OGDC 2007: Interview With Scott Brown of Netdevil
Earlier today, I sat down with Scott Brown to talk a bit about Warmonger. Warmonger is a multiplayer FPS using the Unreal 3 Engine and incorporating the Ageia PhysX engine. Here's what he had to say:
Scott: Warmonger is in the final polish stages now, and what we're really trying to do now is find out what is the best type of business model. What do we want to do, do we want to sell expansion packs? We're going to give this first episode away and we're trying to figure out where to go from there. Do we go with a publisher and have them pick it up and release a full-featured game? Do we do it ourselves and release a gun pack or map kit?
Razor: I got to play it at GDC and what's the biggest thing between then and now that you guys have added or finished since then?
Scott: Well, there's more levels now than we had then and a lot of polish. Items like how you know where the next objective is, do we make it a HUD element, and of course there's always performance optimization.
Razor: How close are you to starting an Open Beta or releasing it?
Scott: Once we feel really confident then we'll do an Open Beta, hopefully not for very long, just to see if there's anything we need to catch before we go live with it. Because we're giving it away there's not much difference between the Open Beta and Launch so we need it to be even more cleaned up.
Razor: You were talking about map packs, will you ever allow players to create their own maps?
Scott: We're thinking about that too, because Unreal is famous for its Mods. We kind of see this game as a bit like the Counterstrike for Unreal 3, that's really kind of the style of game that it is. They don't really have a game like that in the Unreal world, and it would be a great way to grow the game.
Razor: What about the backstory, what is it that makes the Warmonger world the way it is?
Scott: The story is it's a future world where due to fuel shortages the government's basically gone bankrupt so they've gone to outsourcing all the military to different companies. You play the role of a mercenary working for one of these corporations that are now running the military. They are sending you on raids and missions like "go hit this old downtown part of New York because there's some data files we need to get". You're going to choose one of the two sides, it's very simplified right now, but it's something we hope to build on.
Razor: Will there be any in game tools to support something like the FPS clan or a guild?
Scott: What we do right now is store a ton of statistics. We show you kills, how you rank against other people's kills so there is a web page that tracks a lot about you as a player, but there's no real form of advancement. But we can tell you things like accuracy, kill/death ratios. Clans could come to our site and pull what they want if they want to display it on their sites, but we don't have any official support. The data is all open. We're using Gamespy Comrade for all of the connections.
Razor: Will it have its own integrated voice comms, like Auto Assault did?
Scott: You can use the Comrade one if you wanted. I feel that there are such great tools out there that how are we going to build a better one.
Look for an announcement concerning Warmonger to come out Soon(tm), and thanks to Scott for taking some time to talk with me.
Permalink
OGDC 2007: Interview With Scott Brown of Netdevil
Earlier today, I sat down with Scott Brown to talk a bit about Warmonger. Warmonger is a multiplayer FPS using the Unreal 3 Engine and incorporating the Ageia PhysX engine. Here's what he had to say:
Scott: Warmonger is in the final polish stages now, and what we're really trying to do now is find out what is the best type of business model. What do we want to do, do we want to sell expansion packs? We're going to give this first episode away and we're trying to figure out where to go from there. Do we go with a publisher and have them pick it up and release a full-featured game? Do we do it ourselves and release a gun pack or map kit?
Razor: I got to play it at GDC and what's the biggest thing between then and now that you guys have added or finished since then?
Scott: Well, there's more levels now than we had then and a lot of polish. Items like how you know where the next objective is, do we make it a HUD element, and of course there's always performance optimization.
Razor: How close are you to starting an Open Beta or releasing it?
Scott: Once we feel really confident then we'll do an Open Beta, hopefully not for very long, just to see if there's anything we need to catch before we go live with it. Because we're giving it away there's not much difference between the Open Beta and Launch so we need it to be even more cleaned up.
Razor: You were talking about map packs, will you ever allow players to create their own maps?
Scott: We're thinking about that too, because Unreal is famous for its Mods. We kind of see this game as a bit like the Counterstrike for Unreal 3, that's really kind of the style of game that it is. They don't really have a game like that in the Unreal world, and it would be a great way to grow the game.
Razor: What about the backstory, what is it that makes the Warmonger world the way it is?
Scott: The story is it's a future world where due to fuel shortages the government's basically gone bankrupt so they've gone to outsourcing all the military to different companies. You play the role of a mercenary working for one of these corporations that are now running the military. They are sending you on raids and missions like "go hit this old downtown part of New York because there's some data files we need to get". You're going to choose one of the two sides, it's very simplified right now, but it's something we hope to build on.
Razor: Will there be any in game tools to support something like the FPS clan or a guild?
Scott: What we do right now is store a ton of statistics. We show you kills, how you rank against other people's kills so there is a web page that tracks a lot about you as a player, but there's no real form of advancement. But we can tell you things like accuracy, kill/death ratios. Clans could come to our site and pull what they want if they want to display it on their sites, but we don't have any official support. The data is all open. We're using Gamespy Comrade for all of the connections.
Razor: Will it have its own integrated voice comms, like Auto Assault did?
Scott: You can use the Comrade one if you wanted. I feel that there are such great tools out there that how are we going to build a better one.
Look for an announcement concerning Warmonger to come out Soon(tm), and thanks to Scott for taking some time to talk with me.
Permalink