| |
 |  |
|
0 Players Online
Take me to the game |
|
| Behind-the-Scenes with the Crimson Skies Developers | |||||
Todd@CSkies> I'm Todd Squire. I'm the Test Lead on Crimson Skies, and I spend my summers hunting for cheap Velvet Elvis on Ebay. Chris@CSkies> I'm Chris Kimmell. I'm the Program Manager at Microsoft for Crimson Skies. Michelle@CSkies> I'm Michelle Gamboa. I'm a games tester and yes, girls do play games. =) +Dec@zEvents> Girls do rock the Zone for sure! I have been beaten by many of them. gray@CSkies> I'm Tom Sternberg Multiplayer lead, Artist, Animator from Zipper Interactive. cat@CSkies> I'm Graham Kays, Designer for Zipper Interactive. xtra@CSkies> I'm Erika Carlson, tester for Crimson Skies at Microsoft. Team@Cskies> Jay Banchero, Technical art lead/animator David@Cskies> I'm David Kern Lead 3-d Artist for Crimson Skies at Zipper Interactive __Team@Cskies> Hi this is Darren Guttyr Baker from CrimsonSkies.Org +Dec@zEvents> As you can see Zipper is well represented tonight and looking forward to chatting. Now then, lets begin. RSL_Starlaser> Hello and good afternoon, great game y'all! There are a lot of planes in the board game. Will more be coming for us in the PC game? Chris@CSkies> So we think we've got an awesome set of planes right now. You won't see any more until v2 RSL_Musashi> There are a great number of units who'd like to import their own custom art for the planes, can we expect any kind of means for importing those? Todd@CSkies> Currently, there's no way to do that. We're going to do some poking around and see if there's any way that this can be done in the patch. RSL_Minardi_> This is a two pronged question. What is on the horizon for CS, and what was the hardest aspect of developing the game? Team@Cskies> Perhaps the hardest part of the 3D portion was the environments - making them look good both at altitude and close to the ground. xtra@CSkies> We're very excited about starting development on the sequel to Crimson Skies with many more adventures for Nathan Zachary. RSL_Minardi_> Any sdk coming? Michelle@CSkies> Ummm...not right now. Oragun> Hi, KILLER GAME. Is there anything that you or I can do about hacks and cheats in multiplayer? Todd@CSkies> Currently, yes, it's pretty easy to hack/cheat in MP games. But we're going to look into what can be done to make values less accessible to players that try to change them. There's a jillion things we could do; it's just a question of finding what specific things are gonna work out the best. Oragun> Will there be other scenarios for multi in v2? Chris@CSkies> We just finished v1, so v2 is a ways off. Rest assured we'll have a rockin' game that's even better than the first. adtwo2> I'm unsure of this game has the playability. I'm a true X-Wing vs. Tie Fighter pilot. I'm just wondering what you are trying to achieve. Is it a sim? Is it an arcade? Because it fly's like a mix of both. I'm sure I will purchase the full version; I just hope I'm doing the right thing. What I mean is the more I play hopefully the better I will get because I'm hopeless at this game in multiplayer and I think the multiplayer is the gaming at it's best. cat@CSkies> CS is an action game, but because it is a flight game, we needed to put some kind of physics into the game in order to make it believable. Quake in a plane is a good analogy for what we were trying to achieve (with story, barnstorming, etc.) IX_Savage1> When can we expect to have the ability to modify/create Multiplayer Missions/Weapons/Planes (Mods) if at all? I find that's a huge part of Online Gaming. Chris@CSkies> Multiplayer is definitely a key aspect of any successful game. Unfortunately, we did not have time to put this into version 1. We'll definitely consider for v2. IX_Savage1> Any target date for version 2? Chris@CSkies> Totally unknown. And even if I did, I could tell you, but then I'd have to kill you ;) CS_Chieftain> Hi ya. I would just like to take this chance to thank the development team for all those present here tonight for the brilliant job they have done in bringing crimson skies to the computer. Michelle@CSkies> Rock ON! CS_Chieftain> The matter I would like to address if the current inability to link fire weapons. This causes many aircraft designs to be less than useful when being created. For example nobody would use 8x 30 call. Todd@CSkies> I have seen several people requesting this on CrimsonSkies.org, but currently, there's no way to do that in the game. CS_Chieftain> Are there any plans to introduce linked fire weapons in an upcoming patch? Chris@CSkies> Sorry, but that's quite a bit of work to fit into a patch. We'd rather focus on some of the more problematic issues that players are having. CS_Chieftain> Why the difference in release between north America and Europe? My copy doesn't get here until the 14 when it is released. Chris@CSkies> Where are you from? For different languages, it takes a while to do all of the translation. David@Cskies> The game is also being shipped via zeppelin! IX_CyberZombie> Any plans to raise the maximum user counts? One of the biggest draws of an older (Flying Circus) was the 100+-person games. Chris@CSkies> A thorny technical issue, but the short version is: no. we're sticking with 16 players max. IX_CyberZombie> At least 16-player on the Zone? Todd@CSkies> Games that are client/server can scale much easier to much higher numbers. But peer-to-peer has a much lower ceiling on max players. Chris@CSkies> Also, we will bump Zone games up to 16. I just need to make a change with the Zone team. XQuetzalcoatlX> Hi folks, thanks for being here. 3 quick suggestions, 2 quick questions; suggestions for patch or v2: Dedicated servers, Coop MP vs Ai, and MP stunt flying. Question: Will the patch make it so we can edit existing planes without having to start over from scratch? And when is the patch due? Michelle@CSkies> Thanks for the suggestions. There are a lot of things being considered for v2. It's still in design. As far as editing planes in the patch, well, that's something that's looked at for v2. There's too much work to change it right now. That would be a LOT of code changes. xtra@CSkies> The patch is coming out as soon as we make the changes that are needed. We just want to be able to produce a very solid patch. Durango_Kid_1> Great game! MP keeps games alive long after SP has diminished. Hypothetical, if CS had been designed essentially as a MP game with SP feature, what would the essential differences be do you think? cat@CSkies> From the beginning, we knew that the single player experience was our focus and was the best way to convey the compelling nature of the Crimson Skies universe. There were many different multiplayer modes that we considered but did not make the final version of the game. Had the game had a multiplayer focus, we might have been able to implement those ideas, but the depth of the universe would not have been conveyed as well. Stryker_BS> First off, I'd like to say to all of you, thank you for the great job you've done in bringing the board game to the computer, and I'd especially like to thank Todd and his guys for being so active on the cs.org forums. That lets us know you're really doing your best to fix our problems. Now, concerning the problems a lot of folks have been having, what will the next patch cover and how many patches are you expecting you'll need to do? Todd@CSkies> Woo hoo!! Thanks Stryker! For the patch, we are planning on addressing general issues that we've been seeing in all of the forums. Stuff like stability, multiplayer, load times, and performance. Stryker_BS> Concerning the game drop problems a lot of us have on the Zone; is the Zone looking at their end of the matchmaking code? Because I've found hardly any drop problems through IP hosting and fewer drop problems through Gamespy arcade which tells me that there's a problem on the Zone side of things somewhere. Which, I hate to say, the Zone people I've talked with even refuse to acknowledge. They blame it all on the game. Chris@CSkies> We've seen reports of this problem, too. So as Todd mentioned, this one area that the patch will focus on. But unfortunately, I don't have more details. +Dec@zEvents> When I first installed my Crimson Skies, I used the "small" installation. This prevented me from joining any multiplayer Crimson Skies game on the Zone. I then reinstalled full version and now can connect and stay connected with no difficulty. Fallen_MadMax> I've seen problems on gamespy too btw :). Any way to set it up so that players can join games in progress, up to the max number of players so that when a player drops in a team game, it isn't ruined? Michelle@CSkies> There shouldn't be a problem between min & full, but we'll also go over it when we work on the multiplayer patch stuff. Todd@CSkies> Joining games in-progress could be a tricky thing to implement. That is a pretty big architectural change in how the multiplayer code is structured. We have a dev dude who will look at it, but we currently don't have a good idea as to what sort of work... Todd@CSkies> .It will/won't take to do such a thing. RSL_Barbarosa> Ok, this is a question I just asked Todd a little bit ago, but I think a large enough number of us here are curious about it. How do you edit custom designs that you have already created, which completely recreating the design? Todd@CSkies> Currently, there's no interface in place for opening a previously designed plane, editing one/many details of it, and re-saving it. RSL_Barbarosa> Should we expect this as a possible patch in the future? Or is this a major rebuild that will take much longer to build? Chris@CSkies> Sorry, but like I said before, our patches will be for fixing problems; it's unlikely that they will carry new features. Michelle@CSkies> A lot of design suggestions came out during testing as well. We hope to put some of them in v2. GEE55E> Hi all; first I would just like to say thanks for a great game! I have enjoyed playing CS in single-player and multiplayer as much as any game I ever have played!! Great job and looking forward to part 2! Just one very general question any advice on returning to college in design and development area of games? John@CSkies> I suggest dropping out of college. GEE55E> LOL. Been there already! Todd@CSkies> More colleges are offering computer game design/development programs. Look at DigiPen. They have a couple of campuses around the U.S. and Canada and focus explicitly on PC game design. Michelle@CSkies> Btw, John@Cskies is the designer. John@CSkies> and a college drop out! IX_Savage1> With the upcoming patch, can we expect the Menu system to be a little more friendly as in less of a resource hog? Chris@CSkies> This is definitely something we're looking into. IX_Gryphen> Am personally most concerned with the memory leak being fixed. But I am curious to find out if the Targeting system will be tweaked or improved in upcoming patches, or does that count as a new feature and not a fix? So much pressure being the last question of the Day. David@Cskies> What's the problem? IX_Gryphen> It seems to lack some intuitiveness like targeting just enemy planes and not bases or rearming bases. Chris@CSkies> So we're definitely looking into memory leaks. But we really haven't heard that much about targeting, so it would be way down the list. IX_Gryphen> So where do we send emails about that? Chris@CSkies> Post to cs.org; Todd, myself always monitor that Todd@CSkies> Word. Chris@CSkies> I would like to thank everyone out there for giving us great feedback on our game. I would also like to thank all of the team members at MS and Zipper for the hard work they put in. Crimson Rocks! +Dec@zEvents> This concludes our chat portion, please move on to /crimsonskies/ for some real action. But be forewarned the Zipper gang came to play to win! |
|||||
