wanted to do that kind of game again and at the end of the day that is the best reason to make a game - because you want to. If you don't have that then the long hours and hard work will be pretty much unsustainable.

OnlineWelten: What do you want to improve besides the graphics and the AI with Evolution compared to the original?

Hermann Peterscheck: Everything :). Seriously though, good game development is all about detailed perfectionism. There's an aspect of madness which is a requirement for this job. Early on in development we took the approach that we wanted to focus on making the game one piece at a time. The early weaknesses we perceived in the old game were graphics and a sense of emptiness in the environment. Focusing on good graphics and having a more advanced AI system were the obvious solutions so we tackled those issues first. But that is really only the beginning. We're redoing the UI, the quest system, adding more equipment and deepening some of it. Honestly the approach we are taking is quite simple. We work hard to make the game playable as soon as possible, and then we start playing it right away. What we don't like or feel needs to be added, we fix or add. Then we focus test it with other people to make sure that others enjoy it as well. What is amazing is that in general people tend to like and dislike the same things, and also get stuck in the same areas, so there is a large amount of consensus when you focus test. I mean, when you test a game and don't like something it's we can easily see if it's the same thing that other people don't like through hard testing processes, so that tells you quickly what should be changed, right? I think that's where games go wrong, is that they don't ask and test, or they run out of time and ship too early.

OnlineWelten: In the press release you mentioned a completely improved AI-System. How exactly will this affect the gameplay and why do you think a good AI is needed not only in single player games but also in MMORPGs like Jumpgate?

Hermann Peterscheck: AI is a tricky thing. Very dumb AI is easy, just make things random. Very smart AI is also easy, just make it perfect. Making AI that is believable is the trick. What we wanted to do was to make a compelling and engaging universe and having ships fly around and do things that you expect is critical to that. So we can have defenders that fly around and patrol, pirates that attack, space stations that request ore and send out cargo vessels. All kinds of fun stuff. The idea is to fill space with life and then allow players to engage with it so that there is an unpredictable world. It's actually not that complicated once you have a basic system. As a side-effect we can use the AI server to do load testing as well as other stuff.

OnlineWelten: Will Evolution introduce - besides all the small and huge improvements - also completely new features, which didn't make it at all into the original Jumpgate? If yes, can you tell us a bit more about these new features?

Hermann Peterscheck: Without being too specific we're evaluating all kinds of things right now. There's all the basic stuff such as missions, mining, combat, PvP and so on... the stuff that players expect to have. However there a number of "wouldn't it be cool if..." features. An example is that most of the team has been wishing for large scale capital ship combat. Fighting huge battle stations in cooperative staged combat, similar to what you see in epic space movies, like going up against the final, massive boss for a group mission or raid. Since Jumpgate Evolution is an action based space game, we're going to try and put something like that experience into the game. Player driven economies tend to be much more interesting so we want to try and give the players a much more meaningful role than in the original game. For me and many other people, loot is a big thing in games so we want to make loot play a much larger role as well. Many types of loot and many ways of getting it. From there we'll have to see. I really look forward to seeing what people want the game to do through our testing rounds and then providing that experience.