This morning
when I got up I started rooting around in some of the items I
needed to get done and realized I had this great Gunman
interview I had overlooked and never posted. Unfortunately the
review is about a month old and was done a few weeks prior to
the release of the game. The material in the interview is
still great for those who have played the game and especially
for those who are thinking about picking up a copy. for these
reasons I decided to go ahead and post the interview.
PCShooter: What is your primary goal or objective at Rewolf
with the
creation of Gunman? More specifically what is going to make
Gunman stand out and be different from other first person
shooters already
on the market?
Dev Team: Our goal was to make a game with a lot of variety
and action.
We've made weapons that can be customized in
countless ways, created quite a few very different
environments to explore, and populated the game with
everything from robots to aliens, humans to dinosaurs. All of
it is tied together with a fun storyline -- I think we
achieved our goal.
PCShooter: Who came up with the idea for the game and can you
give us the storyline? Who will be the main character in the
game?
Dev Team: The game's storyline evolved over time. We knew
we wanted a huge variety of stuff in the game, so we worked on
finding a way for the
story to include all of it and still make sense. As we built
the game we added countless scripted sequences and events to
ensure that the player felt that they were a part of the
story, rather than simply having it told to them.
You will play the part of Major Archer, one of the
"Gunmen" who keep the
peace on the frontier. You are one of the few survivors of the
battle
of Banzure Prime five years earlier. The great gunman General
was lost
in that battle; eaten by a massive "Xenome"
creature. Since that day
the strange silicon based xenomes have been spreading from
planet to
planet and more recently, have begun to rapidly develop traits
that have helped them to defeat the Gunman. Scientists suggest that the
xenomes are being genetically engineered and deliberately placed on
the infested planets by an unknown outlaw faction. Your mission begins when
a suspicious signal is detected on an uncharted jungle planet.
PCShooter:
I noticed in the game FAQ there is mention of 70 levels. This
is obviously
a huge game how many hours of play time will the game offer?
Dev Team: Sometimes I'm surprised how fast people are able
to finish it, compared to the average play-testers we had been
using at Valve. I think
people are averaging 15-20 hours. We
intentionally sped up the game-play by minimizing the kinds of
puzzles that take hours to solve and aren’t really that much fun anyhow (no teleporter puzzles etc). Our
goal has always been to entertain the player constantly.
PCShooter: Do you know if there is a new
engine in the works that will
push the capabilities of the Generation V video cards such as
the Geforce 2
or the other 64 MEG cards?
Dev Team: You'd be surprised how little time I had to
wander around and spy on the stuff Valve is doing. I imagine
it has to be awesome, since they're all working so hard, but I
couldn’t blab about it even if I did know a lot.
PCShooter: Did Gunman
start as a Half Life Mod then evolve into a stand alone game?
Dev Team: Yes. Though we hoped it would turn out this way
since the very
beginning.
PCShooter: What sort of weapons can I
expect to find in the game? I noticed there are a few weapons
on your web page. I also saw there are several configurations
for each weapon. Can you explain how this
works?
Dev Team: Each of the weapons has the ability to be
customized or configured to meet the situation at hand. The M.U.L.E. (Multiple Unit Launch
Engine) is the most versitile rocket launcher in any game EVER.
Imagine being able to choose from firing when you pull the trigger, or when
you are
locked on to an enemy. Setting the flightpath to
"guided", "homing" or
"spiral" which fires two rockets at once. You can
then adjust the
warhead to explode on "impact",
"proximity", "timed" which acts like a grenade, and "when triggered" which acts like a
trip-mine. You also can choose between normal explosives and
cluster bombs as the
payload. Other guns can be customized in different ways, and you can also
find upgrades to add new abilities to certain weapons.
PCShooter:
With 70 levels 1200 sound effects, 30 monsters, 19 megabytes
of original
textures, 8 configurable weapons, drivable vehicles, ect this
game has
to be huge! How long has this game been in the works? How much
hard drive
space should I clear up so I can install Gunman, what will the
system requirements be?
Dev
Team: It took us over two years to put Gunman together. The
system
requirements are slightly higher than the original Half-Life,
but the good thing is that despite all the new stuff, the game
runs smoothly and looks great on computers that may not be
state-of-the-art.
PCShooter: Reading in the FAQ for Gunman I got the impression
that the multiplayer
aspect of Gunman may be rather basic. Will Gunman be using the
Half
Life netcode? What kind of multiplayer game options can I
expect from
Gunman?
Dev
Team: Gunman uses some of the new netcode. Many of our weapons
are entirely too complex for the fancy new netcode to handle.
(Its impossible to use the new prediction code with a homing
rocket, for instance)
Multiplayer is indeed basic, but its still a lot of fun with
the new weapons. If we can get enough servers (thus interest) we'll
work on some team based gameplay in the future.
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