Recently members of the PCShooter staff were able to get with Joel Huenink, the President of 4DRulers and ask him some questions about the upcoming, and highly anticipated game GORE.

PCShooter: Thanks for taking this opportunity to sit down with us to do this interview, can we start off by asking your name and telling us what you do at 4DRulers?

Joel: Joel Huenink, I do President stuff for the company, modeling, animating, I manage most of the GOD files (set up gameplay rules, weapon settings, character abilities, etc) I manage all the guys, give them technical direction, and help them with issues. I'm the guy everyone turns to when there is a problem.

PCShooter: How does this game differ from other FPS games out there today?

Joel: We’ve put a lot of work into the gameplay of the game. There are a lot of subtle things in Gore. Major features are character classes, Stamina system, weapons that have secondary modes, some of which exploit the stamina system, damage mapping, skeletal animation, facial animations, the list goes on and on.

PCShooter: Currently you can only play death match. In the final release will there be other formats like team play? 

Joel: Definitely. We’re putting a ton of effort into making team play awesome. I can’t go into details at this time, but I can say that we will make all the CTF and Counter Strike fans happy when it is done.

PCShooter: I have a geForce 2 card and the graphics look great, are you designing the game to take advantage of the new geForce 3 technology?

Joel: Not right now. If we have some time when everything else is done, we may make some options to take advantage of the new geforce3.

PCShooter: What engine are you using? Did you develop new technology and a special engine?

Joel: We licensed the AMP engine from Slam Software. Eyecon, our coding partners are working together with Slam to make the engine even cooler.

PCShooter: Some health and stamina articles are placed too high to jump to, is there some sort of special jump sequence I have to do to reach them?

Joel: If its there, you can get to it. Probably have to negotiate a ledge or two to get to it.

 PCShooter: We ran the demo on three very different test machines. One is a 550 Athlon  on a DSL, the second was an 900 Athlon on a T1, and the third was a 1.1 Athlon on a T1. The ping times on all machines were quite consistent. Is this due to the user's connection or some new server code written specifically for this game?

Joel: Ben wrote the engine, you would have to ask him.

Ben: The Gore ping meter is not very precise - or to be more specific - it measures the connection time plus the time the server takes to respond to a user event such as fire. In general it goes in multiples of the server period

(default is 50ms) (25, 75, 125, etc). Even though the current ping meter is fairly rough it is still quite useful.

Client speed will only affect the ping measurement if the framerate is below 20fps. If you want to measure the framerate in gore, type 'enable counter' at the console.

Also, the difference between DSL and t1 is probably not significant unless you're running a server. Then, is more of an issue of bandwidth allocation and the number of players, not ping.

Here is some additional information on configuring Gore networking:

By the way, the final version will probably have a more traditional ping meter that measures the connection only. If you are interesting in strictly measuring the ping time for a particular connection then you can use the 'ping'

PCShooter: How does your net code differ from other fps multiplayer online games out there today?

Joel: I don’t think that it is incredibly different or anything, but we now have it nice and solid, and the game isn’t due out until the end of the year. I’ve seen a lot of games ship with crap networking, and still have crap networking. Gore is smooth as silk and we’re still in beta, so that should tell you something. 

PCShooter: Will this be stable on a LAN connection? How many players can be in the game and still have a smooth-playing game? Have you found there to be a magic number? Or is it machine specific?

Joel: Gore rocks on a LAN. We designed it first over a LAN, so it runs without flaws. We’ve had servers up ever since the 1.27 patch, and they have been running ever since. As for the magic number, it depends on the map, but we would like to see it support 32 players before the game ships. Gore uses both CPU and graphics card quite a bit. 

PCShooter: With such a great demo, fps fans are eagerly awaiting the final release. When do you expect this game to hit the store shelves?

Joel: Before Christmas.

PCShooter: Will there be more than three characters in the final version? Will there also be more facial animation incorporated?

Joel: There will be eight to 10 characters. There will be a few more facial animations as each weapon comes with special face animation.

PCShooter: Will there be another demo released before the final version?

Joel: Yes, we will continue patching Gore with updates all the time. The next build should have some massive graphical updates to  items, effects and weapons. Down the road we will have team play test demos. The final demo will have bots.

PCShooter: In listening to the in-game sounds, it seems this game really takes advantage of the EAX technology, is that true?

Joel: No we’re not using EAX to my knowledge. Perhaps the sound engine does something similar.

PCShooter: This game’s focus is multiplayer, have you considered making a single player version as well?

Joel: There will be some single player modes, but our next title will be more single player story orientated.

PCShooter: How did you come up with the stamina idea? It’s pretty interesting that the characters respond differently based on their size, it’s more true to life.

Joel: We wanted to do character classes, and it just wasn’t fair to see a 110 pound girl carrying a huge heavy weapon compared to a 550 pound large man. The simple way out would be to restrict what weapons people can use, but that is stupid. I think if a tank was coming at me in real life, I could figure out how to use a LAW pretty quick. So instead of restricting characters to certain abilities, we just let them do what they want, but pay the price with stamina. So let the light player carry a big gun, and a great big guy use a little gun if he wants, but penalize them elsewhere. So the light players can use heavy weapons, but they wear out quickly with stamina. The big guys can use smaller weapons, but they are not as good with them. For example, the light players can shoot the shotgun faster than the big guys.

PCShooter: Can you divulge any information on the characters that will be in the final release, like unique characteristics, etc.?

Joel: There will be two sides, UMC soldiers and MOB bad guys. There are similar characters on each side of the war, light, medium, heavy, assassins, and mechs.

PCShooter: What weapons can we expect in this game that are not seen in your every day first person shooter?

Joel: We have already   introduced the defensive shield on the shotgun. I think about every weapon has been done in the past, but you can count on 4D Rulers doing it a little different. There will be some cool devices/gadgets available as well.