I never read this interview so thanks for posting it Jay!

If you happen to be "borrowing" an internet connection later and your bored you might want to check out my tech demo for my game camera.
 

This is the last engine change, I promise. Between the usability upgrades and the shiny it was just TOO tempting not to.

But even with that, I'm really tired of porting engines and having it break in a million places, so no more after this. I now have no major complaints about the engine, it is what TGEA should have been, so I think I can resist any future temptation.
 

Heh - no worries, but it's fun to rib ya just a little.

For me, it is just a business decision. Maybe if there's an FK2, an upgrade will be justified. Or not.

So are you back to the same level (or better) of functionality you previously had with SoW?
 

Almost.

The T3D folder structure is a little different, I started moving my assets to match and that turned into a full blown reorganization (I got in a "spring cleaning mood" :/ ). Which has, in turn, broken asset paths everywhere. So I'm fixing those scripts and then, by the looks of things, we should be back to a similar level of functionality.

The only thing that doesn't work is my dynamic texture/material blending resource. But that section of the code seems in flux, keeps getting revised every beta release. I'm going to leave it until the codebase stops changing and work on other things.
 

Great interview! It really makes the game sound intriguing. No mention of the combat, though. If it's "real-time," I hope it's something I can handle (or even want to handle, since I prefer having time to think). At any rate, I'll put this on my watch list.

One other comment: Like The Age of Decadence, I see there are no "good guys" or "bad guys," just different factions. I wonder what that means. Personally, I like playing the "good guy" in a game. Well, I want to be the hero, I guess - at least trying to do what's right. After all, it's a role-playing game, right?

I like the idea of factions, provided I can join one with a philosophy or a goal I can share. In The Age of Decadence, it sounds like all factions are equally nasty. That's supposed to be "gritty," I guess. But, much as I'm looking forward to the game, that doesn't appeal to me. Do we just pick a faction at random, then? (It's supposed to increase the replay value, I suppose.)

Sure, in RL, almost all factions think that they're doing good. But there ARE differences between them, so that we don't just pick one at random. For example, I tend to pick factions that are democratic, tolerant, progressive, etc., and avoid factions which are aristocratic, fundamentalist, reactionary, or think that the end justifies the means.

Sure, things are different in a medieval fantasy setting, but the idea is the same. One faction may believe that charity is a duty of the wealthy, while another is all about blind ambition. One might feel that law and order is necessary for a stable, prosperous society, while another may work with bandits, or employ assassins, for their own benefit.

I don't know if I'm explaining this very well, and maybe it's just that I do enjoy playing the "good guy." But in a role-playing game, it seems to me, you need to have reasons for your decisions, reasons that match your conception of your character. For that reason alone, shouldn't factions be distinguishable, and not just equal shades of gray?
 

@WCG : Thanks :)

There are, of course, differences between the factions. I'm not trying to make them all equally nasty, I'm more trying to ensure that the interpretation of their actions is somewhat open to interpretation.

Lets take a real world example. Let's consider the US military. The members of the military obviously think they are doing the right thing, overall, and so do many civilians. Sometimes innocent civilians are casualties in war, but they consider the overall "good" of their actions to justify that cost. But, on the flip side, there are those who see some or all of their actions as unjust, destructive, who point to certain excesses or mistakes etc.

In real life, there is no absolute measure of whether the US military is "good" or not. In many RPGs there is. The good guys get glowing auras and holy powers granted by the gods because of how just and moral they are. It's clear who is good and evil in any moral consideration. The real world is open to interpretation. It comes down to the eye of the beholder.

In SoW you aren't prevented from playing a "good" character. But I do try to present factions with enough depth and enough "grey" in their actions to allow players to interpret their actions from their own viewpoints.

IF I manage to pull it off, the hope is that 2 different players can choose two different paths that they each consider the "good path".

You CAN play a good character, I am just trying to ensure that you have to think a bit to decide which path is actually the "good" one, or at least the most good/least harmful.
 

That makes sense, and it does sound good, Gareth. It would help, too, if we can make a difference, if our actions actually affect the world.

I enjoyed The Witcher, but no matter what choice I made, things turned out badly. The game was set up that way. Unfortunately, that meant that my choices weren't at all important. The game played out differently, depending on which choices I made, but the difference wasn't significant. It certainly wasn't any BETTER, because of my actions.

So I don't just want to pick a faction based on significant differences between them, I also want my actions in support of that faction to make a difference - not just in the success of the faction, but also in that faction's subsequent conduct.

Therefore, I might pick either of two factions, but whichever I pick, that one will be influenced by my choices, hopefully to make the gameworld a better place (although a player could do just the opposite, if he wanted). So as a self-described "good guy," I could play the game once as a member of one faction, which would affect both the faction and the world, and then play again as a different faction, in which case first faction might not be quite as "good" as when I was a member of it (different, at least).

In other words, as a player in an RPG, I really want to have the ability to make a difference.

PS. I must admit, I tend to be a "builder" in games, if not literally, then just attempting to build a better society. To me, that's far more fun than combat, though I need the combat, too. It's always disappointing when I don't see my actions having any significant effect. (Even having NPCs talking about my exploits, or thanking me for them, helps, though I'd prefer to see the difference.)
 

I've been looking forward to Scars of War ever since I first heard about it - he just looks like he's got his head on straight and has very similar opinions on the fantasy genre to my own: magic ought to have consequences for the game world, politics can be interesting, etc. The art blog has showed an interesting style, too.

The *one* thing that makes me pause is that, following the dev blog I saw that the one bit of direct description from the game has an its/it's error - that's always jarring to me; seeing that kind of thing in a demo is almost always enough to make me not buy, I just don't trust the developer to have been thorough with the rest of the game. Not as bad as a crash, of course, but recently I was seriously turned off of the recent major Spore update because they just didn't copy edit the very first mission!.
 

@Gareth
After I finish up my mobile game I was considering venturing into the 3D realm. I really like how in your interview you backed your liking of torque with the fact they have a few proven titles behind it.
Anyways have you ever used the engine for any iPhone or Xbox development?

Even for 2D PC development I was looking into the 2D engine since it claims to be cross-platform. Might give the demo a shot.

I just remember looking at the engine awhile back (years) and remember finding a serious lack of documentation.