One of the developers of Project Offset, Nick Mohilchock, talks briefly about the process of developing games, and what the team is working on now for their new IP.
This is taken from the official Project Offset forums:
"I've been shy on updates as of late because I've been beyond busy working on gameplay and prototyping and other infinitely tedious work. The end result of which should catapult your in-game experience to new echelons of gameplay extacy. There are lots of things that I just can't say about it, so I thought instead, I'd give you guys a little bit about the actual process.
For starters, we're working on AI - how it behaves, what can it do, what's it's favorite color, etc. Designers and programmers work on these various characteristics to fine-tune an enemy or NPC so that it will behave realisticly (or not if the case is necessary) in any given situation. The goal is to make the AI appear smart, even if for the moment the decisions being made by the character are things like your distance to it, line of sight to it, the health it has left, how many friends it has left, or what kind of weapon or item you are using.
All of that is fine and dandy for a room or flat plane with nothing in it, but what if you eventually want to make a level with STUFF in it? That's where design goes into overdrive. It's not just making the level look cool or be short/long enough... every battle, every engagement and every objective is carefully constructed, tested, and reconstructed and tested many times. We have to be sure...or we're perfectionists... whichever excuse works best for you.
How does this all happen? One space at a time. Litteraly.
We'll start by making a section of the level we "expect" to be in the final product. In that space we'll place a couple of entrences, exits, walls, bends, elevation changes, deliberate lines of sight, and most important... cover. Then we play from one end of the space to the other. We tune the AI to use the space smarter when engaging the player, we tune the cover and the layout to be easier to navigate and more tactically advantageous. Rinse and repeat.
A few days later, we have the gameplay worked out. We know what we want to accomplish, we know what kind of features the programmers need to add to the AI, we know what size art assets we need for props and geometry to create the gameplay space, and we know what some of the limitations of the characters are when we plan the next encounter. It's a long, itterative and tedious process - but as I said, it will be worth it when the final product ships.
I know... not REALLY insightful, but it's the best I can do for now. Keep frosty and we'll have some announcements in a couple months or so. M'kay?"
GameEnthus Podcast ep267: Iron Inversus Man or Geriatric Weaponry? This week Ryan(@RyanJuckett) creator of Inversus and founder of @Hypersect chats with Mike(@AssaultSuit)&# 160;and Aaron(@Ind1fferenc e) to discuss: Inversus, GO, Hypersect, Bungie, Destiny, Othello, Neversoft, Pandemic, Project Offset, Gun, Tony Hawk American Wasteland, Tony Hawk Project 8, Southwest Airlines, Airbnb, Red Flags, New 2 US, Guitar Hero … Continue Reading →
Extraquarter-"Unfortunate ly, history has shown, there are a select few titles, despite the enormous attention and potential, will never see the light of day. None showed so much promise, potential and excitement, arguably more than Project Offset."
"You know, it’s no secret that many games have been cancelled in the past. Some of those games had the potential to be a AAA experience but for some reason or the other, those ideas were thrown out. That is the way the industry works, because after all it’s a business."
We all know if The Getaway 3 ever had to exist it would've been to GTA-ish seeing thats what fans would've wanted.
Man, would be awesome to see The Getaway and Star Wars 1313 on PS4. Though, BloodRayne didn't make the list, it was a lot of fun too...would like to see it on PS4 as well!
I forgot all about Project offset, but I always knew PO would never come out on the PS3 or X360. PO appeared to be beyond both systems capabilities at the the time. Fractiv LLC is the name of the company that made PO demo, they actually licensed their game engine for the game Firefall. I do think Sony should make Getaway 3 for the PS4, thought the demo looked pretty nice and GW2 was decent but not great back in the day.
Project Offset!! Thank you, I have been trying to remember the name of that one, I was so excited about it but it just vanished.
I think technology now is capable of rendering Project Offset. In 2006 no way graphics processors had the rendering grunt to run this vaporware demo at HDTV resolution with AA. Look at Crysis, took about 4 years before single graphics cards could render that Crysis at max settings around 60 FPS.
My old Nvidia GTX 670 was the first graphics card I own that could rendering Crysis at 60 FPS with AA 2012. In 2010 my AMD 6970 got close, around 50 FPS without AA max settings.
but at least the game is still alive!!!
I'm definitely looking forward to this title; it's the first game I'ver ever come across that I'd be willing to pay to play online, based on the way that it seems online play will replicate the scale and sense of purpose of offline (i.e. not just killing everything that moves). Still hoping that it will come out on the PS3, as they still haven't announced their publishing deal for it yet.
This game has so much promise to be move systems that it's rediculous. If they can get the gameplay right and a good story to go with it we might have another AAA title on our hands. I just hope that everything comes together.
based on what i`ve seen of it so far.
Micro$oft publishes it!