Interstellar Marines: SITREP - Week 005 news

SITREP is basically an ongoing progress report where we publicly display our current tasks, progress and focus areas. Primarily targeted at those of you who find game development and our Open Door Development methodology intriguing.

Team debriefing

Kim (ZPSHicks)
Game Director

"Design, web and thumbnails was the agenda at the beginning of the week, which was actually OK for a change .. Tuesday, Gert stooped by the office and its feels great to be completely aligned on all our future plans and strategies.

Yesterday, Reese and I had one of our explosive creativity talks spawned out-of-nowhere when we spontaneously started talking about the ending of this ambitious trilogy, in the third game called 'Satellite of Saturn' .. We didn't change anything to the story just reconfirmed our old ideas, reliving (sorry for sounding arrogant) how this "master-piece in the making" will one day be concluded .. gotta tell you I live for these moments!".

Kenneth
Lead Sound Designer / PR

"The first ASPM-prototype is away! The first ASPM-prototype is away! My journey into the world of realistic audio has this week lead me to completing the first Advanced Sound Propagation Model prototype on a simple test-level, and things are looking bright. The scope of this prototype was to try and see if it was possible to make a more realistic sound-traversal system using pathfinding. Thanks for your comments in my recent blog about this.

Aaaand I've just begun traveling down the next path of my journey, where I'm trying to evolve the same Model to be used a more complex level - I've borrowed one of Jess' levels with "outdoor" areas (more like cave-exterior, than actual outdoor, that is :) for this important next step".

"Who's Your Daddy??" - Gert dropped by our office to make sure that Kim is doing exactly what he's being told

Mikael (heks)
Lead Programmer

"I've been down with the sickness for the last couple of days (yes, gamedevs are real people too!) so my progress on the networking prototype has been somewhat limited.

I was asked by a friend what the difference (and challenges) are writing multiplayer code in Unity compared to an engine like UE3 (Unreal Engine 3), which we've previously worked with. My answer is that there are obviously many differences, but one of the more notable ones is that UE3 provides a FPS-oriented "template" that's been tried and tested, where as the Unity world is an entirely open canvas, ready to be painted with whatever brush and colors you have at your disposal. It means we can code stuff from the ground up but also that this code will be more susceptible to changes. I hope that made sense :)".

Jess (NecroSonic)
Level Designer

"The challenge for the Deadlock multiplayer maps is that we only have the Running Man modules available at least for now. As our own expectations of the Deadlock maps are beyond those of Running Man I am trying to push this set of modules to their limit using them ways that was actually not intended when Anders designed the modules back in the day.

My initial goal is to do some levels that is not straight up indoor levels. I have discussed with Kim the possibility of taking the fight out into the actual caves, and I am in the process of creating a few examples to show Kim and you guys how I think that the indoor environment and the cave environment can be merged. It is quite challenging due to the constrains implied by the Running Man modules but it makes for a very cool exercise in creativity on my part. Even though I was quite sceptical myself at first I have been amazed by the possibilities of these modules. There will definitely be some leaks and short cuts in the initial versions but I am confident that we will be able patch it up over time!".

Nicolai (Reese)
CEO & Composer

"The short and boring version: I've spend most of this week concluding admin tasks (still) but the light is getting real close. I can't wait for spending some quality time with music composing and being much more creative with Kim and the rest of the team once again.

/Gief Programmer Cookies - might do the trick? #heks".

Gert (gert)
Main Investor

"WORK HARDER!! or there will be .... trouble ;)".

InterstellarMarines.com Summary

• Ask The Developers (Week 16): "Are there any vehicles in IM the players get to use?"
• DevBlog: "Advanced Sound Propagation Prototype"

Picture of the Week

Mentions this week

• "These Shooters will Rape your Wallet In 2011 and 2012", Playstation University
• Playstation University forum thread
• Blog post about Interstellar Marines by Sorin Minc? (Romanian)
• Pumpkin Bread Gaming forum thread
• The Dice and Deck forum thread
• thinkbroadband forum thread

Last weeks SITREP here

All the best,
Nicolai (Reese) & the team at Zero Point Software