As the Miner Wars team ramps up their development efforts and seeks out a possible publisher, the team will be putting out a series of dev diaries to give their community some information on what is going into the game and possibly answer those questions you have been wanting answers for.
Original article: http://www.minerwars.com/News.aspx#Develdiaryno1
Hi guys,
I just thought it would be cool to share some of the fun and constraints we are having in development of the game and report a bit on how the game is progressing so far.
The team
The team Currently consists of 30 people. There are people from all around the world. Mostly EU and United States. We have around 10 technical people, programmers, admins and QA. The rest is Art - concept art, 2D assets, 3D assets and marketing personnel. We use a lot of viral marketing tools for our job since we do not have the funding to start a full blown campaign. Miner Wars uses a virtual office environment. We all chat on skype and our meetings in voice are held in Team Speak. Rest of the management is done through the use of our internal forums. It is surely a daunting task to manage so many people since until recently we were only 5 :). We are fast learners though so we have already started to cope with it.
Current game development progress
We are heading for the demo release and pre-orders of the game quite soon. Revelation might shed some light on all of that :). All in all you guys can expect something before the summer break, which I think is good news for all of you.
Sectors
We have just recently added the possibility to travel through sectors. Each sector in the game now has a different representation. We have taken decisions on the storyline and its almost ready with just a few adjustments necessary.
Levels inside asteroids and structures
We are bringing you a truly innovative feature with this. Our technology allows for some truly great indoors environments. In addition to the vast area of space you will be able to travel inside asteroids and bases and fight inside them. Think of them as dungeons in space. We believe that we are the first ones to bring such an option to the player. You will be able to seamlessly fly inside an asteroid base, fight inside and gain loot. These places will be for example big factories, hideouts, bases, forgotten temples etc. You will also be able to battle your opponents inside these super-structures.
Factions
The list of factions that will be playable in the game is complete! The two main military factions will be UFSME - United Federation of Space Mining and Exploration and main opposing faction will be IFS - The Independent Space Front. More on factions in the next developers diary. Each week until the demo release we will be unveiling some light on each of the factions. We will also give you a brief look at how the design of each of the faction ships will look. Good news also is that explosions are nearly complete both of big motherships and small ships and let me tell you guys that they really look cool :).
Sounds and music
We have succesfully implemented new sounds to the game and we already have around 10 music scores from our wizard Dan Wentz. Other team member are also helping him with music. You will love the music we have in the game. Its has a very dark mood and is mostly a fusion of classical music with modern trends. Its just lovable 🙂
Inter-sector transporation
We have thought long how to make inter-sector transportation both fun and realistic for you guys. We have to say we finally nailed this one down. Here is a snippet from our Game Developement Document:
Big ships with compartment for small ships. The player ship docks with these mammoths and cannot shoot or do anything at the time of transport. You can listen to the faction radio and browse the network for messages and announcments. The compartment doors are closed and you are transported.
These transport physically travel in the sector. They are very fast. It takes them less than 1 minutes to pass one sector. Every team one transport leaves another one enters the sector. They travel in metro intervals - very often.
Publishers
Aditionally we have to say that we have attracted more interest from the publishers out there. I am glad that our game is getting recognition and its mostly because of you guys who are helping the game become what you want it to be.
That is all for this week. Please stay tuned and we hope to bring you soon some more news on our developers diary no. 2. The next one will focus on weapons and ships themselves. We will also give you the basic descrtiption and background on the faction called UFSME.
New Web
We are in preparations to make a new website it will be cooler and badder than the one we are using now. The current website is legacy but somehow we never found enough time to really sit down and prepare a new version. We are still looking for a web-designer who thinks he could handle such a task 🙂 We have some people in the pipe but we are not 100 percent sure yet.
STAY TUNED!!
Tomas "Darghan" Psenicka
Think a huge factor for Miner Wars to be successfully is how the build the game world and most importantly how they populate it. Some things I will be looking for in the game will be:
- Factions: there needs to be a few of these and they all need to have there own AI. Which i mean they will go out and attack players that are not in high standing with there faction, possibly go after NPCs traveling, assault player bases or NPC bases, etc.
- NPC's: there needs to be some npc traffic, so the universe is a little busy least at the major hubs and a few sectors out from there. And hearing NPC comm traffic would be awesome...
- Ships: Modular ship design if possible. But if not least a fair amount of ships to choose from so all players don't look the same in the game.
- Quest/Event engine: Like in all MMO's this really is the lacking point in most MMO's in my opinion. If quests/events can actually have an impact on the game world for all users to see this would be great. For instance you may get a quest from a pirate faction that wants you to assault a mining facility or destroy a large cache of ore or food. And in doing so your actions make the prices of those items go up and the demand higher. Thus making a opportunity for people to make extra cash transporting goods to that sector.
- Exploration: I am hoping in the end the Miner Wars team has something in store for the people that just like to explore. Come across some derelict ships, alien technology, secret bases etc...
Those are just a few of my thoughts that would really improve the game for me and things that I have been wanting in a space MMO for a while. I have a lot more things that would love to see in a game but wait patiently to see what the Miner Wars team has in store for us. I will try to post a few pics this week from the updated client.
I watched the trailer for Miner Wars and love the way the headlights cut a path through the darkness.
I can imagine the first space battles being conflicts over mining rights in the asteroid belt. The concept is great.
Lancer Solurus, who has made many great Freelancer modding utilities, is on the Miner's War team. If nothing else, that suggests that they have some very experienced developers.
That is the one thing I really like about Miner Wars is that it is dark and hope they keep that concept going.
They have some nice concepts they can run with if they are done correctly. That's why I hope the faction system is really done right and gives the players a solid faction to play against or even work with for profit.
I didn't know he was on the team, I knew of SolCommand and Chebar was. Nice to see some community members in there contributing to the success of the game.
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