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Jumpgate Evolution Progress Report Interview
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 of 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.”
He went on to tell me that they have also come to the point where a lot of the uninteresting back-end stuff is getting wrapped up, things like logging on, registration systems and the like.
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“We’re getting to the point where players can come in and give feedback and stuff like that.”
So, what’s new with the game that we might not be aware of?
“We’ve got a battle space scenario that we’ve been working on. It’s a capitol ship type of battle, so that’s the big exciting thing we’ve been working on lately. Then, we’ve just added a multiple mission system so that you can take a bunch of missions at the same time , you can use those to gain faction rating to get all kinds of new ships… We’ve got a lot more to flesh out.”
“There’s a lot more content in the game,” he continued. “We spent probably the last five or six months just adding a lot of content making sure there’s a complete experience all the way though.”
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.
Missions
From here, I asked Hermann to go a little bit deeper into some of the specific features that he mentioned previously. First, I asked him if the multiple missions that he mentioned earlier were different from quest strings that we see in many MMOs.
“Most space games tend to be: you take a mission, you fly out and do it, and then you return to the station,” he answered. “We realized very quickly that that gameplay was not very conducive, especially if you’re with a group of people, so we had to change that so that you could take multiple missions at the same time.”
“Our missions break into a main storyline that goes through the game for each of our nations. Those are campaign, or story missions that are very specific and directed, and then there’s a generated mission system and those are missions that come from factions.”
The factions, we are told, are different groups in space. Working with them can gain different rewards and unlock new things in the game. Hermann said that these missions give the game more depth than a simple “I do A, B, C, D and E” to achieve my goals in the game.
The team has also identified one of the problems with what Peterscheck called “generated missions”. He noted to me that often, generated missions are unique, meaning that you won’t be given the same mission as your group mate, which suddenly makes grouping a lot less appealing. In JGE, however, you will be able to share your generated content missions with others.
These missions are dynamically created, and are created in groups. Often, with auto-generated content, players are left with disjointed missions that don’t make too much sense when taken together. NetDevil plans to offer dynamic content in the form of logical quest chains. A slightly different take on an old idea.
“The way that we do that,” he explained, “is we have designers write stories that can be put together in interesting ways. Then, we can link them by saying that these missions take place at the beginning, then these are in the middle, and then these ones would happen at the end.”
To clarify the point, Peterscheck told us that boss fights don’t generally come at the beginning of a quest chain. They come at the end. So, their system would put the boss fight part of the chain at the end, rather than the beginning. The end result of which is that the dynamic quest chains should feel more natural for players.
“It allows us to create an infinite number of things to do in the game that are still meaningful while we also have the ability to keep putting in pieces of custom content.”
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Capitol Ship Battles
From there, I asked Hermann to go into a little bit more detail on the capitol ship battles that he had mentioned previously:
“The space genre lends itself to massive space combat,” he said. “If you think of Star Wars or Battlestar Gallactica, you always envision tons and tons of ships flying around. That’s been a core drive of the game, so in addition to all of the MMO components, you want that space combat kind of feature… the way that we discovered to do that was to have lots of ships at the same time , both AI and players, and then different scales of things you’re fighting against.”
What he means by this is that instead of just saying here’s my really big fleet or army and it’s going to fight your really big fleet or army, The Capitol Ships allow many ships of a smaller size to fight against a single, enormous entity.
“We’re trying to take down your Capitol ship while we’re trying to take down yours. I don’t mean six vs six, I’m talking about fifty vs fifty.”
His mention of Battlestar Gallactica (at least the new series) earlier on can serve as an example here. When Gallactica fights, she deploys manned gunships called Vipers. Their enemies do the same and the resulting battle is a lot of small ships trying to destroy a large enemy ship (while the enemy does the same thing). Fans of the show should have a pretty good visual cue as to what Capitol Ship battles are meant to be about.
Now that we have an idea of where NetDevil’s Jumpgate Evolution is coming from, and where they have been focusing their energies as the game moves toward more public testing, we can start to get an idea of how the full game will be shaping up. We hope to be in contact with Hermann and the rest of the dev team on a more frequent basis as the game inches closer and closer to launch.
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.
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!
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
It's "capital". A capitol is the building in which the legislative body meets, you know, those idiots who come up with all those silly laws. "Capitol" can never be used as an adjective. It's a noun. "Capitol ship" is wrong.
Wikipedia redirects "capitol ship" since it's a common error people make, not because those behemoths constantly carry a state's entire legislative body around.
Hi folks,
Is this game played from a third "person" perspective or first person? Saw a video of the game and a guy was playing the game in third person perspective.
Just wanna clear this doubt.
Thanks in advance,
Abal
Both.
They're still working on how first person / cockpit view is gonna look (or so they say). Currently it just zooms in and the ship's gone. You'll be able to play third person or first person, with your mouse, joystick, gamepad, toaster or any other input device is the claim...
Thanks for replying bud. I don't like third person perspective for this kind of games so I'm really hoping on first person perspective here but as you say they're working on it.
Cheers,
A.
They have given an official release date on Facebook of June 2009.