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REVOgames has created a great looking project - Glider - who won Conitec's latest contest. André Weinhold took the time to answer our questions.
Q: Who is REVOgames and when have you started to work at Glider?
A: REVOgames is a small group of independent working people, who plan and realize projects without any contract or payment. When having a look in some forum topics concerning REVOgames or Glider, especially the ones dealing with last year’s contest, it appears that some people think of us as a "big company", but definitely we aren’t. All members are students or have full time jobs at other companies. We just dedicate our spare free time for doing all the work that’s necessary to finish our current project. First design concepts for Glider were developed with another team, at the end of 2000. But much has changed since then and only two of the original members are still part of it.
Q: How and where did you learn programming?
A: Well, since the first version of the A3 engine was published, I’ve been working with it, so you can say I grew up with wdl.
Q: How big (in quants) is a medium sized level in Glider?
A: 32.000 * 32.000 * 16.000
Q: What tools are you using for your models and textures?
A: The old models were built with milkshape, the textures are made with photoshop. The latest models and graphics are produced for us by a graphic studio.
Q: It looks like you have improved the engine pretty much using your own dlls; what have you added to it? Have you considered selling these dlls to the rest of the users?
A: We call this development A5Extensions (A5E), we had to write it two times. The first version can be seen in the contest version of glider, running with the core of directx 7 and the A5 engine. It features fast terrain rendering, a simple skybox support and last but not least environment mapped water. The second version which supports the newer DirectX 8 API is not finished yet. So you can say, we had to rewrite the whole code again. But the new terrain renderer supports a lot of the new functions of directx 8. For example, we added support for texture compression, giving us the possibility of using terrain skins with extents larger than 4048 x 4048. So really big and detailed landscapes can be portrayed without the need of having a 64 MB graphics card. Currently, we are developing features like environment mapping for models and a new water renderer using pixel and vertex shaders of actual graphic hardware to reach a much higher level of realism and performance.
We already planned to sell A5E, but unfortunately we don’t have enough members to ensure the support for the necessary programs and different functions, which are used by A5E and which it supports. So this plug in won’t be published in the near future, sorry for that.
Q: What would you like to see implemented in the engine in the near future?
A: First, we would like to see a shader support. This means, you can create single materials for the entities and the level’s geometry (textures), this could be continued by implementing things like environment mapping, multi- texturing, bumpmapping etc. Second, improvements in the multiplayer section would be desirable, just like the possibility of creating your own session in the running game, to join it (which is possible at this time) and last but not least to list all running sessions, so a game lobby could be made. These are some of the features that shouldn’t be missing in a multiplayer game, but which are still missing in the engine at the moment. Further, the speed of several multiplayer commands should be improved.
Q: Is your team complete? Don't you have any open positions?
A: No, our team is not complete. Yes, we are still searching for talented 2d and 3d graphic artists, but also for a level designer and a c- script programmer. To get more information just visit our homepage http://www.REVOgames.com and have a look into the job section.
Q: When can we expect to see a demo of your game?
A: I think the contest version should be available soon at conitec’s download site. A totally new state of the art demo, which will exceed the things you have seen so far, may be available in some months.
Q: Who will publish Glider? Have you signed a contract with a publisher?
A: We have no direct relation to any publisher at the moment. But we’ve got some contacts which could be advantageous in the future.
Q: Please give us a few tips for beginners!
A: As it was told so often before, I can only repeat that you have to start small. I have never participated in some tiny projects, but rather tried different things. Developing a game yourself is very difficult for only one person, so I recommend to do it with some friends. It is very important that the communication is not based fully on the internet. And, like in any profession which requires a lot of work, discipline is needed absolutely.
Thank you a lot, André.
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