I'm shocked and a little disgusted at some of the user comments in this thread. Freeverse is entitled to enter into a business deal, and it's natural that this would delay their game. While it's true they need customers to buy their stuff, it's pretty arrogant to say that paying a few bucks for the occasional game constitutes "paying their salaries." It's cool that the devs use this board but it's completely obnoxious to assume they need to inform the public of their development plans if they have other things going on. As for free-to-play or downloadable content, I can't understand why a sane person would criticize these business decisions before anything has been announced. I'm looking forward to Warp Gate when it's done and released!
It's very much like Flat Space in that regard. Dealing with all 3 axis is very time consuming and can be very difficult to get used to from a player's perspective. We wanted to make each star system feel unique and alive. Setting everything on what we call the "Space Grid" has helped a lot. While there is free rotation of the camera, the game is set to an Isometric view. So it becomes easy to get familiar to systems. You know the Jupiter is at the top of the screen and Pluto is to the bottom. I'm going to have to keep silent on release date or devices for the time being.
Even in 2 axis you can get some pretty good space battles going. On the iPhone there is Archangel: Fate of the Commonwealth which I thought was excellent but sadly since abandoned by the developer. I played Star Trek Tactical Assault on the PSP and they did a great and underrated job in creating tense battles which had challenging AI. How many grids are there in the game? And is there a distinction between "fighters" and "capital ships"? I am expecting some news from GDC!
There's tons of combat. It's just set on a 2D plane. The Space Grid is more of a visual style. When you send your ship from point A to B, with a starfield background, it can be hard to tell the ship is moving. The grid provides a visual effect to tell the ship is moving, and to help you judge how fast. All ships can fight. There is a huge difference in size, strength, cargo capacity and weapon capacity in ships. So a huge cruiser can carry several thousands of tons of cargo, and equip 10 massive weapons. Where as a small 1 man fighter can only carry a few tons of cargo and equip 2 weapons. The game has two main modes. The StarZone and the CombatZone. In the StarZone, you are flying around. In the StarZone, other ships can engage in combat, kill each other, attack you and such. If you choose to engage in Combat, you enter the CombatZone. This changes your ship into Combat Mode where you attack. It's all designed to keep the controls as intuitive as possible.
The Star/Combat zone idea is clever. Kind of like what the Silent Hunter campaign menu is like now. I hope there are enough variety in encounters to keep things interesting! It was said before that DLC will be used for purchasing ships and weapons. Is this still true? Will it be extra items that are purchasable only (ie they aren't unlockables which you can buy to have them earlier?)
Right now there is 1 star ship that can be purchased via DLC that is not found anywhere in the game. It is not the most powerful starship, but it is the most stylish. I've started working on new DLC content (as in outlining the plot and getting sketches started). But that wont' be ready until the game comes out. Every weapon can be purchased with in your in game currency and does not depend on DLC.
Sounds like the game is still a few weeks away at least - unless you guys can pull off miracles to script and programme the DLC contents in days!
Probably not this week. Due to crunch time, only Lydia traveled to GDC. I don't think she wanted to get any new stuff out while she was thousands of miles away from the office.
The game engine is incredibly flexible at this point. it's all data driven. That allows us to produce additional content very fast. The bulk of the project was developing the engine to be so flexible as to let us do that.
Hippieman I understand you're not permitted to disclose a release date, but can you at least suggest if this one's coming out in within, say, a month?
I thought it was. It might be more behind closed doors stuff. Regarding all the secrecy. We work with partners that require us to not be as open as we'd like to be. Sucks I know.
That's cool I guess. I don't know, I never understood this GDC or E3 behind closed doors industry exclusivity attendance only bullshit. You would think that in an industry where the consumer has the most control over a companies projected future viability, the industry would want the 'common mans' perspective. Out of all the trade shows it seems as if PAX is the one that's more connected with the actual gamers, whereas E3 and GDC it would stand to guess that all your doing is showing your hands to your competitors and press. And probably hearing a lot of empty words. But alas I digress from my mini rant, I just want to play the game. Its sound fun and fascinating! And theirs only so many times you can crush the rebellion as the right hand man of Commander Kane... (Escape Velocity Nova reference)
When I go to an event. It's to meet with business partners. I do dinners with Apple, meet with fellow devs, catchup with my Xbox people. For me it's a way to firm up relationships to continue making great games. Some fantastic partnerships have come out of GDC and E3. I love interacting with the fans, but it's difficult to balance.
