Interstellar Marines: SITREP - Week 029 news

Post news Report RSS Interstellar Marines: SITREP - Week 029

Holy jaws.. It's 2012 and we're back with the SITREP. Have you experienced the first iteration of Deadlock yet? /Reese

Posted by ZPSReese on Jan 6th, 2012

Please remember that you can support the development of Interstellar Marines by upgrading your profile to Spearhead or Frontliner, or by purchasing a few Support Medals in our [Shop]

Read last weeks SITREP [Here]

Team debriefing

Kim (ZPSHicks)
Game Director

"For the first time since, I don't know how long (Well, thats not true .. since we released the community website back in May 2009), we're finally at a point where we're seriously ready to start changing how games are made from the inside out; through Open Door Development with a whole army of dedicated gamers, that truly care about uncompromising the vision.

I'm filled with unlimited exponential creative energy to make Interstellar Marines the most exciting, best executed, polished AAA Science Fiction FPS game franchise ever created and feel goosebumps regularly thinking about that it'll all be possible because of YOU, the worlds most awesome gaming community in the known Universe.

Cinematic Science Fiction - Tactical Role-playing - First Person Simulator here we come!".

Mikael (heks)
Lead Programmer

"We're finally back from a long vacation. Deadlock (ver. 0.1.0) was shipped after a few hectic weeks of crunch leading up to Christmas, and finally released to the "masses" after a 28h-long stretch that almost killed me… no, not literally.

So it's been good to get some much needed rest (and food) before signing in to ZPS HQ again.

This week has been a bit on the slow side. I've been cleaning up some of the mess that a fixed deadline inadvertently makes, and we've started planning for our next release(s).".

Jesper Andersen (Scribblehead)
Concept Artist

"SARA: Entry mismatch. Subject appears to be offline. No record stored this week".

"Have you experienced the first iteration of our in-development multiplayer game, Deadlock?"

Anders (cptKickASS)
Lead Artist

"SARA: Entry mismatch. Subject appears to be offline. No record stored this week".

Jess (NecroSonic)
Level Designer

"Since my return from my trip to the Caribbean I have been crazy busy creating my new Deadlock map. I want to share a bit of info regarding the concept for this map. As I think I mentioned earlier I wanted to create a map that would be less open compared to Combat Range 01 that is currently featured in Deadlock. Being an old Counter-Strike player I like maps that restricts sight-lines in a clever way to afford a well balanced gameplay that allows for both sniping, run n gun as well as stealth tactics. By doing a less open environment you have more control as a level designer to setup the gameplay and suggest different strategies to the player according to his position. As much as I like complete control (muhahaha) this is not Counter-Strike but IM so player choice is extremely important. As such I am generally adding more alternative routes through the environment than you would see in the classic Counter-Strike maps.

Going back to the underlying concept for the map it draws some influence from the map Pipeline that was featured in CoD4. In the early days of the development of Running Man we had some very nice games on this map during lunch break. As I wanted to make my map less open the core idea from Pipeline by having the action centered in and around to bigger buildings next to one another seemed like an viable approach. The big buildings with relatively narrow streets in between is a good way of restricting sight-lines and the inside of the buildings themselves can make for a smaller arena for close and mid-range combat. Currently the clearest reference to Pipeline is one warehouse-like building with three storeys of catwalks that allows snipers to climb up inside to some windows overlooking the "street". I did however abandon the idea of having two such buildings next to one another in favor of going for a layout with three buildings. This allow me to keep the map open for a domination style gameplay where each team fights for control over the buildings. In this setup an uneven number of bases is preferable to avoid stalemates where each team camps their base resulting in a draw or something along those lines.

Anyway I got to get back to work. Feel free to share your thoughts if any of my ramblings have sparked an idea or a question. ".

Nicolai (Reese)
CEO & Composer

"Re-booting after the holidays and currently planning / initiating work on all remaining audio aspects of Deadlock as the audio part in the current 0.1.0 version is very basic and crude and needs loads of work. What you can expect in the near future as we continue to release iterations of Deadlock in regards of audio are character movement, body noises, ambience, weaponry as well as reverb and better trigger zones.

..and of course in time we need a suitable music score to accommodate Deadlock /media/uploads/pictureotweek/interstellaas a whole.. you know, just to wrap it all up :) ".