In which state of production is the game at the moment? Which elements are currently in production and which are finished?

Ooh, good question! With next gen games most game companies have adopted a somewhat new method of building games – that of pre-production, production, alpha, beta and open beta. So, some fast education on what those terms actually mean is in order!

Pre-production is where you do all your risky stuff, with a smaller team. It’s where you design the game and test out all the new idea’s with small prototypes to prove game play. Prototypes can be anything from a card game (for unit / system balancing), lego models of levels all the way to real code for how cameras work and so on. At the end of pre-production you know exactly the game you want to make, what it’s going to look like, what the systems required to build it will be, what tools you’ll need and so on. The idea is to remove the risk and need for iteration on game play when you have the full team applying themselves building content.

Production is where you’ve proved everything, know what you are building and believe that what you are building will be fun, based on the prototypes. This is where a full content team starts cranking out levels, missions, models, scripts, sounds, etc.

Alpha is where you believe the game is complete, even if art is rough and there are bugs everywhere – all in game features are represented, they just aren’t as finished as they should be. At Alpha you don’t add anything new, you just fix / correct / brush up what is already there.

Beta is where the developers think the game is bug free and it’s where QA really starts to bang on the game to find the bugs the developers couldn’t find.

Open Beta is where we let a select group of people play the game and experience our balancing idea’s, as well as find the really weird and wonderful bugs that even QA couldn’t find. And believe me, these users can find any bug that exists and quite a few that don’t…

We are currently in pre-production. We’ve got prototypes of our combat up and running, we’ve pretty much fleshed out the design of all the systems, we know what lands we are building and we’ve started to build some examples of what we know we will need. We’ve also started building all the content creation tools we need – like object tools, placement tools, scripting tools – that will enable us to actually build the game we have designed.
We also have an initial release story arc sorted out, and a pretty good feel for some of the missions we will offer.


Although the game is in a early state of production, we would like to ask about the system requirements. Are there yet plans for Microsoft Windows Vista?

System requirements - well, we are using a state of the art next generation codebase that means we’ll be very pretty. This is by no means set in stone but I would expect that any current gen mid to high end rig would be able to play the game. Obviously at top end we are targeting features that will be state of the art when we do release (and please don’t ask me when that is cos it’s really hard to judge with any accuracy right now!).

Remember though, we are still in pre-production so it’s hard to really gauge with accuracy at this point – we are still just building example levels so our low end may well change based on the results of what we see.
We certainly are going to attempt to build as much content that can scale as much as we can, to support lessor machines – the trick is to be able to do that and not have the game look like total rubbish.
In terms of Vista, you know we really hadn’t thought about it. I think it’s safe to say we will deal with it once we get stable builds of Vista for compatibility testing.


In the forums are the wildest guesses referenced to spaceships. Tell us if we can command and control them ourselves or not. If not, which role do they play in the game?

Starships do exist in game. Currently our initial offering will not allow you to own them or fly them. Currently we are only planning on using them as settings for missions – we may well have missions that take place during a space battle (gotta have that sneaking around Ha’Tak class motherships right?).
There does come a point where we have to limit our scope to actually get the game done and out – although that doesn’t rule out expansions where we take a second look at this and try implementing some kind of starship control system.


Is there a currency for trading like in other MMOs? How will it be called?

Well, the one thing that Stargate Command can always use more of, is naquadah, so that’s our currency. There will be an economics system but right now we are still building it – it’s a tricky subject because the Stargate tv show really doesn’t highlight any economics system besides barter, so just shoving one in there without weaving it into the subject matter appropriately will just be a glaringly weird thing.


The hunting after special items (loot) is a part of nearly all MMOs. Some exceptions like City of Heroes abjure these things. How is it handled in Stargate Worlds?

We will have this, mainly because the Stargate universe is so replete with cool little gadgets. Who doesn’t want to have one of those accelerator armbands, or the healing devices? I know I could use one day to day, if only to get to work on time.. Can you imagine doing your grocery shopping using one of those armbands? All done in 25 seconds flat!
We intend to utilize as many of the devices from the show as we possibly can, plus a few new ones we have thought up ourselves.


In previous Interviews you said that you can take NPC's as party members. Is SGW orientated at Guild Wars in that score? Players meet there only in cities for missions or quests.

We are far more open world than that – it’s far more a traditional approach than going totally individual/instance based (which is a server management nightmare).
In terms of NPC’s as squad mates, yes, it will happen in select circumstances where we build missions that require it. There was some talk about having bots as squad mates early on but we’ve taken a look at that and felt that unless we devoted much more time to it than we had, we wouldn’t do a good job. There was also the social aspect of teaming up with real people that was integral to this decision.
Having played many many games where you have bot squad mates that just really suck (DaiKatana anyone?) I personally would prefer to not have them at all in general terms if they don’t work right. For missions such as “escort the general” or whatever it’s easier to implement since the NPC only has to follow you, not perform combat alongside you and so on.


How will you prevent that players create charakters that known from the TV-Series? It wouldn't be good if you meet a lot of Carters and Thors.

Good question. Well, to start with certain names will obviously be off limits (and that in itself is a real challenge because players are notoriously inventive with coming up with new ways to have the same name.) but the main thrust here is to provide a framework of game play and personal advancement that encourages people to want to attain some sort of individuality. If you’ve just got a game that encourages you to only be one of the principle characters in the first place then something is wrong. Although with a licence there is always this large possibility.

Realistically, if people really think they are Sam Carter or Teal’c then they will think that and do all they can to try and appear that way. We can put obstacles in their way and provide an infrastructure that supports and encourages them creating something original but if we provide flexibility in our player creation tools then some of them can do stuff they aren’t supposed to.
There will always be griefers out there, even if it’s just in their choice of physical manifestation.


What about levels/advancements? Does the player start at Level 1 and can go up until level X? Or will there be ranks and the player can be promoted (e.g. Airman Basic > Airforce General)? Or are both possibilitys combined (e.g. You will be promoted every 3^rd level)?

It is level based – we are going to level 50. We are making a concerted effort to deal with the levelling out problem, i.e. to have game play beyond level 50 to keep people interested, plus we are also put some stuff in place to make replay of new characters as attractive an option as possible.
In terms of promotion, yes that does occur at set places where you level up. For the humans its more obvious than it is for other races, but it will be there.


Are there thoughts about the controls of the game? Do you see your character from bird's eye view and you tell him with mouse clicks what to do or will the character be controlled with WASD? Can you choose the perspective of the camera?

I would actually love to answer this in detail, but it would give away quite a lot of what we intend to do in terms of combat, which is actually quite a departure from most MMO games in terms of how it’s handled.
The game will be in 3rd person, with a 3rd person camera – think games like Heretic II, Rune, WOW and so on.
We are also developing combat with MOB’s so that it is far more squad and team mate based than has traditionally been seen before. Instead of just a bunch of you all standing around throwing fireballs at the Monster, where you are located in combat, how you use cover and advance / flank the enemy and so on really matters.
Combat for the solo player is also high on our list of stuff to make much more fun than is traditional.
In terms of control it’s mainly mouse right now, but there will almost certainly be keyboard options. I’d personally like to try adding in some joypad support too, but we’ll see how that goes.


Wednesday 8:15 p.m., thats the german time when Stargate is aired at TV. Many fans are following the show for several years, a community is given. Will you be at the Games Convention in Leipzig, probably presenting first impressions of the game?

We won’t be unfortunately, at least not this year. We have lots of prototype stuff up and running but little we’d want to show, since it’s all subject to change and almost none of it is using final graphics yet.

We may well have a presence there next year, when we have more concrete stuff to show.


Thank you for the Interview, Jake.