Egosoft Interview(09/14/2011)

0809000

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Here at TGB one of the most excit­ing things we get to do is talk to the peo­ple who actu­ally make the games we know and love.  Recently we got the amaz­ing oppur­tu­nity to sit down with Bernd Lehahn the direc­tor of Egosoft, devel­oper of the X series.   Dur­ing our inter­view with Mr. Lehahn we were able to get some insights into why they make their games the way they do and we also got some excit­ing new details about their upcom­ing release X: Rebirth.

TGB: First I want to say thank you for tak­ing the time to talk with us at TGB.  We are very thank­ful for the time you are spend­ing with us today.

TGB: The X series seems to be your pri­mary title as a com­pany.  What has inspired you to con­tinue devel­op­ment of the x uni­verse instead of expand­ing into other areas?

Bernd Lehahn: This was really an easy deci­sion. We all love space games.  Yes it is true, that only few devel­op­ers have the lux­ury of con­cen­trat­ing on one series, but I am sure this is not because they wouldn’t like to. It is rel­a­tively rare today that a devel­oper keeps full con­trol of his own IP and directly makes money with every sold copy of a game.  Once you are in this posi­tion how­ever, it is great to work with a com­mu­nity of fans and build some­thing larger.  This is also the rea­son why we were able to sup­port our games much longer than a nor­mal game devel­oper can afford.  So it is all closely con­nected with keep­ing con­trol and build­ing a larger IP. Hmm… I hope I can answer some of these ques­tions with a sim­ple: Yes or No  

TGB: The X uni­verse has been quite suc­cess­ful for Egosoft.  Why has Egosoft cho­sen not to expand onto other plat­forms such as the Xbox 360 or Playsta­tion 3?  Are their hard­ware lim­i­ta­tions?  Con­trol Problems?

Bernd Lehahn: Well it’s cer­tainly not a triv­ial task to bring such a com­plex and hard­ware hun­gry fran­chise to a con­sole. Our games have stood and will stand in the future, for total free­dom inside a very large uni­verse. I don’t think it’s impos­si­ble to bring this to a con­sole, but it’s a big task. So as a small devel­oper we have to con­cen­trate on one plat­form at a time.

TGB: Many pre­vi­ous PC exclu­sive devel­op­ers have com­plained that piracy is a big prob­lem for them and have moved away from the PC plat­form as a whole in some cases.  Do you, as a devel­oper, feel piracy is a huge prob­lem for you?

Bernd Lehahn: Piracy sure harms us, but I think we found a good com­pro­mise in how we pro­tected our last two games (and in how we removed that pro­tec­tion after­wards). It is always impos­si­ble to judge how much more we could sell, but I do not believe any devel­oper moves to another plat­form just because of this. Con­soles are a big mar­ket and devel­op­ers would be stu­pid not to develop games for this market.

TGB: The X series, while it has some story ele­ments is pri­mar­ily an open sand­box.  Has Egosoft ever con­sid­ered doing a more focused cin­e­matic cam­paign to drive the story behind the X uni­verse?
Bernd Lehahn: Yes, in fact with every game we have tried to improve on the sto­ry­telling and exper­i­mented with ways how to com­bine the open sand­box with a plot.  X2 had some cutscene dri­ven plot ele­ments, X3:Reunion had plot minigames etc.  But this was all not per­fect because we had to stick with a lot of the exist­ing designs. That’s another rea­son why X Rebirth had to be redesigned from scratch and is not just X4.

TGB : Speak­ing of X Rebirth are there any excit­ing new fea­tures that you can tell us about?

Bernd Lehahn: Many… I am writ­ing a series of post­ings for our own forums for the next few days in which I describe in depth a lot of the new game design and cool features.One very cool new fea­ture is drones for exam­ple. The player will have only ONE ship to fly him­self. But this one ship is super cool. You can move around inside, trans­port and talk to NPCs aboard etc. But you also can still own and con­trol drones and cap­i­tal ships. Drones can even be con­trolled in first per­son, so in real­ity you still have lots of ships to steer from cock­pit view. The only dif­fer­ence is that this is done using a vir­tual real­ity sys­tem (gog­gles come down from top of your cock­pit and the co-pilot takes over fly­ing the main ship) and you won’t die if these drones get destroyed. This sys­tem gives us a lot more free­dom in design­ing new and very diverse experiences.

TGB : Are you going to be adding some FPS style game­play to the X uni­verse?  Plan­e­tary Inter­ac­tion perhaps?

Bernd Lehahn: No. Not that we didn’t think of it. Mar­ry­ing an X game with some­thing like Mass Effect sure brings some nice ideas, but again: We are a small devel­oper and have to do one step at a time. You WILL how­ever be able to step out of your ship and stand on plat­forms.  Talk­ing to NPCs is a big and impor­tant way of con­trol­ling the game and a step to mak­ing things eas­ier (less com­pli­cated menus and sim­pler conversations).

TGB: Will X Rebirth uti­lize some of the newer graph­ics tech­nolo­gies such as DX11?  Does DX11 present devel­op­ment chal­lenges for developers?

Bernd Lehahn: That’s not decided yet. X Rebirth will run on DX9 API as long as all the fea­tures that we need from the API are pos­si­ble with it. That does not mean we may not at some point also sup­port DX11, but for now we do not see a need.  Our engine is quite dif­fer­ent from all the big estab­lished names, because it is designed specif­i­cally for a space game. We would love to use an engine like Unreal or the CryEngine, but unfor­tu­nately we had to develop it all our­selves, because this was the only way to have cut­ting edge space graphics.

TGB: So X Rebirth fea­tures an entirely new graph­ics engine?

Bernd Lehahn: An entirely new every­thing engine  The graph­ics engine was actu­ally replaced  between X2:The Threat and the X3 games, but the X Rebirth engine is a much big­ger step, because it also means a whole new tech plat­form to sup­port mul­ti­thread­ing for AI, physics and other tasks.

TGB: The X titles have tra­di­tion­ally been very friendly and open to the mod­ding com­mu­nity.  Your in game script gen­er­a­tor is a prime exam­ple of this.  Dur­ing the last 10 years the num­ber of devel­op­ers who sup­port the mod­ding com­mu­nity have been greatly reduced.  The recent announce­ment that Dia­blo III would not fea­ture any mod­ding sup­port at all had the mod­ding com­mu­nity in an uproar.  Why has Egosoft cho­sen to be so closely tied to the Mod­ding com­mu­nity?  Why do you think so many devel­op­ers are not releas­ing Mod sup­port with their new releases?

Bernd Lehahn: I can’t speak for oth­ers, but for us it’s an easy choice: Sup­port­ing mod­ders helps adding to our games and bring­ing more cool con­tent to our fans. With X Rebirth it is a bit harder than in the past because the whole tech plat­form has changed at once, so peo­ple can’t work with it before the game comes out. But we aim to release tools and doc­u­men­ta­tion as soon as pos­si­ble after the release of the game. TGB: last ques­tion  

Bernd Lehahn: phew…

TGB: Has the idea of adding multi-player ever been con­sid­ered for the X Universe?

Bernd Lehahn:  Yes and the other half of the answer is again the same as twice above men­tioned: We are a small team and have to focus, but .… yes  

TGB: That is all the ques­tions that we have for you.  I want to say thank you again for tak­ing the time to talk to us about your com­pany and your games.

感谢lemorefly的译文

在TGB最令人兴奋的事情就是和那些制作出我们喜爱的游戏的人交谈。最近我们获得了和X系列的设计师，Bernd Lehahn交谈的机会。通过对Bernd Lehahn先生的采访我们领悟了为什么他们要以这种方式制作游戏，并且我们也得知了一些令人兴奋的新细节，有关即将推出的X：重生。

TGB:首先我感谢您抽出时间接受我们的采访，我们对此十分感激。

TGB:看起来X系列是你们公司的招牌。是什么激励这你继续发展X系列而不是转向其他领域？

Bernd Lehahn：其实道理很简单。我们都热爱太空游戏。是的，很少有游戏开发者会在一个系列上坚持下去，但我肯定这（不继续开发同一个系列）不是他们的本意。当今的游戏开发者对他的IP（知识产权）并没有完全的控制权，他们也不能直接从每份售出的游戏中获利。然而一旦你呆在这里（指的是加入一个游戏制作组，区别于独自开发游戏，个人理解），和一群有相同爱好的人制作一个大玩意是件非常愉快的事情。这也是为什么相比于其他的游戏开发者，我们有能力把我们的游戏支撑到今天。这就像我们大家一起工作，一起创作并分享一个巨大的IP（知识产权）。嗯....我希望我可以回答一些用yes和no就能回答的问题。

TGB：对于EGSOFT来说X系列获得了相当大的成功。为什么EGSOFT不考虑扩展到其他平台比如XBOX360和PS3？是因为硬件机能限制呢，还是因为控制问题？

Bernd Lehahn：好吧，将这样一款复杂又吃硬件的游戏搬到游戏机平台上可不是一件容易事。我们的游戏一贯并且以后也将坚持完全自由的风格。我不是说移植到主机平台上是不可能的，但难度太大。对于我们这种小团队只能择日再考虑这种事情。

TGB：很多前PC游戏开发者都说盗版对他们来说是个大问题，因此他们抛弃了PC平台。你作为一个开发者，是否感觉盗版对你来说是个大问题呢？

Bernd Lehahn：盗版确实损害了我们的利益，但我想我们找到了一个很好的方法来保护我们的前两个游戏（我们事后也移除了保护系统）。很难判断没有盗版我们可以多卖出多少，但我不相信所有转战其他平台的游戏开发者都是因为这个原因走人的，主机平台的市场很大，不在上面开发游戏才是一件愚蠢的事情。

TGB：X系列，是一个带有一些故事元素的沙盒游戏。EGSOFT有考虑过加入更多电影般的关卡来演绎X宇宙的故事吗？

Bernd Lehahn：是的，事实上我们在每一款游戏中都试图增强游戏的故事性，我们在尝试将沙盒游戏和故事情节整合到一块。X2用一些过场动画来表现情节，X3：重聚有一些和情节相关的小游戏等等。但这些都不完美，因为现有的设计束缚住了我们的手脚。这也是为什么X重生得完全重新设计，而不仅仅是一款X4.

TGB：关于X重生你能给我们透露一些神马新细节吗？

Bernd Lehahn：很多....我正在草拟一系列的帖子，在今后几天发表在我们的论坛上，我会在其中深入的介绍很多游戏的新设计和新特性。比如吧，一个有关无人机的新特性。玩家自己将只能有一艘自己的座驾。但这艘船非常酷，你可以在里面走动，传送以及和舰上的NPC交流等等。但你还是可以拥有和控制其他无人飞机和主力舰。那些无人机可以让你以第一人称的方式驾驶，因此实际上你还是有很多船可以从驾驶舱视角驾驶。唯一的区别是这些是通过一个虚拟实景的系统（从你的座舱上放下来一个目镜然后你的主飞船则被副驾驶员控制）实现的，你也不会因为你控制的无人机被摧毁而挂掉。这个系统给了我们在飞行系统的设计上相当大的自由。

TGB：你打算在你的X宇宙中加入FPS的元素吗？或者是和行星有一些互动之类的？

Bernd Lehahn：不，我们没考虑过那些。把X系列和其他一些游戏比如质量效应结合确实会带来一些不错的东西，但再一次重申：我们只是个小开发组，我们得一步一步地来。但是你可以走出你的飞船并站在一些平台上。和NPC交流对于游戏的控制来说是个相当重要的方式，这也让一些东西变得更容易（更简洁的菜单和更方便的对话）

TGB：X重生会引进一些新的图像技术比如DX11吗？DX11的出现对于开发者们来说是个挑战吗？

Bernd Lehahn：还没决定。如果API就可以满足我们需求的新特性那么X重生会继续在DX9 API上运行。这并不意味我们不会在某些方面应用上DX11，但现在我们不觉得需要这玩意。我们的引擎与众不同，他专为宇宙游戏而生。我们当然希望用上类似虚幻或者孤岛的引擎，但不幸的是我们得完全依靠自己，因为这是获得最好的太空游戏引擎的唯一方式。

TGB：也就是说X重生会有一个全新的图像引擎？

Bernd Lehahn：一个全新的引擎。X2和X3之间已经换过一次引擎了，但X重生的引擎是个还要大的进步，这是个全新的科技平台支持多线程AI（支持多核？），物理特效和其他效果。

TGB：X系列对于模组相当开放和友好，你们游戏内置的脚本编辑器就是个例子。上10年间支持模组开发的游戏数量大大减少。最近大菠萝3宣布不会支持模组让模组团队一阵骚动。是什么让EGSOFT选择如此贴近模组团队？你觉得为什么这么多的开发者不让他们的新游戏支持模组？

Bernd Lehahn：我不好对其他人妄加评论，但对于我们来说这不是什么抉择：对模组的支持让我们的游戏为粉丝们带来更多更帅的新内容。为X重生开发模组将有些困难因为整个引擎都换了个面。但是我们的目标是游戏一推出就尽快放出开发工具和帮助文档。

TGB：最后一个问题...

Bernd Lehahn：phew~

TGB：有考虑为X宇宙加入多人游戏元素吗？

Bernd Lehahn：啊我又得再婆妈一遍我们是个小团队，必须集中力量，但是...我们有这个考虑（泪流满面，撒花~）

TGB：这就是我想问的全部问题了。再一次感谢你抽出时间和我们讨论你的公司和游戏。

0809000

历尽千辛万苦~~终于找到了被屏蔽的词汇....K.............T..............V
只要相连的几个单词包含这几个字母..就没法发表....
强烈建议~~将所有带英文字母的屏蔽词汇还有带*的都换需要审核....不然实在是.....


cock­pit以这个词汇为例...如果说{代替前面那词} view....这样就屏蔽了.....坑啊~~太坑爹了~


貌似修改了测试一下cock­pit view

AlbertNi

这霸气的匹配亮瞎了我的狗眼……

0809000

AlbertNi 发表于 2011-9-19 09:18
这霸气的匹配亮瞎了我的狗眼……

而且我还发现了个问题.....我现在一楼就有这么一段这种相连的词汇（自己用Ctrl + F搜索）...居然没被屏蔽....

roro

浏览器 直接把“E”文翻译好了~ 悲剧的最后才发现 - -

bbgun

如果有坏消息，那就是玩家只有本体座驾一种，但是可以利用超链接技术(模拟实景)控制一系列无人机包括主力舰。（应该不算是坏消息吧？这等于是化身，不必和以前，船被搞爆就game over）

好消息是你的个人形象能够走出飞船，用你的腿走路了，而你的座驾本身是一个完整的结构，此外你还会有船员。另一个好消息是还将继续支持MOD。

文中还说道新引擎，貌似重点是在大量即时处理AI之类的后台运算上，或许意味着更大规模的战斗运算和更复杂的互动环境？

0809000

模拟实景...这样的话真算不得坏消息.......貌似没啥大区别~~希望模拟实景里没有延迟.......
座驾是固定的？这个不给力啊.....
CPU是软肋啊...显卡也不够看了...

bbgun

说到这，我要YY一下，如果新的XR能加入RTS模式，就是提供一个战术地图，比方说第3人称，移动空间坐标（家园那种），小队编组，小队阵形，简单的互动命令，那游戏玩起来就更体贴了。而且XR完全有潜力通过MOD改造成类似家园那样的RTS游戏。

此外如果有人物走动的话，风格可以模仿FL，接任务啊，商店什么的。

Death03

如果座驾是固定的……那他们最好确保这架座驾是个大大大家伙……不过从可以甲板走动和NPC交流来看，也的确不会是一架战机
这个设定的好消息是第一人称爆船不意味着立马读档了，可以操控一些船只做AI做不好的自杀性任务（火力侦察，高危布雷，轰炸敌舰关键部位等等）。而且实际感觉应该和目前的区别不太大……
但是不能真正自由更换自己的座驾这一点……感觉还是不大爽，这里每个人都有自己最爱的座舰吧……哪怕出去踢馆子都是遥控舰队，自己还是要坐在喜欢的船只里感觉才好不是。。

0809000

bbgun 发表于 2011-9-19 09:41
说到这，我要YY一下，如果新的XR能加入RTS模式，就是提供一个战术地图，比方说第3人称，移动空间坐标（家园 ...

也不是不可能啊...这种操作做起来应该难度不是特别大~~不过RTS，估计画面就没得看了....
以前也算是可以的..不过不能下达足够详细的操作~~也不能很方便地控制..但是使用脚本后...这些都不是问题，
不过想要RTS式的战斗演算是不可能的..所以就算简化了操作还是会令很多人失望的..
其实X3真的不适合改造成RTS...因为这种猎奇的为了缓解几百星区战斗演算的简化到极致的战斗规则很难理解为RTS.....


关于人物我倒觉得应该宁缺勿滥....那些东西都是浮云....改变不了神马