Interview #1

[ElvenKind]

Personal Information

Name : Jonathan Maeyens
Birthdate : 28-04-1983
Country : Belgium
City : Near Ghendt[/b]





1. Let\'s start off easy. You finally got the site launched. How much time went into this new site?
A lot! I’m a big supporter of open source software, so it’s no big surprise I chose PHPbb to power our forums. A standard PHPbb doesn’t really cater to our needs, but luckily there’s a ton of modifications freely available to expand its functionality. The only option was to manually select and add the modifications we need. This is where 90% of the time went to.
Overall, I think it took me several months to create a full PHPbb powered community portal (site + forums). Of course I didn’t work on them 7 days a week. They were something I did on the side whenever I had a few hours to spare.
As always a lot of things could go wrong, and they did. But I’ll spare you all those details. Very accidental I stumbled onto a new forum package called MyBB. I really liked what I saw because it incorporates many of the things I had spent so much time on, integrating into PHPbb. Fed up with the slow & tedious progress of PHPbb I tested MyBB for about a week on a free webhost and even though the package needs some fixes & time to mature, I’m really impressed by it.

2. Why change the site when the old one was very good looking and working well?
Why not change it? I like to call myself an amateur webdesigner so naturally I always feel the urge to play around with web designs.
I think from time to time all sites need a facelift. As time passes, many people get tired of seeing the same old design over and over again.
On top of that TTR is no longer a UT MOD, but we\'re trying to have it be a worthy standalone game on totally different engine. Many people don\'t seem to know this yet, but that\'s a very big thing and an important change! To help symbolise that, we need to get rid of the old & bring in the new! The game is off to a fresh start and so should the website & community.

3. Regarding the new forums. Why split the main site and the forums?
Initially I had planned on having a community portal where site & forums intertwined completely. But in the end, most people just don\'t care about all that. Not to speak of the time it would take to create it...
Like most standalone games, I\'ve decided to keep the site small, stylish & informational with a seperate forum for our community.

4. How do the new forums compare to the old ones?
First of all, these forums are much more feature rich and the design is much simpler & straight forward. In fact, the design is so simple I\'m pretty sure that most people don\'t even realise what power these new forums house.
Some useful features I think deserve a special mention:
1. The ability to easily track posts through your User Control Panel.
2. Syndicate certain or all forums (newsfeeds)
3. The ability to help keep the forums an enjoyable place by reporting malicous posts to the moderator team.
4. The community itself is now in charge of awarding the \"good\" community members through a simple reputation system, so we no longer have a misleading ranks system, where people just spammed to get their postcount up and appear as a valued community member.
5. Apart from the members themselves, the threads can be rated as well. This immediately make good threads stand out from the bad.
6. There\'s an advanced PM system that looks a lot like a mail client, allowing for extensive & advance management of PM\'s like never before.
7. The much requested attachments features is now also available.
The list could go on, but most importantly, these boards are much faster then the old ones!

5. Anything special planned for the site in the time to come?
That would be constant tweaking & improving where possible or needed. In the not so distant future the foums will be upgraded to the latest version of the forum software however. This should bring forth some bugfixes, a lot of improvements & maybe even some new features.

6. Ok. Let\'s move on to what everybody is waiting for - the game. When did you decide to move to the Torque Engine?
Although UT2004 is a wonderful engine to work with, it was clear to anyone closely involved with TTR, things weren’t going as they should. Everyone on the team got burned out sooner or later and as time passed some lost all aspiration to mod & called it quits.

UT2004 is oversaturated with projects and with the rivalry between them, finding replacements proved to be nothing less then an extremely hard and close to impossible task.

During a conversation between Reno and myself he mentioned he had purchased a TGE (Torque Game Engine) license for a personal project of his and that’s where the idea of moving to the Torque engine sparked.

7. How did the rest of the dev team react to this?
The decision wasn’t made by one person, and the team in general agreed that if you look at the current UT2004 mod popularity, it seems all the time & effort needed to create a mod goes by almost unnoticed.

Just imagine the scenario of TTR arriving on the UT2004 scene at the end of its lifecycle… We experienced such a situation first hand with TTR on the original Unreal Tournament. It’s definitely a mistake we shouldn’t make again. Looking towards the future, the only sensible option was to port or restart development on another engine.

In collaboration with Reno, I spent weeks considering & researching various engines and Torque came out best. After our extensive research we laid the proposition on the table and everyone pretty much agreed this is the most logical move we could make. I think we had all come to realise at some point it was going to be really hard to create TTR on UT2004.

We haven’t just switched to another engine, it’s a whole new challenge for us, and I guess that’s exactly the spark we needed to light the fuse again.

8. How will this move reflect upon TTR as a game?
Obviously you can’t compare the Unreal and Torque engine. Both have their strong & weak points. Also the production process is different. The Torque engine really shines in it’s outdoor capabilities & networking code. So this means you’ll definitely get to see a lot of outdoor action and player counts possibly up to 128 a server. This will all contribute to a much different gaming experience then what we’re used to from other WW2 games. I don’t want to give much more information or details at this point in time. Maybe in another interview later on.

9. Why did you wait to release the information about the move to Torque?
Both a lot of research and internal organisation was needed first, before we were ready to handle the additional pressure of the public.

10. Has it been hard to keep things under wrap for so long? Did you ever just want to spill your guts about it?
Most definitely! With all the speculation going on there were times I really had the urge to scream it out. I know how frustrating waiting can get. I guess it’s a normal reaction for people loose faith at some point and that’s when they start speculating, criticizing the development team or leaving altogether. Still, it doesn’t reflect on us as a development team in any positive way.

11. How do you feel about finally letting the news out?
I’m glad the word’s finally out. It put a halt to the speculations & rumours that were going around and we’re very pleased to see people sparking some new interest in what we’re trying to do.

12. What do you think about how the community reacted to the dev team being silent for so long?
On the one side we really want to give something back to the people that follow and support us. But on the other, the community sometimes doesn’t understand how much it takes to actually do all this. From experience I’ve learned that in the end it’s a bad practise to reward negative community behaviour like speculating or criticizing with updates or news when it isn’t ready. Some things take time and waiting is unfortunately a part of the dance.

13. What do you think about how the community responded to the news about the move to Torque?
I’m really happy that so many in our community have received it in a positive manner and realise the opportunities we have. To be totally honest, I had expected much less understanding & much more arguments.

14. How has Garage Games reacted to this move?
Initially we didn’t plan on releasing this important information until we were a little further down the road. To our big surprise, when Benjamin Bradley, the Garage Games PR guru caught wind of our undertaking, he was very enthusiastic and mailed us right away offering his help through a front page “call to arms” news item. This article gave us a massive and positive response from the Garage Games community. So many thanks to you Ben and the Garage Games community.

15. Alright. Let\'s move on to even more game specific questions. What is this next generation TTR game going to be named?
”The Third Reich” with some suffix added to it. Since we are creating the battle for H?rtgen and its surroundings, it will likely be something along the lines of “The Third Reich: Hell in H?ertgen” or “The Third Reich: Battle for H?rtgen”. This leaves room for other campaigns.
”The Third Reich” is a powerful and controversial term that immediately indicates that whatever it is, it’s got something to do with the Second World War. I believe a bit of controversy just might give us the spotlight needed to set us apart from other WW2 games.

16. Does that mean that TTR\'s gameplay will be taking place in and around Hurtgen only?
For now our focus is on Huertgen & Huertgen only. A very early idea on the table is to package different campaigns separately as releases, each representing a different campaign of the war. Of course we never know what the bumps & kinks in the road the future will bring, so for now, it’s Huertgen only.

17. Any new features planned that you can reveal?
You wish…!

18. Are there any special features that you personally will fight for to be implemented in the game?
I want this game to be fun and appealing to a broad audience. I’ll always try to have an input that’s based on the “KISS” (Keep It Simple, Stupid) philosophy. Most of my input in various aspects of the game’s development is based on keeping that in mind.

19. Will vehicles still be available from the first release of TTR?
It’s early & hard to be specific about any details this early in development. There are no guarantees, but we definitely plan on having vehicles as soon as possible as they are a crucial element of the game and the Torque engine has great support for them.

20. Any tips/clues on what kind of vehicles we\'ll be seeing?
Your usual most common WW2 vehicles.

21. About weapons. Will all the previously seen weapons be available in the new game?
With all the WW2 games out there, many people already know most of the WW2 arsenal and you’ll definitely find them in “The Third Reich”. The weapon models are very detailed and I hope I can create skins to match the quality of the models.

22. How about quality of the work with an almost entirely new team working on it?
Every member of our team is talented in their own departments. I’m very confident that if we can bring together all our skills we can deliver a very qualitative game. The team atmosphere is very positive and enjoyable which makes for a productive work environment.

23. What will you be doing as a developer now that the site is almost complete?
I’m actually a level designer but I’m also pretty proficient with Photoshop so I’ll most likely be active in the level design and 2D art departments. I’m currently investing my time in skinning weapon models.

24. Finally, do you have anything to say to the community now that the news about the move to the Torque Engine is out?
Thank you to those that have stayed with us through all the rough times. Keep the faith & spread the word.[/font]