MMORPG.com Managing Editor Jon Wood spoke recently with Jumpgate Evolution Lead Designer Hermann Peterscheck to talk about the progress of the game.

Recently, I had the opportunity to sit down and have a conversation with Hermann Peterscheck, the Lead Designer on NetDevil’s Jumpgate Evolution to get a report on the game’s progress since the last time that we spoke.

The most obvious question to start with whenever we haven’t spoken with a company for some time is to ask where the game is in terms of development cycle?

“It’s a really great time right now,” Peterscheck responded, “we’re just now getting to the point where we’re going to start announcing more external people coming into the game. We’re ramping up the internal tech for that. A lot fo the features are now at the point where we can play through them. We’ve done a lot of work, especially on making the game have a much more epic combat kind of feel to it.”

Read the Progress Report Interview

A nice interview, did they let on as to when it might be released?

Very nice.  Had not previously been following this game, sounds a lot more interesting now.

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He went on to tell me about some of the rewards that they have planned. They seem to have taken a page out of Xbox’s book with statistics and medals and awards, following in the footsteps of other MMOs like WoW, LotRO and others that have incorporated alternate achievement paths into their games.

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sorry, but play JGC, came out 2001 (before xbox live, before WoW, before LOTRO, awards have been in there :) they are called medals. you can get them doing anything from docking to defeated a huge swarm of conflux, and then some.

This would be a good interview if statements were not that are just simply false.

JGC has had features for almost a decade that the other games implemented later.  JGC has made many innovations that today's MMO's hope to achieve or lie about and fail to deliver.

I'm hoping Jumpgate Evolution does as good of a job as Jump Gate or JGC as it's now called did when it came out.

Rogue has it right on the head.  JGC has had medals for in game achievements for years and years.  They aren't taking anything from other games, they had this in their game years before the ones mentioned.

Would be nice to see credit given where deserved.

 I like the way they think (the generated mission system being a good example). Looking forward to seeing how this turns out.

I bloody just can't wait for this game. It is the only one that flat out says it will have 100% twitch-skill based combat and it will play much like jumpgate clasic which is even better. It will be GLORIOUS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

One concern:  I read the word "storyline" in this interview.

game def.  STORYLINE:  A device used to force players to play a certain way and/or to force players to watch or participate in some contrived theatrical reenactment at the pleasure of the game developers and chagrin of the players themselves.

I sort of like that definition; it fits with many recent MMORPG's and I believe is the reason that MMO's with legendary licenses (i.e., LOTR, Conan, Warhammer) have failed in their expectations. 

Got to follow the story.  Please, no!  Don't wander over there.  Invisible code will keep you on the path until you click through the dialog boxes with the quest NPC and in the appropriate sequence.   Ah, just clicking through without reading?  Well we will rearrange some of the answers in the dialog boxes so you have to read them.  Read them, darnit!  You must, you must!  We ill make you follow the story!  You will be frozen in open dialog until you get through it and you will do this with each new character so get used to it.  You cannot leave the tutorial unless we say so!

I hope that "Jumpgate" presents its players with more of a universe and less of a "storyline" (there is a reason "EVE" is a popular game, you know).  I have not heard that the original Jumpgate was an offender in this manner, so I have hopes the new version will be good and that this mention of "storyline" really ends up as nothing.

SWG did good storylines, they called them "story Arcs" and the story was pushed forward each publish (about a month). No pressure to do it and it could be soloed and the rewards were pretty much an extra title or two. But the game wasn't focused on you doing the storyline.

I hope netdevils do the same and the story is there if you want to do it but it makes little difference if you don't. I also like the twitch based combat. How many times have you heard "It actually takes SKILLZ to play this game" and found yourself going to sleep at the keyboard with sore fingers mashing keys? This is the only way to do it, and I can't wait :)

Very informative

Can not wait

he said battles are going to be like BSG, frak yeah!

I am really looking forward to this.

A good interview, it's good to hear something at all from NetDevil, they're not handing out a lot of information, really. 

I'm very excited about this game and like the part about "generated group missions", so I can actually fly missions with my friends.

Oh and a language question (I'm a english learner). Can Capitol ships also be spelled Capital ships? Are both versions correct?

@Stradden: Please, bring the mmorpg podcast back to life!

Originally posted by Minas

A good interview, it's good to hear something at all from NetDevil, they're not handing out a lot of information, really. 

I'm very excited about this game and like the part about "generated group missions", so I can actually fly missions with my friends.

Oh and a language question (I'm a english learner). Can Capitol ships also be spelled Capital ships? Are both versions correct?

 

@Stradden: Please, bring the mmorpg podcast back to life!

I think a capital ship might me a merchant class of ship, capital meaning money or assests. However a large say battleship must be spelt Capitol (from Capitoline hill (one of the hills of Rome I believe)), to mean big son of a bitch about to rip your hull open!

I quickly did some research, wikipedia says:

Quote: The capital ships of a navy are its "important" warships; the ones with the heaviest firepower and armor. There is usually no formal criterion for the classification, but it is a useful concept when thinking about strategy (...) A capital ship is generally a leading or a primary ship in a fleet.

However it also redirects to this page when you enter "Capitol ships" so they seem to be synonyms.

They seem to be doing a nice job I just wish they had more gameplay footage available.

 Capital is the correct term for a large vessel designed for direct support or command of fleets.But who says that a "SCI-FI" game cant come up with new class names for their ships.Tho Capitol ships sound more like flying fortresses ,exemple: Eldar Craftworld ships or City Ships from Nexus the jupiter incident etc.

Yeah, I played the original when it languished on the microsoft servers.  I think they are improving exactly what they should be to move this game into this decade.  It should be a very good game.  There is nothing in the genre that comes close to what it offers.

There is nothing presently in the game forcing players to do "storyline" or campaign missions, aside from the very first handful that are available in the starting sector, which are designed to familiarize you with basic gameplay and your nation.  Once you exit the starting sector, dynamic generated missions will be available, and you can ignore the campaign material entirely.

However, the campaign material has decent rewards and can be worth doing at least some of those missions in the process of ranking up, even if striking out entirely on your own is your chief goal.

I remember playing the original.  I also remember the medals you earned, and there were tons. You would visit your character screen located on a webpage to see them. I also remember some kind of system where you could have a veteran player as a mentor or something like that.

I recall when you first started the game, the hardest part was docking your ship after coming back from mining your first asteroid. The missions were kind of like an extremely simplified Eve, running through warp gates carrying cargo to sell off at a better price, using your mining beam on asteroids to collect resources, or hunting pirates (AI). You could also upgrade your ship components and buy other ships either cargo or combat oriented. There were some brutal grind issues though, mining for hours with your mining laser so that you could finally earn enough money to buy... a mining laser that was a little faster... ugh. Grind hoops, please kill the designer thanks.

The combat was fun, totally twitch based and you could use a joystick for greater control.

It was definitely a fun game due to the combat but much to shallow and repetative to play more than a week imo. Even back then.

 It was like an Eve blueprint ;p

Dev

P.S. If i log in and I see little mining laser upgrade as a carrot then it will be hard to resist uninstalling ;p