Information on Jumpgate: Evolution has been “out of the gate” so to speak for over a year now, with NetDevil demoing the game at various events, showing new features as they build, develop, improve and iterate.
“Our artists are way ahead of the game development team,” said Scott Brown. “So they’ve had time to optimize and refine.” According to Scott, the NetDevil artists have been doing better and better work, yet kept systems specs low. “They’ve done an amazing job,” he said, “and the most recent is the work on the particle system.” Keeping the system specs low is a major design objective for NetDevil as their goal is to allow keep framerate high and allow gamers with lower-end machines to play their game. The ripple and reflective effects of glass panes are really something else now and some of the Capital ships are truly impressive.
“Playing a game should be fun and shouldn’t cost an arm and a leg,” said Scott, “and we want to be able to get as many players as possible into the game.” This would also hold true for game events such as raids and PvP. Players with lower-end machines would expect some slow down when there are many ships in the area, but hopefully, it would not be a major issue.
Keeping the frame rate high also assists with the vertigo effect. Some gamers (like me) are more susceptible to vertigo than others and prior to Jumpgate, I would not have even looked at a space flight game as watching it gave me vertigo as well!
Jumpgate has just gone through a friends and family beta, and from the feedback garnered from that and focus groups, they have done a lot of work on the game, re-doing many parts. “One of the things we’ve had to do was to slow the ships down. Can you tell the difference?” he asked. I could not.
There will not be much appearance customization of ships or avatars in the game as that slows the game down. Instead, there will be many ships to attain and choose from, and character portraits, as this is a space combat game, instead of avatars to walk around on space stations. “In the future, however, who knows?” Scott said, referring to EVE Online’s plans for walking in stations.
The Mission system is receiving an overhaul so that players aren’t presented with large paragraphs of text they have to read through. Instead, the mission will be delivered in a series of steps with much shorter text messages popping up at different stages. This was to involve the player more, to create a more immersive experience as the mission is no longer as straight forward as it may seem at first.
A voice-over system has been added at the newbie tutorial stage to help new players get into the game faster, so they are not presented with a bunch of text they have to read while trying to learn how to fly their ship, and an auto-docking system has been put into the game.
There are different rules in PvP space, I was told, and a new story line at level 10 will teach the player about the PvP rules as well as the different factions in space. The PvE death penalty is basically time and money as you’ll get a nice repair bill for your ship. There are plans to have different rules for PvP death, but this was not fleshed out during our interview.
I asked about the collision rules. At this time, it’s only Player against AI & Environment, not player against player, although it could change for PvP. NetDevil is currently working on the extent of damage that could be caused by explosion backsplash and debris. It would suck if Luke Skywalker’s X-wing had been caught by the explosion of the Deathstar, so there’s some balancing to do yet, and NetDevil’s next big development push is open PvP.
For the second year, NetDevil shared a booth with Dolby. That is because Jumpgate: Evolution is Dolby’s MMO game showcase for their Dolby Axon software suite. Dolby Axon provides full surround sound, direction, position and distance attenuation. “Space will not be without sound,” said Scott, “Players will hear ships when they fly past, and you will be able to catch radio chatter.”
Dolby Axon was built from the ground up for games, with dialogue leveling built in, so players will not have to spend the first ten minutes of logging in, adjusting levels and telling each other to get their mikes closer or further away or turning volumes up.
For Jumpgate, players will not have to use outside services such as Teamspeak or Ventrilo as Dolby Axon is built into the game. Depending on the game, voice chat will be served from the game servers or Dolby’s servers. Different classes of users are built into Dolby’s API and provided to game developers, so a hierarchy of users could possibly control chat. For example, when the Raid Leader speaks, all others could be muted and this rolls downhill for guilds with different class and squad leaders. Voice mods are also in their API and some provided in Jumpgate, and voice fonts are also available.
Jumpgate is currently taking closed beta sign ups although they will go into another friends and family beta when this iteration is done, before going into closed beta later in the year. As for Dolby Aoxn, beta signups are being taken at https://axon.dolby.com which will begin at the end of September. During beta, for groups as little as 5, the chat will be hosted on the chat initiator’s computer with larger groups rolling onto Dolby servers.
The sound bit looks promising, not so sure whether I am going to like the visuals though; some of the ships look a bit like plastic toy models, design and color wise. Textures, lighting and bump maps can only do so much about that. The dogfighting selling argument will probably be a hit anyway.
*imagines the sound of strained thrusters when pulling a 7 G maneuvre*
Whhhhhrrrreeeeeeeeeeee ...... huuuuuuuuuu ...huuuuuuuuuu .......whoooooooaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrr........ PEW, PEW, PEWPEW!
Hopefully, the devs can also imagine "the sound of strained thrusters when pulling a 7G maneuver," because I'm afraid they might go the way of Auto Assault, and the ships will handle more like plastic toy models, too.
This game keeps soudning better and better.
A level based game :(
Shame, I was hoping for a skill based game that this genre deserves....
Agreed, a level based space game seems wrong.
This game looks to be the best next scifi mmo. Anything is better than Eve's Point n Click fighting. Don't get my wrong, I like Eve, it just doesn't feel like I'm actually controlling my ship.
I don't know, I didn't get a good vibe from that article. I agree with you that actually controlling your ship will be somewhat better than EVE's system but I was disappointed to hear that it will be level based and that the death penalty is a repair bill.
Also, I don't care what they say about their in game voice chat, I don't think people will use it because when the game is off, so is the voice chat. I can't remember a single time I have ever used a game's voice client, it was always vent or TS since you can still keep in touch with your team if the game crashed.
it is twitch based (will have full joystick control)
as you level up you get bigger badder ships to pilot
Gameplay will destermine the success of this game. Hopefully we can find out soon.
doesnt seem promising at all... black prophecy seems to have way more to offer with modular ships that dont all look like jets in space... its space for god sake why does everything need to be aerodynamic
I've played it at PAX, people can say what they want but netdevil learned their lesson, this game is going to rock hard right out of the gate and will be a day one purchase for me and my squad.
This is the only game I am truly excited about. I loved the original and gamers can only benefit from a company making a second version and having all the history of the first. If this game sucked then I may just give up on MMO's for good! Well maybe if the new Star Wars sucked as well...
I don't know, I didn't get a good vibe from that article. I agree with you that actually controlling your ship will be somewhat better than EVE's system but I was disappointed to hear that it will be level based and that the death penalty is a repair bill.
Also, I don't care what they say about their in game voice chat, I don't think people will use it because when the game is off, so is the voice chat. I can't remember a single time I have ever used a game's voice client, it was always vent or TS since you can still keep in touch with your team if the game crashed.
Good point, Verk. I fly in IL2 Sturmovik and we all use Vent. Most of the time we are not even playing the game, just shooting the shit.