that much bigger, more populated and more interesting. This is exactly the model that MMO games use – and with increasing popularity. So no, we don’t have to jam everything in this game all at once. Thats what DLC is for. :)

We have a specific goal and vision for our game and we’re going to stick with that vision – no matter how it plays out. We believe in the game, the mechanics and the premise. The graphics are very good and top notch for what they do and for a game of this size and scope. Once the tech demo is out (sometime in early March) the interested gamers can draw their own conclusions since that tech demo will be based on near final game code but still be subject to various tweaks and such derived from playtesting feedback.

Until next time, keep rooting for us! Unless you’d rather be playing, oh I dunno, the upcoming Battlefield 1943 – a game you played back when it was called Battlefield 1942? Yikes!

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3 Comments »

  1. Magnus says:

    Epic blog post is epic.Hopeing to get a beta invite. ;)

    This project is really looking to shape up to be a grand slam of a game. I’m getting everyone I know with a decent PC or a 360 involved with the game, because they’re all generally similar to me in their tastes and I know will most likely LOVE this game. Spreading this by word of mouth has been fun. ;)

    I am really glad that there will be DLCs and content added, I was slightly worried about the 400sqkm of space being not used much – because, no matter how awesome it looks, it would be a bit boring to never see anything new in the space.

    As always, looking forward to release and post release releases, as well as sucking at the previous games as much as possible!

    Posted on February 6, 2009 @ 3:21 pm

  2. Thomas says:

    Will you be able to change the in-game GUI background to fully opaque? It might be hard to read it when facing snow otherwise…

    Posted on February 6, 2009 @ 9:15 pm

  3. Derek Smart says:

    No. We’ve tested it against all backgrounds and it looks just fine.

    Posted on February 7, 2009 @ 2:11 pm

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