Space... its big... its dark... its about to get a major makeover.
Flavien Brebion and Co. have taken an independent thought and begun the creation of innovative MMOG. Borrowing storyline elements from "Children of Men", Infinity: The Quest for Earth aims to provide the MMO player with an open gameplay mechanic, combined with a dynamically generated universe to ensure a virtually limitless gaming world to explore.
I was able to speak with Community Relations Director Rich Woods and Senior Developer Flaven Brebion concerning the development progress of Infinity.
Lets see what they had to say:
Please tell our readers about your MMOG - Infinity: The Quest for Earth.
RW: Infinity: The Quest For Earth, is a game currently being developed by a small development team brought together by head developer Flavien Brebion. Unlike most MMOs, Infinity will have gameplay where it is your skill that counts, not what level you are. The action takes place in a full scale model of our own galaxy, that's one hundred billion stars, each with its own planetary system. You will never run out of new places to visit in this game. Infinity uses procedural techniques to generate the galaxy which is why the playing area can be so vast. By the end of next year Infinity could be as well known in the gaming world as Eve is now. But by no means is Infinity a copy of Eve, the inspiration comes largely from older games such as Elite and Frontier. I can't easily describe the potential of Infinity, its easier to show you a video: Infinity Demo
How is the development of Infinity progressing?
RW: Development was held up for a while due to the successful release of the Infinity Combat Prototype but is now back on track. We expect to start testing in mid 2008 with a view to a public beta release towards the end of next year.
Being an independent development house must present many challenges, what have been your biggest hurdles?
RW: The release of the combat prototype was a major hurdle in the development. Until then all the technical problems had been hidden from the public but at that point all our cards were laid on the table. A date was set for the release of the prototype and our IRC channel began to fill with prospective gamers. The release was a few hours late due to technical problems, but the download location was finally posted and people scrambled for one of the sixteen player slots.
Most people ended up on a queue waiting to play, but there were reports in the channel from a few lucky souls who had got in and quite a few reports of problems. Flavien was fixing bugs as fast as they were reported and more and more people were getting to play the game. In the end, it proved a great success, but it was also a very long weekend for our poor programmer!
FB: True, but that was for the first release around June 2006 if I remember correctly. The 2.0 release ( which is closer to what I originally had in mind ) was in early December 2006. Overall, the development of the ICP took 6 months: 3 months for the first version from March to May; and 3 months for the second version from September to November. It was a great experience, and looking back, I think jumping immediately into the full game development ( as I was tempted to do ) would have a mistake. Now I've got a clearer vision of some of the technical / design problems that I'll be facing in the game.
With a stated lack of "hostile" alien entities and core emphasis on PC to PC interaction what challenges will players have to face?
RW: Not having any hostile aliens, or any aliens for that matter, does not mean the players won't have enough challenges. Human beings can provide quite enough problems without us needing to add aliens in to the mix. We have three major factions with conflicting political agendas and also the Dynamo, a mysterious group of bandit raiders that will certainly provide a lot of scope for missions for players.
A lot of the challenges we'll put to our players won't necessarily be based on combat either. With a whole galaxy to discover, exploring the stars and planets will be just as much of a challenge, and perhaps more rewarding for non-violent gamers.
What innovations will Infinity introduce in order to break it out from the MMOG crowd?
RW: Infinity will have a hundred billion star systems to explore. That means there will always be places to go where no other player has been before you. Infinity has seamless transition between space and planets, take off, fly through the clouds, and watch as the blue sky gradually turns to black, the planet receding away in your rear view. Combat in Infinity is based upon player skill instead of your character's stats, this takes us away from the whole grinding and levelling process that is endemic in other MMORPGs.
Seeing that is a "labor of love" what has been the most rewarding part of creating the Infinity universe?
RW: The most rewarding thing for me is seeing all of the contributions that come in from the Infinity community. This game is getting a huge amount of support and every model or piece of music that comes in is a labour of love that says that the person who made it believes in what we are doing enough to dedicate their own time to the game. We now have nearly 70 complete ship models and many more pieces of artwork, concepts and original pieces of music. Another gratifying aspect is seeing how people are developing their modelling and art skills, with help from the community around them.
FB: Well, personally.. building a world ( or better: a whole universe ! ) and not knowing what one could find in it, is very inspirational to me. Also, all the positive feedback is a great source of motivation. When I see that some people really enjoy the ICP, while it's only a fraction of the full game, I cannot wait to play the game myself and to see what players will think of it.
Any ideas on when a closed beta might be starting?
RW: Officially, our response has got to be "when its done". We're a small team of developers working part time on the project, even professional games studios have trouble keeping to deadlines, so imagine a group of independent developers. Having made that disclaimer, we're currently aiming to have a beta version released before the end of next year.
If you could change anything about Infinity: The Quest for Earth what would it be?
RW: I don't think there is anything that I would change.
FB: I think it's too early into development to start having regrets :) From a player's point of view, maybe that would be the lack of "walking on planets".
For more information concerning Infinity: The Quest for Earth
Please visit them at: Infinity Official Website
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1.
12-07-2007 14:13
The story of how I found this game:
I was up playing WoW being bored. I had just quit EvE a few months back and was missing it. I started thinking how much I wanted to blast something with some kind of energy weapon, in space.
I turned off the game and started talking with my girlfriend who was still playing WoW. We went back and forth creating the best space MMO we could think of just off the top of our heads.
I popped over to MMORPG.com to see if anything was coming out anytime ever that would even slightly resemble the game we had created...and I found I:TQFE...
I promised my friends all accounts if this game comes out. We already have plans for it. Please complete it. We've been messing with the combat sim for the game and love it dearly.
Space... its big... its dark... its about to get a major makeover.
