Comments - John_Matrix82

Hi Ciro, try it out and let us know how it looks! :)

Thanks guys :)

Yep, we dropped the project, we.. we were working on it for too many years and with still a lot of things left to do.

We're getting out soon with a simpler game, with which we hopefully use to fund Naumachia or other projects.

You caught the idea of the game.. Action :D

This is our credo since The Specialists (our previous work, a mod for Half-Life) :)

Hehe, thanks, but also your project is really promising, I see that we're not the only ones trying to create good games without a full-sized development studio with dozens or more people behind it :)

Starting from the assumption that anything in this genre can't be fully original.. I can say I had to search for that ship cause I didn't knew that one from HW. The front end design is quite similar effectively.

You have to consider that we are a very small team (namely 3 persons..) working on this project without earning a single dollar (well 'euro' since we are Italian). Aiming at quality, our development times are quite long, so as much as I'd love to give the users the possibility to mod it, you'll understand if i say that we'd have to develop at least some basic tools to allow mods. And this takes time.
We will consider this aspect only after the release of the game.

We aim at this: you download the client, register it and play freely without any barrier.
During the matches, each player can improve the military grade/rank (it depends how well is the conduction of the game); only those who buy a license will be able to advance to higher ranks and so employ all the weapons/ships available in the full game, this is what we'd love to do.

How much for it? I'm aware this isn't as complex as other games on the market, so i won't certainly ask 50 bucks for it. We still have to define this aspect, but we'd love to keep the price low.

It will be team deathmatch based with non-persistent stats (at least for the first releases). You earn your ranks during a match and when the next one starts you should have to start everything from the beginning.

However you may understand that we are really few people working on the game (3, with a single programmer) and if everything goes on well, we will upgrade and improve it along the way, and most of what you suggest is in our 'wish list'. The only "impossible" thing is the number of players: each player at its highest rank can have under command several units then you have to multiply this number for the remaining 15 players (assuming a 8vs8 match) so it's quite difficult to simulate so many units all together (you have to count every shot/missile/physics and so on).

Yes :)

You can either set turrets automatically (with or without specifying a target) or man them by yourself. This of course if you are onboard the ship, otherwise the IA under your command will take care of them.

You know, we are 3 guys working on this.. we'll try pushing for a release within this year.

We know that modding in general is important, but to get the proper tools it's very likely that you'll have to wait after the full release of the game. However we'll probably let modify skins or something like this, but for custom-built ships and so on, it's really early to speak about.

We are evaluating several options, however expect close action especially for the beta, we need to balance off the various factions, after that we should introduce wider environments.

About players expect 8vs8 (total of 16 players). It may look a small number, but consider that each player once reaches the highest level, can command up to 16 AI units, so in the level you may end up having more than 256 units on screen that need to be simulated and syncronized with the server.

The engine uses only the 2.0 shader model, so to play it using directx9 any videocard above an Ati Radeon 9200 or a Nvidia Geforce fx 5xxx should run it. With shaders turned off you can run it also in directx8 mode, so even very old hardware can play it.

It should, but then do not expect to pay as much as other high end games in terms of buying a license :)

thanks, it's too much :).
I played both freespaces and liked them a lot (and i still like them) but it's totally different.. forget shields, forget of non-existing physics and many other things, the games differs a lot.

What do you mean for models? If you need models then try asking on modelling forums such as Blenderartists.org or Forums.cgsociety.org. Otherwise grab a program (i use blender Blender.org ) and do them yourself :)

You can play it freely but during online gameplay you won't be able to employ all the available fighters/ships because yor rank will be locked over a certain level. Let's suppose the maximum rank reachable in the whole game is 5, if you want to play our game without buying the license then you can "only" reach rank 2, but you can use the game undefinitely.

The first release won't have a real singleplayer game.
Since the AI is quite good then you can play/try the game even offline using bots, but it will probably be a singleplayer version of what you'll find online.
As we say in our website, we plan to add a specific singleplayer campaign along with several updates (some sort of an "expansion set"), obviously after the first release of the game.

I'm running two gigs, and they are old ddr400, that's why i was worried hehe :D

Maybe it's just matter to evaluate implementation of map downsizing in the game, to avoid any problem like those? :)

Your mod is one reason to buy a Crysis copy (which i don't have yet).
Great work, best wishes from an italian indie developer :)

Most of the Coalition fighters may recall that fighter, however "our ones" are quite bigger.. in FS the herc was an heavy fighter, this (from what i remember) should be as big as that one, but for us it is a light fighter :D

We'd like to have everybody be able to play it freely but with limited content. To unlock full contents, then you'll have to buy a relatively cheap license.

The engine is proprietary, written from scratch; it employs Directx9 with 2.0 shader model, but it can be scaled down even to Directx8 (so it works even with older hardware). :)

I'm always impressed to read about people thinking that the game is demanding in terms of hardware.. This means the graphics are good :D

Apart this the game runs even in directx8 mode (of course without post processing effects/shaders). With shaders enabled, most of the graphic cards present in the market from 2003-2004 should handle it without too much trouble, altough we'll know more once serious testing begins.

Yep indie and entirely made by 2-3 people :)

We want to give a reasonable design, mostly based on solid-like shapes. No fancy-thingies flying around :)

"The game is planned to be an online multiplayer experience; later on we plan to add a single-player campaign."

Further videos might be a problem atm because we prefer to focus on development rather than losing time with videos.