A: We're not commenting on specific "community features" yet. In general, T:V will have more community features than T1 but less than T2.
Q: Can you give a summary to the story leading up to the approval and the beginning of the development of t:v? Meaning, was this proposed by the developers, proposed at the corporate level? How easy/hard of a sell was it? Did it ever get close to getting canned? Any interesting antecdotes outside of the actual development of the game? Dunno why, but I find that stuff interesting... maybe make some people's heart skip a beat if it ever got close to getting the axe!
A: That seems more appropriate for a Developer Diary entry - you'll have to wait until then.
Q: Will BaseTrash take an important place in the game, especially about gens, vpad and invs ?
A: Whenever those objects are present, part of the game cycle will include the destruction/repairing of base objects. Obviously, this is dependent on the map.
Q: Can you guys say anything about what you're doing to combat cheating?
On a side note I think Jailbreak is a Kickin Rad mod/gametype.
A: We design and implement features in such a way that cheating is discouraged as much as possible.
Q: Apart from the discussion about chooseable spawnspheres ( what I second btw ) will there be other changes to spawning? Will the persons you just killed be able to spawn invisible/in your back seconds after?
btw to all ppl missing ninjas, there's ninjamod respectively ninja-x
A: Respawning players are not invisible.
Q: How much is actually being taken from the Unreal engine? (percentage wise, I know you can't specify exactly)
I'm curious if scripting that was used in Unreal can be used in Vengeance with very little modifying, or if it require a huge overhaul. There was also a concern about all the cheats that were available in Unreal that may be carried over into Vengeance.
A: Can't really answer, except to say that we are definitely modifying the editing tools to suit our game.
Q: Will this mean that HO will have a less important role in regard to attacking enemy deployables and turret monkeys have a less important role in deploying assets?
A: No to both of those questions...you assume too much. Deploying and its counter-measures are a fun part of Tribes.
Q: Lastly what games did the lead designer Ed Orman previously work on, I'm just curious.
Is this the same core team that made System Shock 2/Thief/Freedom Force?
A: I did design work on Freedom Force. Before that, I was Lead Designer on Fallout Tactics for Interplay/Micro Forte.
Q: As an admin of a T2 server I find this one problem i'd like to see addressed.....
Will Admins/Super Admins be given the ability to Private chat amongst themselves on a server easily?
A: No, this isn't currently planned.
Q: Accessibility: Many people are colour blind. 2 of the guys I work with are never really sure who they should be shooting at, which can cause problems. A good example is once, Tasogie dueled midfield then headed for the enemy base and started taking everyone out at the flag. He didn't realize that he'd gone to the wrong base and was laying waste to his teams defence. Soooo funny. Anyway, will T:V have a way to easily change the colour of the IFF triangles? Say a drop down list or slider?
A: We are taking color-blind players into consideration when designing the markers.
Q: Will you be bringing back "How'd that feel?" to the voices? I think we ALL want to know this!!!!!!!
A: There will be voice chats, and you can expect some old and some new. Won't commit to specifics at this time.
Q: Sorry I lied, I think it would be very very useful to implement the CC map as a HUD which can be zoomed a bit and resized as transparent over your main screen a bit like BF1942, I also saw a more 3d isometric CC map from Planetside which definitely looked funky, what is your take on that(CCmap/hud) or is that information you cannot release at this time?
A: I can't answer that at this time.
Q: Are there plans to implement a slightly more perspective aiding flag reticle. I saw my friend had a reticle when the enemy had the flag which was like a little target circular in nature that kind of looked spherical that seemed to help with depth perspective. Will you be looking into reticles along those lines to aide those soughts of things?
A: I can't answer that at this time.
Q: Can you give a summary to the story leading up to the approval and the beginning of the development of t:v? Meaning, was this proposed by the developers, proposed at the corporate level? How easy/hard of a sell was it? Did it ever get close to getting canned? Any interesting antecdotes outside of the actual development of the game? Dunno why, but I find that stuff interesting... maybe make some people's heart skip a beat if it ever got close to getting the axe!
A: I think this one probably falls to me.
In late 2001 Alex “Marweas” Rodberg convinced me that we should start working on a new Tribes game. That was quite a feat, because I had a sweet little military combat shooter that I was just starting work on and it meant I would probably have to give that project to another producer.
We put together a project plan and took it to our executive team. It included:
• Tribes Aerial Assault (in some question at the time)
• Patching T2
• Creating the T2 mods and classic maps
• Tribes Vengeance (pitched under the name code name Tribes Story)
• An interesting and hard to classify project that went thru some (quite successful) testing and early design work but has been put on hold for now.
Oddly the most difficult pitch was the patching of Tribes 2.
It’s very important to note that without Alex none of this would have happened. In what was quite frankly a very dark time for the franchise he picked up the biggest light he could find and lead the entire executive staff to the land of jetpack lovin’.
Once we got the go-ahead (End of December 2001) Alex and I made a big list of all of our favorite developers and started calling them to see who would want to work on a Tribes game. I was very amazed at the response we got. Not only was everybody interested, but also they all seemed very enthusiastic about the project. We asked for proposals from our top seven developers on the big list and got to reading. Only two were really close to what we wanted - many saw Tribes as a tactical team combat game set in the future, like Rainbow 6 w/ jet packs. Of those two, Irrational’s proposal was clearly the winner, and their team also the most fun to work with, which all jibed nicely with our initial list which had them in the top position from day one.
By the end of February 2002 we had signed an agreement to build a prototype of the single player game, and by the end of July we had a full contract in place. The prototype was finished in October and the project given the green light soon after that.
During all of that, we hired z0dd, ZOD, KineticPoet, and Nefilim to build Classic, TR2, and the Classic Maps. To say hired is a bit of an exaggeration, as they likely made around $.25 per hour on the deal, but they did a great job and the TWL ladder is more active than it’s been in a long time.
The most difficult thing about this project has been figuring out the name. For most of the time when we were calling it Tribes The Next or The Next Tribes Game, we simply didn’t have a name. Because of the single player aspect we didn’t want to call it Tribes 3 and have people directly associate it with the first two multi-player only games, but every time we found a good name legal would tell us it was taken. It was Tribes Story for so long that Alex started to like the sound of that name and I just about had to beat him to get a real name out of marketing. Finally somebody in Australia suggested Vengeance, it wasn’t legally taken, and it fit the story well, so here we are… TV.
How’s that?
Q: Thrax will you take advice from a fellow panda and have them include a new version of scarbrae for us old die hard Panda Players?
A: Um... no. Pandas prefer DoD.
Q: Thrax said earlier that this game had a specific release date already. Not just an estimate, or what quarter it will be in, but a day. Tribes 2 was said to be out by November 8th, 2002 for the longest time, but actually came out April 18th, nearly 5 months late. What I am wondering is, if you are currently on schedule, have hit all of your deadlines, and are definitely comming out on that day, or are going to dissapoint everyone and delay the game.
(the date was actually leaked out today, but I'm deciding to be nice and not mention what it was )
A: I saw that date, and while I'd be interested in knowing where it came from, I guess I don't particularly care as it's wrong.
As for the rest of your question, the dev team have made every date, are currently on schedule, and we expect them to hit their final date. Additionally the've built a smart schedule, with hard things up front, so it's less likely than usual that we would run into something that just kills the schedule. And if we do we know exactly what to cut (pre-planned) to get back on schedule without killing key features.
Q: Thrax going off your post about Marweas pretty much saving Tribes and being responsible for this project even starting (nice story BTW), I dont understand why he is no longer involved with the project.
Is he going to be involved with T:V in any way from now on?
It just seems weird that someone with as much interest in it as he did would no longer have involvement.
A: Alex is working on a very major unannounced title. It takes almost all of his time.
Q: Will Vengeance feature gore and blood, or will you be sticking to the Tribes tradition of good, clean fun?
A: A combination of good, clean fun and tasteful pain and suffering.
Q: Will a player be able to shoot directly below and directly above?
A: Yes.
Q: Will there be online stats system for T:V? Something like both UT games already have, or is it already part of the Unreal engine?
A: Sorry, we're not yet discussing our plans for stats.
