The Team*
In addition to some Star Trek Star Trek Star Trek Armada 1 veterans, including myself, Gordon Moyes, and Matthew Nordhaus, Mad Doc Software has perhaps the most experienced and talented development team I've ever seen. We've got James Fleming, Kevin Wasserman, Tim Farrar, Liz Buddington, Mike Swiderek, Mike Ryan, Steve Nadeau, Pete Calabria, and Karen Wolff all formerly from Looking Glass (& Irrational). We're further bolstered by up and coming stars Tara Teich, Ken Davis, Mark Graham, Brian Mysliwy, and Shaun McDermott. Most everyone on our team has 3, 4, or more acclaimed hit games under their belt including* Dark Reign, Battlezone, Civ* Call To Power, Star Trek Star Trek Star Trek Star Trek Armada, Call To Power 2, Dark Vengeance, System Shock, System Shock 2, Thief, Thief II, Flight Unlimited (1, 2, & 3), Terra Nova, British Open Championship Golf, and Janes Attack Squadron.
The Game*
Star Trek Star Trek Star Trek Armada 2 has been in development since early September, 2000. The recent press release gives a first good glance at what we're doing with Star Trek Star Trek Star Trek Armada 2. We've got a new and improved DirectX 8 3D engine which supports the most spectacular space environments ever in a game, bar none.
GamePlay* We've got more races, more ships, more special weapons, better AI, more game modes, new & bigger single player campaigns featuring the voice talents of some of the most popular Star Trek* The Next Generation actors. We're making serious efforts to strongly differentiate each race to provide the most varied and exciting RTS out there. New space stations and an improved "economy" will make all your favorite game play modes and all your NEW favorite modes even more playable and replayable.
3D* We've retained our default familiar "Strategic View" from Star Trek Star Trek Star Trek Armada 1, which is a top down view of the game world that is especially well suited for strategy and base building, but we've also added an optional fully functional 3D "Tactical View" which puts you in the middle of the action like never before. Ships are no longer limited to just a 2D plane, and 3D formations are an important part of combat. We’ve evaluated all options and decided that we’re going with a unique map style* we call it the “Deep Dish Pizza Box”. It’s much wider and longer than high (and wider and longer than most Star Trek Star Trek Star Trek Armada 1 maps by a fair amount), but it’s still high enough to encompass all the 3D tactical movement you’d want. Our feeling is that for strategic purposes, you can think in 2D, but you can take advantage of 3D for cool tactics. The final ratios are not set in stone, but an example is a map that’s 15000 wide by 15000 long by 2000 high (where 100 is the length of a grid side on the Star Trek Star Trek Star Trek Armada 1 map grid, and the biggest Star Trek Star Trek Star Trek Armada 1 maps were 6400 by 6400). That allows plenty of awesome 3D combat, but enables users to keep playing a proven top-down mode if they desire. The Strategic View also gives the player a sense of canonical directions (N,S,E,W) so that players can coordinate better in multiplayer and build sensible bases. The optional Tactical View is a major rush! You can perform any action from either view, but we’ve found that the Strategic View is a good default to help organize your bases and strategies, and the Tactical is tons of fun in combat and managing formations.
Star Trek Star Trek Star Trek Armada 2 will also feature the most varied map topologies of any 3D space game ever* with Nebulae, Asteroid Fields, Black Holes, Wormholes, Moons, and Colonizable Planets the natural terrain allows more varied maps and strategies than ever. We're retaining the action and excitement of Star Trek Star Trek Star Trek Armada 1, but you've never seen anything like this game! *)
The Races*
Multiplayer* In MP games, you can play as Federation, Romulan, Klingon, Borg, Cardassian, or Species 8472. New ships and capabilities for the existing races have been added (with some special top-secret Borg revisions!), and the new races have been built from the ground up! BTW, I’m pleased to tell you that we’ve switched to using GameSpy, perhaps the most reliable and well respected Internet matchmaking service in existence, in order to improve the Internet playing experience!
Single Player* The story Arc will have 3 campaigns. 1.) Federation versus Borg, 2) Klingon versus Cardassian, and 3) Borg versus 8472. The Federation will be making key appearances and contributions in each of the later campaigns, too!
The Community*
We're hoping to build the community further and support Mods even better than before. The new map editor has many, many new and convenient features, and we're retaining the user mod friendly .odf and .sod files (of course, the 3DS Max exporter for .sod files is already out there), and adding much more (including user definable 3D formations). The new multiplayer modes will encourage even more map generation and trading.
I'm personally looking forward to making this the best RTS game ever. Revolution, evolution, and refinement, and the Best Team in the Business will make this game absolutely rock!
Now, I've got to get back to work, as we've got a game to finish... *)
Best,
Mad Doctor I
CEO & Mad Scientist
Mad Doc Software, LLC www.maddocsoftware.com
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Various snippets and information from official boards
There will no longer be a seperate Directors cut function. This will be more integrated into the actual game itself, most notably the new 3d formations. These will range from aggressive to defensive formations.
Info about music: "We are switching the music from .wav files to redbook audio from the CD. The wav files are too much of a performance hit and i'd rather have better framerate. We will probably still support mods using .wav files. If we get a chance we might get in MP3 support, but no promises."
The supposed system requirements will be PII - 266Mhz, 8Mb 3d card min, 64Mb RAM, Sound Card, Mouse, DirectX 8, Windows 95/98/ME/2000
Map Editor "The map editor will ship with the product. It will however be shipped in a beta form. That's a normal stipulation for tools that we include with products. The editor will not be supported by Activision's Customer Support. Typically we don't update the tools past the launch of the product. However it's safe to say that this set of tools will have more enhancements then what was available for Star Trek Star Trek Star Trek Armada I.
One thing we haven't done in the past is release the source code for the tools. Typically because they are so tied in with the codebase for the graphics engine. However i'm going to check into that as well for this product. It would be a nice addition to the MOD capabilities of the product."
Quelle: http://www.ststarfire.de
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