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2004.04.29 - Interview with PlaneShift's Director

Erik - Sorry for the straight question, but Crystal Blue release is late, what are the main reasons for that delay?

Luca - The main reason connected to the delay is that new version is quite challenging in terms of technology and new features. There are three major technology pieces that we have to deal with: cal3d models, new renderer and terrain engine. Each of those bring some good enhancements to the game, but also are costing us time and efforts. I will give you a brief summary of each.

About cal3d models: the technology used by player models present in Molecular Blue (MB) release was not based on skeleton, but on frames and it do not allow us to increase the number of animations available, due to memory issues. The new technology (cal3d), allows the usage of bones, allows to blend animations, and to animate just parts of the body (for example closing an hand). We wanted these features in Crystal Blue (CB), so we delved into the problem. The integration of cal3d into Crystal Space (the 3d engine) had to be done, but the major issues was the remake of player models. Due to differences in the technologies, we had little usage of the old animation cycles, so all characters had to be redone. While we were at it we also improved the char geometry, adding some detail. The result was (and is still right now) a major rework, that surely is bringing good results, but is costing us most of the delays.

About new renderer: after the release of MB, Crystal Space team released a first version of their new rendering system. We were pretty interested in the features it could bring, like shaders and better usage of new hardware capabilities, so we decided to embarque into integrating the new renderer into PS. The new renderer was still at early stages, and a lot of work has been done on both sides (CS and PS) to have it working correctly. Using new hardware features means also having the levels aware of those, levels had to be adapted and tested.

About the terrain engine: The need of a terrain engine was never big in MB release, but with CB we felt it was necessary to have larger areas were monsters may roam. CS had different projects running on terrain and thanks to their efforts, we managed to get one up and running at good speed. Tweaking and testing are still major activities of these days, like the integration with portals and non terrain levels.

For the "pure gamer" those are probably not very interesting features, but more technical internal aspects, but for us those are the building blocks for the future.

Erik - You spoke about monsters, this mean players will fight, get experience and level up, I suppose. How far is PS from being a "complete game"?

Luca - It's quite important to outline that Crystal Blue will be our 3rd "tech demo" and not a "complete game". We are still missing a lot of RPG features, stories, quests, areas, deepness of setting in general. We feel that an RPG game deserves a lot more, so we don't want to call CB an "RPG game" yet. We have a lot of good ideas to create a good RPG game, but we decided to go step by step and to release tech demos to bring attention of other developers.

Nonetheless I think the "gaming" aspects of the new release are quite interesting and surely the players will have much more to do and to have fun with. The community of players is already supporting us very well with guilds, forums, fans web pages, etc...

Erik - A mmorpg is probably the most complex piece of software ever, is a team made by volunteers enough to build it?

Luca - That's a good question, and surely one of the most important aspects on which I work and brainstorm often to ensure things are going into the right direction. The responsiveness from developers is overall quite good, but dealing with a community of volunteers brings some issues. I must say that I'm amazed by the professionalism of most part of our team and on the rhythm of work that these people can keep in their free/spare time. But in such a team the main issue is stability and the effort required to handle new prospects. We have quite a good process for handling new people, but it happens really too often that someone decides to join and then leaves after we spent hours explaining how and what he has to do. That kind of attitude really drains a lot of time from us and delivers nothing. So my request to the community of developers is to join if they really want to contribute and work with us for a long time. If I look at our team 1 year ago, and 2 years ago, i can say that we are getting stronger and better at every release, since the attention of devs increases and more people are willing to contribute.

Erik - What you need to complete CB and next releases of PS? Is the current team enough?

Luca - At times I get messages from people who think we are all set, and the team is more than enough. That's absolutely wrong, we surely need more people to speed up development and to add new features. The department that needs more people now is surely 2d/3d. Given the need to expand the playable areas and to provide more graphical content, there is a good amount of work required on new buildings, new models, new textures.

Erik - Can you disclose some more content of the CB release?

Yes. Here are some renderings (not in-game screenshots) of the Arena, a big structure built to hold competitions and fights. Enjoy!

Arena1, Arena2, Arena3, Arena4.

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