Quake 4 Sound
Blaster X-Fi Unleashed in Quake 4 on the Creative Labs Website offers
some sound thinking on Quake 4 by discussing the audio in Quake 4 with sound
designer Zachary Quarles: "Well, the process of creating a huge alien world
was very daunting, but also pretty gratifying once I realized that we pulled
it off. I really do love the 5.1 surround spectrum and how complicated and
layered the world sounds. When we added OpenAL to the equation, I was in
heaven. I really wish we would have had OpenAL earlier in the game
development process because I would have tried to experiment with it a bit
more. As it stands, I think the final product sounds great and was very
pleased with the work that Creative Labs helped out with."
World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade The
WoW: The Burning Crusade Q&A on Computer and Video Games discusses the
upcoming World of Warcraft expansion with Shane Dabiri of Blizzard: "As is
traditional with MMO expansions, a large portion of the content will be
geared toward characters in the range between the current maximum and new
maximum levels, starting at around level 55. However, we do also plan to add
content to better tie in the new races to the world, so players who choose
to start as one of the new races will experience a great deal of new content
up to about level 20."
Mythic GamerGod's
Sanya Weathers & Scott Jennings Q&A Part I and
GamersInfo's Mark
Jacobs Q&A each discuss what's going on at Mythic Entertainment. This is
from the latter: "The biggest change is that we are no longer being seen as a
niche part of the game industry and people actually take my calls when I try
to speak to them about projects. Ten years ago most publishers wouldn't even
speak to us, at least not seriously. Year after year we heard the same thing
(both pre-Mythic and post-DAoC), "Our market research shows that there is
only a small number of people who will pay to play online games!" This was
followed up by the equally absurd "Our market research shows that there are
only a small number of people who will pay to play online games!" Which then
led to my favorite quote "The market is saturated right now, there really
isn't room for any other MMO other than UO [And then substitute EQ, DAoC,
etc.]!"
Warhammer: Mark of Chaos The
Warhammer: Mark of Chaos Q&A on TotalVideoGames.com
discusses the upcoming Warhammer RTS game with Namco's Chris Wren: "The
vision is to make a great war game that anyone who's ever enjoyed blowing
something up can appreciate. Our strategy is to pull together some of the
best elements of RTS and war strategy gaming into a new, dynamic environment
creating the best possible war gaming experience for gamers of all
experience levels. The Warhammer Universe brings with it a wealth of
history, politics and culture which makes for a rich environment for us to
build our game in. By no means do you need to be a die hard fan of Warhammer
to try it out, one of our goals is to make sure that regardless of what you
knew about Warhammer before playing the game, you will be a die hard fan
once you've had a chance to play it."
Company of Heroes The
Company of Heroes Q&A on GameSpot talks with John Johnson (from
Wisconsin?) about the upcoming World War II RTS game: "We're in full
production and have been very busy since E3. We've been spending a lot of
our time developing content, with a major focus over the summer and fall on
developing the multiplayer gameplay mechanics. We're down to the iterative
tuning-and-polish phase of multiplayer now, which will give us ample time to
fine-tune and perfect our gameplay well above what we've been able to do in
any of our past products. In conjunction with this, we've also been very
busy developing the single-player game to ensure it matches the intensity
and excitement of this year's E3 demo in every mission."
Steve Ince The
Steve
Ince Q&A on Working-Title is the English version of a
Q&A
also available in German talking with the ex-Revolution developer about
what he's currently up to at start-up Juniper Games: "I'm certainly not
going to rule out publishers at any point but the primary idea is to release
them as downloads. Just because I think with the increasing take-up of
broadband, more and more people are happy to download a game. I know a lot
of people like to own the discs and have the boxes on the shelve, so it
would be nice to offer that as well but if I plan to do too much too early,
then the likelihood is that you get spanked with everything you are trying
to do. So it's a case of taking one step at a time and hopefully building
from there. And I think when the first game is released, and depending on
the reaction to it and how well it goes, it will define the path I take from
that point."