First I want to thank Spacesim Central for their post on Pulsar. It’s exciting for me as a developer to see the word getting around. I chose a Wing Commander/Space Shooter style game because the WC series are my all time favorite games and genre. It disappoints me that the genre hasn’t continued to grow. I had a lot of hope for games like Jump Gate, Eve Online and other similar titles but none ever really met my vision. I have this grand idea of a great MMOPG for Space Combat (STARQuest) but I finally realized it’s too large an undertaking for one individual, and there is still plenty of opportunity for more multi-player (not massive multi-player) and single player games in the space combat genre.

I really want to make PULSAR for the community and find the right blend of game dynamics to bring renewed hope to the genre. I’m hoping if enough people can speak up and let me (and other developers) know what you’d like in a new title, it can help me to bring my game to life and meet the wishes of the community. I have several ideas, but the one I’ve been leaning most towards is a multi-team based strategy/FPS hybrid. In this game 2-4 teams will compete. The goal will be to destroy all enemy bases, and the last team left wins. However, to destroy a base will require each team level up to a designated science level. It will require good team strategy and tactics to be victorious and should provide hours of game play in a single campaign.

Also, a small correction to the post, due to limitations of the Microsoft XNA framework for Xbox 360 Community Games, I can only support up to 30 players, not 64. Otherwise, that seems to be the only limitation from my original design.

Feel free to comment here or visit my pulsar forums at http://www.3dmuve.com .

Thanks and I look forward to hearing from everyone what they think of the game and what they’d like to see in it.

Hey Quadgnim

With WC Arena and Star Trek DAC on Xbox Live and looking over there features game modes and features are very close. What are you doing to separate yourself from these two games?

Will there be a ranking system and possibly a way for players to improve their starting ships because of their rank?

Isn't XNA easily ported to the PC? Or would MSoft take control of Pulsar?

It'd be cool if:

- I had an X-Box, which I don't

- I didn't suck so bad with a gamepad

- it came to PC... though I don't think that's likely to happen

It looks great on the screenshots though 🙂

I believe I will have a richer strategy element along with an engaging first person shooter. There is a heavy focus on team play but more importantly cooperative team play so people who just want to jump in and fly around on their own probably wont like Pulsar, but those looking to develop mature teams and engage in serious competition I hope will find it highly enjoyable.

Only during game play, not between games. At least not from a MS perspective. MS doesn't allow ranking in community games. However, I can save local players stats, so I could conceivably track your stats locally and allow you certain benefits based on that. I'm still considering those details.

90% of my development is on PC and only final play testing and tweaking in on Xbox. I could definitely release it as a PC title. The reason I like Xbox is because MS has over 12 million units out there and once the game is released to the community market place its immediately seen by a lot of people. Without a formal publishing contract I don't know how I could get that kind of recognition on the PC. If there is a good PC self publishing platform and enough interest I'd definitely consider it. The current version runs great on my development box at over 300 FPS.

Thanks for the feedback. I am considering a PC version. My development is all on PC and the game runs great on PC. The biggest thing holding me back will be publishing, so we'll have to wait and see.

Thanks for answering all the questions Quadgnim.

I totally agree with your reasoning. With the economy the way it is now and publishers probably unwilling to pickup small projects Xbox Live is probably the best way for you to get rewarded on your hard work. One question on the whole Msoft thing. If you publish a game and they add it to Xbox Live. Does that prevent you from say converting it to run on Wii and PS3? Do you have to sign some sort of non compete clause? I know I have a PS3 and it also has a large almost larger online community because its Live component is free. Just some thoughts, and maybe if Pulsar does good we'll see ya selling it off your website. 🙂

With respect to Xbox community games there is not a compete clause, so I'm free to do whatever I want with it. If it were published as part of arcade or a full publishing deal that might be a different story, but community games doesn't have any restrictions. As for making a version for PS3, I'm not aware that they have something like community games, so to distribute something on PS3 I think requires a full publishing deal. Wii might have something similar to community games, but I'm not certain. I'll continue for now on Xbox with a possibility on PC. If it turns out good and people like it and there is interest for a PS3 version then maybe I'd consider porting it using a PS3 engine, but no promises.

Just got a PM from quadgnim and looks like Pulsar development is back on and is in full swing. And one interesting development a lot of you may be interested in is that it is being developed for the PC and not the Xbox360 now.

So add another game to the coming soon list Pinback 🙂

Will do, some how seem to have completely missed this game the first time around.

Thanks guys, I appreciate it. And if we can get some followers to visit and like my new Facebook page, I need to get enough followers for a vanity url:

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