A few questions

[RobHuntingdon]

I'm curious as to how far along in development this project is. I saw you've been working on this for three years, but how long is the project expected to take? Four, five, six or more? Do you consider yourself still in early alpha, or are you not even to that yet?



I'm glad to see some people are still working on this type of game. The genre has appeared dead for some time and since it is the only genre I truly love... I'm sure you can imagine how I feel.
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Robert, the Earl of Huntingdon

Tarry here, my merry men, whilst I seek what adventure await in yonder greenwood; but look thou listen for my call, for I will blow my horn if I become hard-pressed.

Adapted from Sterling, pg. 45

[Zaimat]

The game is in early alpha stage. A lot of the features are implemented but many need to be reviewed/improved/added-on as we tinker and test-play.



It would be unwise of me to give an estimate until we enter early beta (feature complete) at which point I expect we will make an announcement.
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Horizon - Lead Designer

[RobHuntingdon]

Err... I wasn't intending to ask for a release date. Sorry if my question was taken as such. I was merely hoping for a rough guestimate of how long you expected the project to take, most particularly how long you thought it would take when you got started. I'm interested in the process of budgeting resources for a project like this, and curious as to how you figure out how many people you need for how long, etc... without releasing trade secrets, of course.



Couple of other questions have come up ask I discussed this with friends. Is this going to be windows only or will you release (or port) for Linux or Mac? Any possibility of releasing some of your videos in other formats? And I didn't see this answered elsewhere but if I missed it I appologize -- is there any multiplayer aspect planned? I'm guessing that this would be difficult if not impossible, but I did have to ask, just in case.



Finally, any rough guestimates on when the next batch of teasers might be released?



Thanks again.

RH
_________________
Robert, the Earl of Huntingdon

Tarry here, my merry men, whilst I seek what adventure await in yonder greenwood; but look thou listen for my call, for I will blow my horn if I become hard-pressed.

Adapted from Sterling, pg. 45

[Zaimat]

Games as you probably know are notorious for running over budget or time or both. Even companies like Blizzard/Id that release great games by all accounts can't seem to escape this but they fund their own games asfaik and always finish them. Their motto is it will be done when it's done.



In our case (I will say as much as I can), this was our first project of this scope so there was a lot of challenges but we knew this going into it. Some things went on time other things took longer than expected and we would do some things differently given a time-machine.

For example our artists spent a lot of time modeling many of the aliens in soft-clay, 3d digitizing them, then cleaning them up, optimizing.. For the amount of work it took, it wasn't the most efficient way to go, although some of this was due to it being the first time for them



In any project it's obviously crucial that you have the funds, and if you have to rely on advances or a publisher than it becomes a lot more difficult and you better be able to deliver on time or they can pull the plug.



How many programmers/artists/etc you need is really based on the project. You need a core team (typically no more than 5-8 people for average sized projects), others can be hired temporarily for a few months as the need arises.



Regarding release versions, we are only working on a PC version at this time. In several languages.



"Any possibility of releasing some of your videos in other formats? "



Certainly. Quicktime seems to perform really well and the easyest option for the viewer (they won't require downloading any additional codecs) but if there is requests for a divx or other versions we can make them available.



"is there any multiplayer aspect planned? I'm guessing that this would be difficult if not impossible, but I did have to ask, just in case."



I would say don't expect multiplayer support to make it into the game. While we have designed many of the components (such as the combat engine) to be open to multiplayer we have not done any serious work on it. Our focus is single-player experience, strong AI w/unique races with open-space exploration and tactical combat.



Without a doubt the game would suffer in other places if we opt to implement a viable multiplayer option. We have given a lot of thought and we feel it would be better to make a new version (basically a different version of the game with certain parts removed and added) more suited toward head-to-head play. I'm not promising we will make such a version just to be clear, but if we do it'll most likely take this path.



any rough guestimates on when the next batch of teasers might be released



Should be seeing some stills soon
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Horizon - Lead Designer

[Sobriquet]

I would say don't expect multiplayer support to make it into the game.



Not such a big loss intailly if you are able to deliver a solid, well-balanced, bug-free single player experience. It's seems to me that most people cut their teeth on the single player game then move on to multi-play.
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i am sofa king we todd it

[Lexx_Luthor]

Well said. Two single players make one multiplayer. In a way. Single first, then multi.