f13.net

Those people have been watching too much Battlestar Galactica.

I'd like to see some gameplay.

That's not a bad thing in this case  :grin:

That looks like game play footage (deja vu here). But the more I see of JG:E, the more I wish they'd raid CCP's offices and steal some designers. Seriously, JG:E has come a long way from the original JG, but Eve sets the bar for MMO space sci-fi and the JG stuff looks too clean-edged.

I hope they push more of that kind of music into the game. As much as I like EVE, the music is forgettable to me.

You just watched some...


?

It was in game footage, I want to see the UI and someone playing the game.

I played this game at PAX. It plays like a really, really good Privateer 2, but it's still early and things can change. Space Station interface is EVE-esque (DO NOT WANT), so I'm going to see if I can help them shore up that UI.

I like the EVE space station UI. It's so much more in-depth than anything else out there, and once you get used to it, it's great.

Netdevil showcased Jumpgate: Evolution at Penny Arcade Expo this year together with Dolby sound & voice technology and Plantronics’ new gamer head sets. I had been given a sneak peek at the game at the Ion Conference early this year but this time we were given the chance to actually fly a ship as Netdevil had set up 8 laptops to run off a local server, giving players the chance to play a few bits of an alpha build.
 advertisement

“Why and how,” I asked Herman, “did a graphics overlay for Jumpgate turn into a completely new game?”

“It took on a life of its own,” answered Herman. “We did one thing, and then another, then we wanted to put in all those things that we didn’t have in Jumpgate and before we knew it, we basically had Jumpgate II on our hands. We have a robust player economy system designed for Jumpgate: Evolution. Manufacturing (tradeskills) is in game as are Auction Houses, better AI, and just a slew of other features.”

I had seen the Battlestation (Boss Mob) fights at Ion and Herman now showed me a “dungeon experience” which was flying and fighting within a large meteor. With tunnels and pits, enemies behind corners, and with the ability to move in all three axes, it totally felt like a 3-D dungeon. Throughout the flight through the meteor, there were enough visual cues for me to figure out what was considered “Up” and what was considered “Down” in the game – and this was mainly conveyed by the direction other ships and objects were situated in free space of the meteor.

I was a little apprehensive as I sat down to play as I am susceptible to vertigo, otherwise known as motion sickness. I’ve never been able to play a space game. One roll in Wing Commander (1990) and I was done for. I didn’t do too well with space combat simulation games that followed either. Star Wars X-Wing / Tie Fighter? Privateer? Descent: Free Space? Forget it! So, you can’t blame me for getting excited when I found that I could play the entire newbie mission in Jumpgate: Evolution without getting sick. My take on Jumpgate: Evolution suddenly went from “Cool concept, nice graphics.” to “Omigosh, I can play a 3-D space flight game!”

Has this colored my perception of the game? Well it made me want to find out a lot more about it, and Producer Herman Peterscheck was there to oblige me, but first, the flight experience. Since keyboard and mouse was used, it was not as intuitive as it would have been with a joystick / throttle set up. With keyboard and mouse, W and S were the throttle controls, A and D strafed you right and left, R and F strafing up and down, and Q & E rolling you left and right respectively. Your mouse movement turned you, the left mouse button was your trigger and the Shift key is your Afterburn.  :drill:

Ships have several stats: Power, Speed, Armor, Radar, Shield and Inventory (Cargo size) but not all were demonstrated. Your Shields and Armor contribute to your “Health”, the difference being that shields are recharged while armor is repaired. Once your Shields are down, your armor is the tin-foil between you and death.

Character creation at this time is very simple. Netdevil has put in a selection of avatar portraits, but is still working on the ability to do avatar customization, to create more of an avatar identity for players. I picked an avatar, gave it a name, jumped into my newbie ship and I was away. Visual cues were intuitive and simple to follow. The mission showed up in the UI, a discreet red flashing arrow cued me to where my targets were, a target ring helped me lock in on my target and when it came into optimum range, changed into a larger, flashing target ring.

The Damper was on as default and that assists newbies in space flight as it, well, “dampens” the physics of moving in zero gravity space, but turning it off allowed some neat maneuvering. I could throttle up, turn the damper off, and while still traveling in the same direction spin my craft around and fire at enemies in my wake. Très cool.

After I had destroyed all of my mission targets, a discreet green arrow cued me to where I needed to go to dock and complete the mission. I flew into a meteor just to check collision. Yes, it works. It also works when you fly into your target because you didn’t throttle back or avoid it. But once I got the hang of the controls after a few “How do I roll again?” type questions, I was enjoying myself and did not realize that I wasn’t getting motion sick! What I had not realized until I was done with the mission was that I had not felt disoriented once, watching Herman play the game. If playing a 3-D space flight game turned my inner ear balance mechanism totally out of whack, watching someone play was usually worse.

“We’ve been working hard on that aspect of the game,” said Herman, “Grace, our Business Development Manager is sensitive to motion sickness and so we use her to test a lot.”

Whatever you did, guys… don’t change it now. Anyone who has always wanted to play a space flight combat game but could not due to a sensitive middle ear, beta signup for Jumpgate: Evolution opened up in mid-August, and PAX is a good barometer for them to see how close they are to beta. The graphics look awesome. The game looks better each time I see it, especially for their mantra of keeping specs low for wider gamer accessibility, and the game is still in Alpha. Flying with keyboard and mouse was simple for me to get used to but I would love to try this with a joystick and throttle set up. From what I saw at PAX, Jumpgate: Evolution is looking good and it’s looking close.

This is going to be another one of those NetDevil games that only I like, isn't it. It looks like the spaceflight version of Auto Assault Freelancer/Privateer/x-wing VS Tiefighter.

This is going to be another one of those NetDevil games that only I like, isn't it. It looks like the spaceflight version of Auto Assault.

Shrug, I thought auto assault was pretty fun. I enjoyed the speed of combat, and the fact that you didn't just sit around with auto attack on. I only played for maybe 2 weeks in beta though, so I guess it could have turned to shit.

The original?

The ships in Evolution handle way better.

I just want to see if I can maneuver ships like they do in Battlestar Galactica without having the coordination of a Chinese Dance Dance Revolution Champion.

And someone said they were pulling too much from BSG.

The issue of PvP features in Jumpgate Evolution has the appearance of being extremely controversial, making the subject sensitive for the development team to address. Jumpgate Evolution is in many ways derived from Jumpgate Classic, and the original game's community has become extremely agitated over the potential changes coming in the new product. Even before Jumpgate Evolution appeared on the horizon, PvP was a divisive issue for the Jumpgate Classic community. Jumpgate Classic was designed from the start as a PvP game. Its simplistic PvE gameplay was a late-beta addition, nearly an afterthought. For some players, however, the available PvE became a major draw and main point of the game. For many others, PvP combat was simply never interesting or important because other activities and styles of play were more enjoyable.

Discussions of PvP matters in Jumpgate have a tendency to take on aspects of religious warfare. There are two diametrically opposed camps within the Jumpgate community, and there appears to be no dissuading members of either side. One group insists that "No place in the game should be safe from PvP", while the other side demands "Don't push your RP on me." As developers, we absolutely must build our game to appeal to the most customers possible, maximizing commercial success, or we risk inability to offset the costs of development. The PvP issue is so strongly polarizing, however, that the forms of PvP gameplay we provide can powerfully affect the number of customers we might attract. Despite the obvious conflict, we want to build a sound PvP system for Jumpgate Evolution that will satisfy many of the extremists in both camps, while also ensuring there is plenty of room in the game for people who don't wish PvP to be the entirety of their game experience.

Besides consideration of the general appeal of PvP gameplay, other factors significantly influence design decisions when choosing how PvP is regulated. Frequently these factors directly conflict with one another. First of all, PvP must be fun, which implies elements of balance, excitement, and challenge. Accomplishing just these things within a game's context can be demanding for any design team; balance, especially, tends to be where developers spend much of their time and effort. Furthermore, new players must not be chased out of the game by griefers using the PvP system to their advantage. Allowing such things to occur limits a game's potential growth, clearly bad news when trying to make a commercially successful product. The game's context or milieu may also strongly influence the design of a PvP system; for instance, it may mandate certain conflicts while restricting or prohibiting others. As a possible corollary to mandating or restricting PvP, it's also desirable for the means by which this is accomplished to either be realistic, or at least consistent with the game environment, to promote the players' sense of immersion. All these factors, and more, come into play when designing a PvP system, and they have all been topics of design discussions within the Jumpgate Evolution dev team.

Other online games provide many examples of interesting PvP mechanics to choose from or to use as starting points for innovation. We might look first to the example of Jumpgate Classic, Evolution's forerunner: in principle, all players in Jumpgate Classic were at risk from PvP, all the time. There were some minor protections in home areas or station sectors, but those deterrents in no way made those areas safe. EVE Online (CCP), presently the most successful online space-genre game, possesses wholly safe zones, where the mere beginnings of a PvP attack result in artificially effective obliteration for the attacker. From these de facto secure areas, space in EVE is assigned degrees of risk, in which the magically powerful guardian forces are gradually reduced in effectiveness until the player reaches space where the guardians are nonexistent and PvP is routine. Though not a science fiction game, Dark Age of Camelot (Mythic) offered a novel approach by developing the concept of "realm vs. realm" (RvR) PvP, in which players choose to play as a member of one of three nations, all of which are permanently in mutual conflict. DAoC possesses entirely safe homelands, where only PvE is possible, and totally open battlefields, where both directed and spontaneous PvP may take place at will among members of the three nations. Battlegrounds are also available in DAoC for lower-ranking characters who wish to sample PvP but who cannot participate usefully in the open PvP frontiers. NetDevil's own Auto Assault chose a somewhat similar safe-homeland, open battlefield approach, but also included arenas for PvP. The arenas didn't impact the global conflict, but unlike DAoC's junior battlegrounds, they did provide an alternative type of balanced and gank-free PvP that offered a venue for PvP tournament ladders, leaderboards, and stat-tracking.

On the basis of subscription numbers, World of Warcraft (Blizzard) is unquestionably the most successful commercial online game today, so one might presume that designers might find its chosen approach to PvP gameplay informative. Though its design includes only two sides rather than three, World of Warcraft also uses a variant of the RvR PvP idea. However, on standard-gameplay servers, meaning the "normal rules" for which WoW was presumably designed, a player is largely safe from PvP attack. One must deliberately choose to participate in a PvP based instance or contest, or otherwise "flag" oneself as willing to engage in PvP. As with most large commercial games, WoW is sharded, and there are servers with variant rules. WoW happens to also offer "PvP servers" as a shard variant, in which the rules are quite different: although the starting areas are once again entirely safe, the majority of the rest of the game environment is "contested" and open PvP is permitted within the "Alliance vs. Horde" RvR context. Fascinatingly, a server breakdown for WoW in North America and Europe reveals that the division between very limited PvP and mainly open PvP rulesets is very nearly 50/50. This suggests that about half the WoW customers in this region of the world play characters where mainly unrestricted PvP is the norm, and the other half play where PvP is available but solely consensual - which appears to mirror the polarization found within the much smaller Jumpgate community! In both cases, though, some areas of this very popular game's environment are entirely safe, and because the game uses an RvR model, truly open PvP is prohibited with a very few specific exceptions.

We consider PvP gameplay extremely important for Jumpgate Evolution, and are wrestling with the issues outlined here as we continue the development process. World of Warcraft's decision to apply different rules on different shards is highly instructive, given the visible polarization of attitudes among our potential customers, but we haven't quite given up on design ideas that have the possibility of making different rule sets unnecessary. Ultimately, we aim to deliver a deep game where PvP is only one of many attractive activities for players, but we want that PvP experience to be fun and satisfying enough that the players who choose to devote themselves to it completely will remain just as entertained and enthralled

Jumpgate was one of the first games I walked past this year at PAX. The clear and amazing graphics stopped me in my tracks as I stared at the monitor before me. I walked over to get a closer look, thinking that it looks really cool but that I am terrible at space games. After a while I decided I might as well give it a try. After all the worst thing that could happen would be me getting frustrated as I either failed to get the ship to move, or I couldn’t get it to stop as I plowed into some sort of space object.

I was quickly surprised at the fact that after a few minutes, I had managed to figure the controls out, and soon was flying around like a pro blasting my way though the first few quests. I knew at that point I had to find out more about this remarkable game, and if it would also appeal to people who were good at flying games.

Jumpgate is primarily a combat action game that is based on licenses that are achievement based, although some of the licenses do require a minimum level. Thankfully, levels can be gained in a variety of ways. Some of the ways experience can be gained is through quest completion, crafting, and PvP. PvP can be played on a battleground or the open playfield.

Jumpgate has incorporated a huge leaderboard system. There are leaderboards for many different things like "Most Players Killed" and "Most Money Earned".

Jumpgate has low system requirements so the average person can play it on their computer. It is designed to be played with a keyboard and mouse, but it also supports a joystick or multiple monitors. Jumpgate is more than a flying and shooting game as it incorporates a multiphase combat system. The quests can be played alone or in groups with other players online. The quests are player driven, and change based on the player's actions in game. The enemy is also fairly intelligent and incorporates different fighting techniques that keep the player on their toes.

It supports a guild system, which are called squads. Squads are an important aspect of the game. Jumpgate incorporates a webpage and message system in the game to allow the players in the squads to communicate efficiently with each other. Jumpgate also allows voice chat so that players can hear the sound of other players in the game.

In Jumpgate there isn’t a lot of dead space travel. Players can jump to different areas of the game quickly. This is very important because space is a vast place and traveling across it could take up huge amounts of time that would be better spent doing something else. Also the areas in Jumpgate look vastly different. Don’t expect to see the same space area over and over across zones, as every area looks different than the last. The vast diversity from the different areas of space is refreshing.

I talked to several people leaving the Jumpgate booth at PAX, and many were very excited because this game is exactly what many people that loved the older flying games have been waiting for. It has amazing graphics, low system requirements, a player based quest system, supports team play, and it has a great PvP system. Jumpgate has taken the previous flying games to a new level, and I highly encourage anyone who misses the old space flying games to give this game a try.

Monday September 15th, Scott Brown, Hermann Peterscheck and Grace Wong will be at the TGI Friday's in the downtown Radisson (111 East Cesar Chavez Street Austin, TX 78701) starting at 5:30 pm and lasting until 7:00 pm.

They will be able to answer your questions and if the conditions are just right, you will get to see the game.

no more jumpgate posts until my beta invite is active!

!!!

this means you!

I think this very recent post by Hermann (Netdevil Exec Producer of JGE) shows a great attitude to releasing their game - after a post challenged them to launch sooner rather than later, then patch and fix post launch (to get in quick before any other launches steal their thunder).  Read and enjoy!

"I'll just throw this out there right now. Shipping too soon is the death blow of most MMOs... games in general in fact. Now... I think the #1 thing that causes early shipping syndrome is not focusing on the right stuff EARLY as opposed to not polishing at the end. People point at Valve and Blizzard... spot on... I spend lots of hours reading all their stuff, trying to talk to them (when they will) and absorb the wisom of companies that produce MANY hits in a row. Valve's approach (if you look up their post mortums) is to basically play test early and often. We have been doing this... it's really hard and painful... crushing to the ego... and suicide inducing... but it works. We will continue down this path until we all die of the pain because we believe it is the only way. If you want to know if your game is good you have to test it on people who will at the end of the day be your customers. Period. There are no short cuts. There are no easy alternates. From what I can see there is actually no other way at all. It's implement->test->fix->modify. Do that about 10,000 times and you release [smile] .

The other side of game development is that it is R&D and therefore it is almost impossible to know when things will be done, which problems come up and so on. As a current example, we recently had to do some major work on networking. It was estimated at 2 weeks and it ended up taking about 8. Sometimes it goes the other way, but not often. The goal is always to make the best game in the shortest period of time with the appropriate number of resources. This is our mantra.

The 4 "coolest" features: capital ships, battlestations (bases), asteroid interiors, and space "terrain" (for lack of a better word) were not in design docs or seriously planned (though cap ships and battlestations were fantasized about [smile] ).

From a publisher point of view it's a bit different. They have marketing expenses, boxes to make, commitments to retailers and advertisers. Those are all very real and very serious; but at the end of the day you guys will buy the game and pay us if it's fun... and hate us and curse us if it's not [smile] . That is my nightmare scenario. Right now my single minded goal is to get this sucker into external testing to put it into your hands and get your feedback to improve the game and make sure we have something solid before we start asking for your money.

It's a simple minded strategy but I am a simple minded person. I think fun games succeed, mediocre ones scrape by and bad ones die (some exceptions, but damn few). I'll know JGE is a great game when it launches and grows. I think if you ship a great game on December 31st you can still go on to sell millions of copies... oh wait... Diablo 2 released on that day [smile] . We're internally committed to making this game great which, to be honest, has been a much more difficult commitment than I had anticipated... and I figured it would be really hard and am pretty much a natural pessimist.

The games industry is full of risk and danger which is what makes it so damn fun [smile] . You never really know if you have a success or a failure until pretty close to the end. Hopefully we're on the right track... it feels right and the vibe is there which is a good sign [smile] "

Without going into too much detail or referencing competing products directly... the key to remember here is that no one (that I know of) begins work on an MMO with the intention of releasing crap [smile] . It kind of happens on it's own. I think the nature of the universe is to create crap and it takes irrational energy and a certain amount of stupid blindness to force something good through the cracks.

Ok. That's probably a bit cynical but look at it form the other perspective. Let's say you have $20 million and you decide to put $12 million up to create a game. It reaches the end of it's budget and it doesn't seem like it's quite ready. You now have the choice of spending the rest of your money and going for broke (literally), or... you can push out what you have hoping you can recoup some or all and live to try again. THIS is exactly what happens to most games... and MMOs in particular. To publish an MMO requires huge risks in an unstable market with unknown returns - finance people don't like the trifecta of (high risk, large instability and unpredictability). A WOW expansion could come out and just crush you... or there could be no market for your game or whatever other disaster may befall you. On the other hand if you go and make another fantasy game can you really complete with WoW and the other handful of products that dominate that genre?

I think that publishers often get the shaft because they have to make difficult choices that sometimes result in negative consequences. However, if you consider the games that came out "too early" it's not necessarily true that with another 10, 20 or 50 million they would have been great in which case pushing the game out was the correct decision from a corporate survival point of view. You never REALLY know how far away you are or even if you are going to get there [smile] . Do you really want to be the guy at the publishing company who sinks the whole company on a game that sucks up all the money and fails anyway; to have to lay off all those people at Christmas time because you were sure that with another 6-12 months the game will be a hit? They aren't easy decisions.

I suspect that many of the failed games that should have been given more time were probably already given more time and still didn't get there. At some point you have to pull the trigger. A lot of what makes companies like Valve, Bungie and Blizzard succeed (in my opinion) is not the bottomless checkbook (although that helps) it's that they dedicate themselves to quality from the beginning. They focus on core stuff and get that done before they move on. It's actually pretty fun to read post mortums on gamasutra.com... fun and educational in this area. Consider, say, Introversion. They consistently make high quality, fun products, with very small budgets in comparably short amount of time. It CAN be done [smile] .

At this year’s GC Germany in Leipzig, Siam had the opportunity to take a closer look at NetDevil’s upcoming space-MMO Jumpgate Evolution, a reboot of their original game, Jumpgate.

I didn’t think I liked space-based MMOs, until I played Jumpgate Evolution at GC08. This impression is based partly on a demo of the game, as well as actual hands-on time as it was being showcased at the Saitek booth along with the company’s joysticks.

The presentation was given by Michael Rowland, producer for Jumpgate Evolution at Codemasters, while the gameplay was shown by Grace Wong from NetDevil using an alpha build of the game.

Michael talked about the basics of the game, mentioning the focus on fast-paced twitch combat, controlled mainly through keyboard and mouse, though joysticks may be used instead. The game’s class system is based around licenses, where different licenses give the player access to different equipment.

Examples of these licenses were space truckers or miners, which use different types of ships and other equipment to fulfil their roles.

Although the game is focused around combat, Jumpgate Evolution is making room for a player economy with mining and manufacturing being in the center. Different manufacturing plants found throughout the game world specialize in creating different items and players will need to find these to make use of them.

They also talked about the background story of the game, a lot of it written by Keith Baker of Dungeons & Dragons fame. He is most known for his work on the Eberron setting in which Dungeons & Dragons Online from Turbine takes place.

Factions are also said to be an important part of the game with different factions available within each of the three nations with a reputation system being based around these factions and the missions players do for them.

An interesting note on the mission system is that if several people enter an area where they have the same objective, they do not need to be grouped together to be able to share the experience points. Michael said this would cut down on spawn camping though one might wonder how exactly this will work so that only those who do the actual work gets the rewards from the encounters.

Later during my visit at GC Germany, I ran into the game being displayed at the Saitek booth. The game was playable and the system was hooked into using a joystick and thruster.

I’m not a huge fan of using them and I’ve avoided them in the past, but since the game rig was provided by Saitek, who of course wanted mainly to show off their products, I had to bite the apple and give it a go.

And I wasn’t disappointed.

I started off in the starting area with a goal to destroy several pirate ships circling debris. After stumbling around with the thruster and the joystick for a few minutes due to my inexperience I finally got the hang of the basics of moving and attacking. And the fun started immediately.

The combat in Jumpgate Evolution is fast-paced and from what I experienced in the early stage of the game, it is twitch based, meaning you shoot the moment you hold down the trigger/mouse button. Using the thruster and the joystick also created a more immersive environment during movement and combat as I flew around asteroids and passed space stations in my dogfights against the pirates.

The atmosphere and immersion the game provided was refreshing and I can say that I haven’t had either feeling recently when playing an MMOG.

What Jumpgate Evolution could use some more work on would be the UI, which to me seemed a bit cluttery and with unnecessary parts, such as the large square area in the top left corner showing an animated rendering of whatever you have currently targeted. It might have some use later in the game, or it may not. But at a first glance, it simply added to the clutter.

In the graphics department, Jumpgate Evolution doesn’t fall in the high end category and the producer explains that they don’t want to have high system requirements for the game. The graphics aren’t bad and the style fits the game well from what little I saw during my flights and short combat sessions.

Overall I had fun playing the game even if it were only for a short time and I am looking forward to giving the game another go, making it one of the few games at GC Germany that piqued my interest.