UI Customization and Capital Ships In Jumpgate Evolution 41
ZAM got a chance to speak with NetDevil's Scott Brown at the recent LOGIN 2009 conference about various aspects of upcoming space MMO Jumpgate Evolution. He mentioned that massive ships will be limited in scope and role to begin with, but may expand and evolve as they figure out what users like. He also made some interesting comments about UI customization:
"We built it with the goal of letting people mod the UI. There's still a little bit more work to do that, so I don't know if it'll be ready at launch, but all of our UI is built in Flash. This is with the idea that anybody can build something with Flash and put it in the game. Now, there are problems, for example, if you do certain things in Flash that might cause the game to perform really slowly. We've still got to figure out how to educate people or how we verify this so that you don't make a mod that I download and my game experience is destroyed. We want it to be easier than that. I think that there will be some work to do, but the goal is that, eventually, people will be able to, using Flash, make their own UI."
Missing the point (Score:4, Insightful)
You know as much as it sounds cool to fly the bigger ship, I'm imagining it's kind of like one of those Battlefield games where you could drive the aircraft carrier around the island. Well it turns out that aircraft carriers are slow and they don't move very fast, and it's not that exciting a thing to do in an action game.
As far as military sci-fi goes, aren't capital space ships supposed to be responsible for coordinating the battle, kinda like a mobile HQ? If you want to make it exciting for people to choose the "slow" unit, give those players an expanded view of the battle field, the ability to give orders, coordinate supplies, handle communications, and other stuff that the fighter pilots wouldn't be interested in, or have the time to do.
There's more to do in a space battle than just fire lasers.
Re:Not Flash! ARGGGHHH (Score:3, Insightful)
In other news, Java is really slow and no-one would use JavaScript for anything serious.