Published by EnragedGnome April 16th, 2007
in FASA, media and interviews.
The fine folks over at 360arcadians.net have managed to net an exclusive interview with Bill Fulton. There’s a lot of material covered and more than a few bits of juicy goodness inside.
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The interview is basically the second hour of the show, but they talk about Shadowrun off and on throughout the whole.
A few points of interest from the interview:
1) The demo may not be released until just before or even after the game is released.
2) Downloadable content in the form of new maps, magic, and tech is likely. Multiple maps are already mostly complete, but they were cut from the retail release because they didn’t meet FASA’s high standards.
3) Achievements can only be earned in a public match with at least 4 people on each team.
4) Why doesn’t the Shadowrun FPS feature Shadowrun staples such as decking and rigging? One of the best answers I’ve heard can be found just after timestamp 1:32:25.
UPDATE: Bill Fulton took the time to clarify how achievements work.
Any game (public or private) that maintains at least 4v4 for the entire round can earn achievements. So you and 7 friends can unlock them all in a private game, provided you meet the conditions.
Tags: 360arcadian, achievements, bill fulton, demo, downloadable content, FASA, interview
Published by EnragedGnome March 28th, 2007
in FASA and interviews.
Bill Fulton, Game Designer at FASA Studio, has posted an excellent description of Shadowrun’s best feature — teamwork.
The aspect of “Shadowrun” that keeps me wanting to play it is how well it delivers the feeling of teamwork, that compelling experience of being a part of a team that has to coordinate and work together to defeat a dangerous and determined enemy. While “teamwork” is hardly a revolutionary new idea, “Shadowrun” was designed from the ground up to maximize teamwork, whereas other games feel like it was “tacked on” without much thought.
Go read the whole thing over at the FASA Dev Blog at IGN.com.
Tags: bill fulton, FASA, features, teamwork
Published by EnragedGnome March 27th, 2007
in FASA.
On the official Shadowrun forums, Bill Fulton has answered our questions yet again. This time he explains how parties affect matchmaking and the auto-balancing system.
Parties will only be split as an absolute last resort to keep the match balanced.
If a party gets split, it will be reunited at the first opportunity where it won’t unbalance the match.
He goes into much greater detail on the matter in his original post.
Tags: auto balancing, bill fulton, matchmaking, parties
Published by rapture March 16th, 2007
in FASA and interviews.
Odd. Picked this up from an interview with Bill Fulton over at games.yahoo.com.
“Xbox Live players won’t be able to browse dedicated server lists–only Windows players will be able to do that. Xbox 360 players will be able to join dedicated servers if a friend is in one, either through the guide or by a friend invite.”
Anyone got any ideas as to why this is the case?
Tags: bill fulton, dedicated servers, gameplay, games for windows, xbox 360
Published by rapture March 16th, 2007
in FASA.
Raid, extraction, and attrition. Get used to those names. They are the modes of gameplay available in Shadowrun. To learn more about them, read what Bill Fulton said about them in a recent Gamespot interview:
The game types are raid, extraction, and attrition. Raid is one-flag capture the flag. The Lineage’s mission is to get the artifact (the flag) and escape with it. RNA Corp’s mission is to prevent that, hopefully by killing the Lineage. In extraction, both teams’ mission is to secure the artifact and escape with it. Attrition is team elimination. Both teams’ mission is to destroy the other. The team that survives, wins.
There is no respawn in any game type. You can get resurrected, but there are no respawns. We like the effect that the “you die, you sit” gameplay mechanic has on players; they try to avoid dying much more, which makes the game feel more serious.
All of the game types are multiround matches; you start with no magic, tech, or weapons, and a little money with which to buy them. You earn money during rounds, and at the beginning of the next round, you can buy more magic, tech, and weapons.
Note: There is no two-flag “capture the flag” type gametype. I think this will be sorely missed by gamers. Again using HALO 2 as an example, single-flag capture the flag gametypes were very unpopular. Dual-flag CTF matches rule the CTF landscape. That said, these single-flag gametypes will probably be fun. I enjoyed playing “assault” in HALO and HALO 2.
I’m guessing there’s a storyline reason as to why there isn’t two artifacts in one map.
Tags: attrition, bill fulton, extraction, gamespot, interview, raid
Published by rapture March 16th, 2007
in FASA and interviews.
Bill Fulton of FASA said in an Gamespot interview that there will be no custom gametypes in Shadowrun.
“As for custom game types, we decided not to support those. There’s nothing to stop players from agreeing to play by “house rules” in private matches with friends (in fact, that’s the origin of attrition–a group of FASA artists played by house rules), but we don’t support playing public multiplayer games with custom modes. It often just leads to awkward situations where you join a game playing something weird that you don’t want to play.”
Bill also jumped in on the official Shadowrun forums to say:
“Sorry if I was unclear–Shadowrun doesn’t support customization of game types at all. I was attempting (and failing) to make it clear that, in private matches with your friends, players can agree to custom rules (house rules), but that there’s no code support for this. Enforcement will have to be done by the players themselves.”
The custom gametypes in HALO 2 were one of the things that made that game so popular. In fact, Bungie took direct feedback from the gamers and actually implemented custom gametypes in their official matchmaking playlists. Custom gametypes are also the heart of any LAN party or competitive league or tournament. Custom gametypes were at the heart of my buddylist. Being heavily embedded into the Bungie/HALO community, most of my friends list is made up of HALO gamers. On my list, custom gametypes were more popular than matchmaking (perhaps because of cheating issues on HALO 2 on XBOX LIVE). Even Gears of Wars, which has limited customization, allows the host to edit some gametypes and map rotations. GoW isn’t really a social game. I think there’s more to a game being social than being able to keep your party together.
Unfortunately, Shadowrun will not have custom gametypes. I think this is a serious blow to the average gamer all the way up to the competitive gamer. I think this greatly reduces the replay value of this game. After all, this is a multiplayer-only game! No doubt what FASA has provided will be fun. But, it looks like the gamers will have little control over how WE play this game.
I do not see a premiere gaming league like MLG being able to adopt Shadowrun as a tournament game (assuming the Shadowrun rights would be lent to those organizations). MLG and other leagues like CAL and CPL all run on custom game settings.
Tags: bill fulton, gamespot, gametypes, interview
Published by rapture March 7th, 2007
in FASA and interviews.
Bill Fulton, game designer, at FASA stated why there is no ranked games in Shadowrun. He gives some good background information that makes Shadowrun multiplayer seem promising:
Hey folks,
This whole story about us doing ranked match with friends (and some very unflattering accusations at Gears) is really just an unfornate series of misunderstandings. I’m going to attempt to clarify this as cleanly as possible, so please bear with me if I repeat what some of you already know. (BTW–I’m the UI & matchmaking designer on Shadowrun, so I’m pretty sure what Shadowrun is doing).
- Shadowrun WILL be doing a party system. One of our focuses is to make it easy for you & your friends to easily get into games together and stay together.
- Shadowrun WILL be using TrueSkill in order to do skill-based matchmaking. Because it is no fun to play against others whose skill is too different than yours, we’re going to put people into games with others of similar skill.
- Shadowrun will NOT be doing ranked match or displaying any skill numbers. We want playing Shadowrun to be about having fun, and not about making some number go up. Plus, displaying rankings/skill seems to just reward cheating, which we don’t want to do.
I believe the misunderstandings around this issue stem from the following causes:
- Some people (incorrectly) believe TrueSkill & ranked match are inherently linked. This is not the case. So when we say we’re not doing ranked match, many people seem to *hear* that we aren’t using TrueSkill; and when we say we are using TrueSkill, some people *hear* that we are doing ranked match. The two systems do not have to linked and we are not linking them.
- Some people (incorrectly) believe that the party system inherently means ranked match. There’s no reason they have to be combined. So when we say that we’re building a party system similar to Halo 2, we mean the ability to gather your friends together before getting into a game. We don’t mean that ranks will be displayed or that when the game ends we’re going to ‘explode’ the match and send everyone back into matchmaking separately.
A brief overview of how Shadowrun matchmaking will work:
- You and some friends can get into a party.
- Your party (or just you by yourself) can go into matchmaking and get into games with similarly skilled players.
- At the end of a match, the next match will start immediately with the same group of players (minus anyone who choose to quit, and plus anyone who has since joined).
- Often, when a party goes into matchmaking, you’ll be joining a game in progress. This means that the match didn’t start once you joined, but will have been going before you got there (and may continue on once you leave).
- At the end of a match, if teams are too uneven, they will be ‘auto-balanced’ to make them more even.
- A friend who shows up late can join your party and get into your match while it is in progress (as long as the game isn’t full).
- A party could leave a public match and switch over to playing a private match (just with party members–no strangers), or go from a private match to a public one.
I hope that this clears up the misunderstandings. I think the bad press directed at Gears because of this misunderstanding is pretty unfortunate (and not to mention unfair to them). If someone could get this info to the 360Arcadians and Knuckles Dawson, I would appreciate it.
Tags: bill fulton, gameplay, party system, xbox live
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