DESIGNER'S NOTES
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This section will be updated every 2-4 weeks
until the release of Void War. If you are
interested in knowing what to expect out of
Void War, or are simply interested in the mad
mind of a game designer, hopefully this will
be a tiny bit educational or at least
entertaining.
Part 4: Pick-Ups in Space
During the course of development, several
people I showed the game to - veterans of
more popular videogames like first-person
shooters - started making suggestions about
pick-up items in the game. Things you could
run over in your ship that would give you
more weapons or special abilities. "BAH!"
I'd say. "Pick-ups in space! Go back to your
first-person shooters, kids! This is a
space combat 'sim' with a taste of realistic
Newtonian physics! Nobody’s going to take it
seriously if it has pick-ups!”
After fuming over it for a few months, I
realized they were right. Did I want Void
War to be taken seriously or did I want it
to be fun? It had to be fun. Fun
eventually won out. With great reluctance,
feeling that the hard-core space combat
crowd was going to want to burn me in effigy
for doing this, I added pick-ups to the
game. Tentatively, so I could rip them out
if they proved to be a nuisance to
game-play.
Much to my surprise, they made the
game! Pick-ups were that last remaining
element to really put the need for 'flying'
back into the space combat genre. The
'pseudo-Newtonian' physics model made
grabbing these objects a little tricky in
the heat of combat. If they were close to an
obstacle, they were dangerous to grab, as
you'd run the risk of scraping or smashing
against the obstacle - not something you
want to do, especially with an enemy ship
shooting at you. Or, alternately, they could
be placed out in the middle of space with
nowhere to dodge for cover - meaning a
player had to "make a break for it" to grab
the item and then try and get back to safety
(easy to do in the Nighthawk, not so much
for the other ships). Players could see when
you were breaking for an available pick-up
in multiplayer, and thus predict your
movement (a very dangerous state to be in).
And you could do the ever-popular denial ---
when a player is going for that critical
power-restoration pick up, you can swoop in
and nab it before him, or grab it after he's
missed it (my favorite).
It just added a whole new dimension to the
game - it rewards expert piloting skills,
adds a bunch of new tactical options to the
game, and just made it more "fun." So they
are in. May the hard-core purists forgive
me, but dang it makes for a fun game.
Well, this is it. I haven't updated as often
as I'd have liked because frankly Void War
development has been consuming pretty much
all the time I have. And I've been answering
some great interviews where they ask some
great questions - but those take a long
time. Void War is almost OUT THE DOOR...
we're pretty much in the bug-fixing stage.
We have a list of enhancements we want to
add, but we're throwing those into the pot
of potential enhancements post-release. We'd
rather focus on what YOU, the customers,
want in the game.
Jay Barnson
Rampant Games
September, 2004
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