Y-Project Interview

Following our Y-Project tour at ECTS with Westka Interactive’s Managing Director Christoph Kablelitz, we managed to ask a few further questions about the game.Q: You mentioned the game was 70% complete. How long until you think the game will be released?A: Yes the game is 60-70% complete and we think we’ll need around 6 months to complete. I think it’s really important that it’s really well done and well tweaked so that it’s fair on both sides, not easier playing one side than the other so you really understand what you should do on each side. We are still to work on the cutscenes and story presentation.Q: Are all the cutscenes in game?A: Yes, all the cutscenes are handled in game. The characters are highly detailed with facial animations and expressions and everything will work seamlessly in the engine. You won’t be taken out the game.Q: What do you say about the comparison with Half Life, you must hear that a lot?A: Yes to be honest of course, we all like Half Life a lot, the Deus Ex titles and System Shock. But of course we are trying to introduce things that are really new so that you are really free to switch between the sides and not have fixed points where you have to switch sides, also new interesting tools, weapons and puzzles and of course the interesting environments so people can discover new things. So yeh, we were influenced.Q: Have you decided what you are doing for the multiplayer portion of the game yet?A: Yeh, I think most likely we’ll focus first on the single player to make the game a fantastic experience that’s well done. I think we’ll be shipping the editor with the game and simple multiplayer modes. With this people will be free to create maps and if everything works well we will ship more maps and modes in a future patch. We really are focusing on the single player still though which is partly due to time and budget at the moment.Q: Have you thought about porting to other platforms?Yes, the Xbox would be easy to port to and we also have to think about the PS2 but it’s not quite as advanced and a lot depends on the publisher. At this point the Xbox is most likely along with the PC version.Q: Have you had much interest from publishers so far.A: Yes we have had lots of interest and we’re talking to a few major publishers at the moment but its not an easy time to find publishers, everyone’s being a bit careful at the moment and there’s a lot of people in the team. We also want a publisher that will pay a lot of attention to the title.Q: Have you decided what you plan on doing as far as testing is concerned?A: It will probably do some sort of a test for the multiplayer but it’s a question of time. It’s unlikely we’ll do it for single player but it’s too early to say.Q: How has the Unreal engine helped?A: The Unreal Engine is really great. I think that was one of the best decisions we made, to use the Unreal engine because of its power and we have got continuous updates from Epic and there’s strong communication in the Unreal Developer’s Network, all the guys are putting the stuff together and they are all extremely kind and professional so it’s great to work with them. As with any technology you have to learn to work with it and how to get the best out of it, what to do with your artwork etc.Q: What size is the development team on the Y-Project?A: We have quite a big team of 25 people. Most of them are working on levels, geometry, 3D and programmers on scripting and AI. We have also enhanced the engine with the special bump mapping and a system to implement the story aspects. But yes, the engine is really cool.Many thanks to Christoph for his time and look out for more Y-Project coverage here on Loadedinc in the future.