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Questions are answered by:
Michal Janacek - cofounder of Pterodon, lead programmer
Jarek Kolar - cofounder of Pterodon, project leader
VC is apparently your second project ( following your web, the first was Flying Heroes ). I'd like to know what was the hardest part of the development ( except time pressure ) and wheter you had to solve these problems during the VC development or you learned from this and eliminated them successfuly
?
=VAC=Bredy
Michal:
Flying Heroes was our first project making use of 3D graphic cards so most problems originated from mastering the 3D technology, we wrote it ourselves. The problems were both technical and design. The creation of Vietcong was easier already.
Another big problem was the growth of the team. During the work on FH the number of team members rose from 4 to 15 and during the VC creation to the today's 24. More people can naturally do more work but there appears the need of coordination what was the biggest trouble.
I think that although ( thanks to experiances from FH ) we managed to evade some problems, more difficulties appeared during the development of VC so it took longer to finish VC than FH.
Who came with the idea of FPS from Vietnam war ? Weren't you afraid of the difficulty to bring the realism of this theme to our monitors ?
TDR
Michal:
The idea of Vietnam was of the Take2 producers. The first thoughts were of Rambo fighting in VietNam but without license we couldn't use it and switched to realistic style. The difficulty of of Vietnam war game was clear ( for Czechs unknown enviroment and historical background, high hardware requirements for jungle, natural behavior of enemies and the player's team ) but there was no game like this and we like challenges so we began.
We are pleased we were the first who made game from Vietnam and that the others are following us.
How did participate in the development of VC Illusion Softworks that is mentioned as co-makers and smewhere even as the makers ?
Katoga
Michal:
Illusion Softworks provides us funding and distribution so we needn't to discuss with publishers and can fully put our minds to the development. That was our part, IS helped us by consulting the bug testing and gameplay.
The advantage is that we know each other for 9 years and Petr Vochozka trusts in our abilities so we had freedom in development. Mentioning in magazines who made a game is a general problem, sometimes even the publisher is written there what is really sad.
Were you surprised by the success of Vietcong ?
[PVC]zuzu.exe
Jarek:
I think the finishing of the project was great success for majority of the team. I personally accept as a success that the Vietcong was that many people really like it and they said it to us. We recieved many enthusiastic letters that confirmed in us the feeling we mad god job.
We don't know if VC was succesful financially, the reslults are known quarterly. But the first place in Germany and second in England are promising.
I wonder how it will be with the map editor. When it will be released and how will the user inderface look ?
baby & Bed@
Michal:
The betaversion release is planned on the beginning of september. You should be able to build new MP maps and create mods and also modify existing maps and mods. The main part of MOD tools is a scene editor and plugins for MAX to create own objects.
The maker of new mod will have to master the C language and to be able to handle our SDK. We will try to mak examples for every important tool.
Will you improve the damage caused by weapons to differ rifles from SMGs ?
C@sP3R
Jarek:
All weapon parameters were set on reflection of longlasting testing. It is important for all weapons to have its pros and cons well ballanced. There cannot be ultimate weapons or weapons noone wants to use. If someone has some specific comment to the functioning of specific weapon, discuss it with other players in the forums and write mail directly to Pterodon.
There are problems with wrong cheat detection. It seems it happens to players with slower connection ( high packet loss, high ping ). Is there a hope for enhancement or is it too difficult to diversify connection problems from cheating ?
=VAC=Bredy
Michal:
Server detects cheating from the data it recieves from clients. If these data doesn't matchwith the expectations of the server, it will the player as a cheater. It sometimes happens that due to the bad connection the data seems to the server as cheater data. We are trying to improve the algorithms to be as reliable as possible.
Will you make an official anti-cheat tool ( like PunkBuster ) ?
YaKUzA
Michal:
The game already contains many anti-cheat checks. But there is problem that when hackers show new cheat we have to release new patch which takes pretty long.
Now we consider making separate system able to upgrade without the need of a new patch. We hope we will be able to include it in Fist Alpha. The cheating is the greatest problem of Vietcong so we focus on it.
The fans in the forums wanted more realism settings - weapon jamming, slowdown after being hit, more realistic wounding, removal ofbunny hoppers etc. Will you add some selectable realism setings or will you try to make the game more arcade by restricting of the selections ?
SKID
Michal:
We haven't decided this yet. The pros are clear but there are some cons also. One of them is the shattering of Vietcong into several types and the difficulty to find a server corresponding with player's preferences. There are also many players yelling that they bought the game for its gameplay and if we change it, it will be swindle. We don't have easy situation to decide. In the Fist Alpha there will be no such changes.
Will Hawkins command the same team in the Fist Alpha as in the original game ? Can you tell us more about the story ?
YaKUzA & TDR
Jarek:
As it was announced in the press, the plot of Fist Alpha takes place in the Nui Pek base before the action of Vietcong. It can be decuced that Hawkins won't take part in FA ( he arrived to Nui Pek just before the story of Vietcong ) but that there will propably be the same SF team.
Will there be in the Fist Alpha MP maps of a great battle like Tet Offensive im February 1968 ? How many MP maps can we expect ?
Foxbat & TDR
Michal:
There will be 8 new MP maps in the expansion disc. The Vietcong players become fond of large nature levels and the expansion disc will bring them this enviroment. There won't be any map of real historical battle.
Will there be a destructable enviroment in the Fist Alpha like falling tree after grenade explosion ?
THE GABBER
Jarek:
If there were a tree falling after grenade explosion, it would be natural to all trees to have such behavior. Thus the player would have the possibility to cut down whole jungle what isn't technically possible and even we don't want this.
On the other hand, to have in the forest single tree able to be fallen by grenade meanwhile all others stands still isn't good either.
Will there be new traps in FA ? CAn we expect new weapons? Will there be possibility to use some weapon system ( AA guns, artilery... ) ?
YaKUzA & TDR
Michal:
Yes, in MP will be new trap ( I like it personally ) and there will be several new weapons and some old ones will get bayonet.
Estimated date of release of the expansion disc ? The price estimated ? What will we found in the box ? I would appreciate paper maps of MP levels...
baby & gessler
Michal:
The expansion disc release is planned for october. The price will be around 600 CZK ( approx 18.5 EUR ), The contents of the box depend on the distributor. But certainly there will be some CD :-)
Is Vietcong 2 planned ?
Foxbat
Jarek:
We have many projects we'd like to do in our minds. But it is not decided what we will do, so we cn't speak about it.
How do you see the future of the company, another projects and your ofn future. Do you want to continue on the PC games development ?
[Destro] - [A]
Jarek:
It doesn't matter what project we will do or what platform we will create games for. If here in Pterodon is a team of people trusting each other willing to make good games, the future will be splendid for whole Pterodon.
Thanks to Pterodon for answering and we wish many proffesional and personal successes.
The www.vietcong-game.net team
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