Since a month from out Kickstarter project interview with Voidspace, they have been making bounds when it comes to making the game an actual game, with the game currently in beta. If you don’t know what Voidspace is, here is a refresher.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39FnANxkzqs
1. Since our last time we met, and the Kickstarter project how are things?
I’d say things are better than ever. We finally have some solid gameplay video footage of the prototype, we’re finally getting some (though minor) media traction. Donations are at an all time high. The game itself is “more fun than a game at this stage of development should be” according to our players. It is all very exciting. I was also given a very good opportunity for government-funded capital as well. There is a program running in Canada that is actually precisely for the sort of things we are doing (video game technology industry) that it seems we might very clearly qualify for. This would mean full funding for the development of the game if we get it!
2. So far, what has been implemented in the game?
Too many to list down, if you want to know all of them we have a video for that!
3. What hasn’t been implemented that you do plan on adding later?
Again, quite a lot from trading Dogecoins in realtime to modular bases to even the “Fog of War”. For complete details, you can check out the features list here.
4. What do you feel will
be the hardest thing to implement/execute?
To be honest, the first year of development was by far the hardest. We were trying to make GWT (Gwt Web Toolkit) work with our application such that the simulation code that runs on the client is identical to that which runs on the server. This had unforeseen difficulties that we have finally overcome (specifically relating to math differences between javascript and java). That was pretty tough and ended up stretching our timeline somewhat. However with that done, we’re able to move on to much more exciting aspects of development. I’m particularly excited to introduce lag compensation and client bubbling, which will allow us to have an enormous world with at least hundreds of players all playing at the same time, and the client performance should improve dramatically! I also can’t wait for the invention system, which we’ve been creating fundamental frameworks for, but have yet to be able to test a fully functional invention system yet. None of these things are nearly as difficult as the obstacles we’ve already overcome, but they would be the next big thing for us.
5. Current Status?
At the moment, I’m really happy with how the game looks and I’ve been getting a lot of really encouraging comments from those who have played the prototype. People seem to love playing the prototype already and we’ve only really put about 10% into the gameplay so far, there is still SO much to come (reason being, we’ve needed to concentrate on the fundamental frameworks for the Universe Engine which will make the whole game possible). Right now the biggest issues with the prototype is the obvious lack of optimization. It’s fine to play alone or with a few other individuals with decent latency to the server, but as soon as you add a single individual with poor latency, the entire game will crawl. This isn’t a bug, we just haven’t implemented all the necessary parts yet. The two major components that, when completed, will see many magnitudes of performance gain is the lag compensation and the client bubbles. These two things together will turn this multiplayer game into a massively multiplayer game overnight. It also isn’t as far away as it sounds. The reason why there has been such a long spin-up time for what appears to be a simple game is simply due to the fact that we’ve been getting ready for this all along, and there is already a lot of code in place for it.
6. Future Development plans?
We have many things in the works, everything from Dogecoin integration to lag compensation to even passive defense systems. Too many to write down I’m afraid. You can also check our website here under “Development Progress” to get a summary of what is going on in the phases of development.
Photo Source: Client Given
For more information: http://www.universeprojects.com/new/index.jsp
