Putting the 'role' back in role-playing games since 2002.
Donate to Codex
Good Old Games
  • Welcome to rpgcodex.net, a site dedicated to discussing computer based role-playing games in a free and open fashion. We're less strict than other forums, but please refer to the rules.

    "This message is awaiting moderator approval": All new users must pass through our moderation queue before they will be able to post normally. Until your account has "passed" your posts will only be visible to yourself (and moderators) until they are approved. Give us a week to get around to approving / deleting / ignoring your mundane opinion on crap before hassling us about it. Once you have passed the moderation period (think of it as a test), you will be able to post normally, just like all the other retards.

Interview RPS Interview - Jagged Alliance - Flashback

Whisky

The Solution
Joined
Feb 22, 2012
Messages
8,555
Location
Banjoville, British Columbia
Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera
Tags: Full Control; Jagged Alliance: Flashback; Rock Paper Shotgun

jaf1.jpg


Rock, Paper, Shotgun has an interview with Full Control about Jagged Alliance - Flashback.

RPS: Are there things that you thought would work, or that the Jag or Kickstarter community thought would work, that when you’ve prototyped them you’ve realised that they’re just not very enjoyable? There’s sometimes a danger of overcomplicating and veiling the core mechanics.

Lund: A lot of the things that we ended up not implementing have been on the plan since day one, since our aim was to take JA 2 as a baseline. We have the source code, as others do as well, and we’ve been fishing through to dig out the mechanics. Some things were a given, that we knew had to be the same way, and we haven’t diverted far at all. It was important to modernise without taking it too far from JA 2.

A lot of the modernisation is interface-based, so adding context-sensitive cursors and more information in the HUD. That explains some of the underlying mechanics and in JA 2 there were mechanics that were never explained – we talked to some of the original developers and dug through that source code, and found that there are a lot of things that have no explanation and no real impact.
So we had a discussion. Do we remove those things because they have no real impact? That’s the kind of thing we work out in prototypes.

Experimentation-wise, the changes we have made from our original plan is mostly on the story side. The original plan that we thought up and used on the Kickstarter is a Cold War setting, where we did have remnants of the Soviet Union and the US forces fighting on an island. The logo was the Hammer and Sickle. That has totally changed as we moved through the story planning.

The alpha for the game will be released tomorrow for backers.
 

sser

Arcane
Developer
Joined
Mar 10, 2011
Messages
1,866,661
Surprisingly inepth and solid interview. I know little about the game, but at the very least I like that the project seems narrowed and focused, not bloated and grandiose beyond its budget like the vast majority of Kickstarters.

Also, it's pretty cool to hear that the voice actors from the original games are now legit talent out in Hollywood.
 

bledcarrot

Educated
Joined
Sep 21, 2013
Messages
98
Surprisingly inepth and solid interview. I know little about the game, but at the very least I like that the project seems narrowed and focused, not bloated and grandiose beyond its budget like the vast majority of Kickstarters.

I agree. They don't sound like they're over-extending themselves. If they focus on the core mechanics and on developing a good base I'd be happy if they used sales to fund expansions down the track. A little burnt out on kickstarters promising "content content content" and spreading it thin.
 

RK47

collides like two planets pulled by gravity
Patron
Joined
Feb 23, 2006
Messages
28,396
Location
Not Here
Dead State Divinity: Original Sin
RPS: You’ve probably been asked this many times before – and I think I might even have asked you this before myself – but do you have any of the original voice actors? I imagine they’re scattered far and wide.

Lund: We don’t have any of the original ones. We investigated where they are and, unfortunately (for us), a lot of them are now voice actors in Hollywood, which makes them very expensive to hire

Awww.
 

Whisky

The Solution
Joined
Feb 22, 2012
Messages
8,555
Location
Banjoville, British Columbia
Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera
RPS: You’ve probably been asked this many times before – and I think I might even have asked you this before myself – but do you have any of the original voice actors? I imagine they’re scattered far and wide.

Lund: We don’t have any of the original ones. We investigated where they are and, unfortunately (for us), a lot of them are now voice actors in Hollywood, which makes them very expensive to hire

Awww.

Totally didn't notice that question before. Good to see some of the originals are successful, wonder which ones and what they're doing.
 

m_s0

Arcane
Joined
Jun 18, 2009
Messages
1,289
I was totally under the impression that this was another BiA style shallow cash-in. Glad to see I was wrong, seems the developers know their JA; though I guess it's impossible to really know until a gameplay demo is out.
Speaking of knowing JA: I can't seem find it now, but I recall one of the early interviews in which the brain behind the project talked about a few features missing from JA2. Some of which happened to be features "hidden" in/by the gigantic buttons underneath the map (sector inventory if my memory serves me right) that takes up most of the screen on which you spend quite some time during the game. And now we know he despises buttons:
The usability part – not plastering the screen full of buttons, trying to make it intuitive to use.
Coincidence? :smug:

On a more serious note: I'll believe in whatever they're saying in the interviews when I see it actually happen. The screenshots look promising so far (definitely more so than I had expected), but than in itself isn't enough to make me believe this project will end up being any good.
 

Infinitron

I post news
Staff Member
Joined
Jan 28, 2011
Messages
97,228
Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
Kevin Saunders could have told you these guys were on the level:

Look, money is important. But I can tell you now that asking people to give you money when you don't have a specific plan in place is dishonest. Budgets are a bitch, game development is like roadwork in its capacity to overrun time estimates, but any business venture looking for investment saying "yeah, we'll work out all the details once we see how much money we can get" is ridiculous. Grunker, people backed those projects (I assume) due to faith in the people planning them, people who have experience managing game projects, have released, well-liked games, and who have a reputation and career in the industry at stake. These guys don't have that good will--not the track record nor the trust. And for whatever reason, their press releases and interviews so far make them look like opportunists.

I think it is wise to consider about the ability and intentions of those behind any Kickstarter, but I can comment a bit on this last part. They're not opportunists.

In between my time at Obsidian and joining inXile, I worked for a serious games company called Alelo. While there, I contracted Full Control to work on one of my projects - a multiplayer language learning RPG called Mission to Senegal (the overall project was called ISLET). I had never heard of them before then and we found them through their involvement in the Unity development community. Mission to Senegal was like an RPG without combat and with speech recognition for multiplayer conversations, designed to teach language and culture to military personnel.

This certainly won't impress you =) but here's a video about the project. It was by no means part of the incline, but it won some recognition in the serious games world. For its budget it was a very ambitious undertaking. Full Control did a large portion of the programming work for the game and they did a fantastic job given the conditions.

I can't directly speak to Full Control's ability to make a great Jagged Alliance game. But I can say that they are very skilled with Unity, understand game/software development, and can move mountains with limited resources. I don't question their intentions or integrity. I backed Jagged Alliance: Flashback day 1.

Kevin
 

Burning Bridges

Enviado de meu SM-G3502T usando Tapatalk
Joined
Apr 21, 2006
Messages
27,562
Location
Tampon Bay
Surprisingly inepth and solid interview. I know little about the game, but at the very least I like that the project seems narrowed and focused, not bloated and grandiose beyond its budget like the vast majority of Kickstarters.

inepth or indepth?
 

sser

Arcane
Developer
Joined
Mar 10, 2011
Messages
1,866,661
Oh whoops. I actually meant to type Johnny Depp.
 

As an Amazon Associate, rpgcodex.net earns from qualifying purchases.
Back
Top Bottom