GDC is this week and we'll be there. Well at least I will be ^_^;

I wanted to share a little of how the game has changed since you folks last saw it. One of the biggest changes is the multiplayer system. We started with a fairly basic system, package extraction. Pick up the item, take it to the extraction point. When we were brain storming among ourselves and our consultants we thought, real military operations are more like a series of objectives ie...

Grab a item

Move to extraction point

Hold the extraction point

Kill or snatch an HVT

You get the idea. Essentially a number of fairly basic games, strung together. So we did that. And to keep it interesting, we made it random.

We blocked out our levels into distinctive sets, each capable of hosting one of three game types within it. We call it intimate scale sandbox. The game is more organic, there's no spawn camping because the game type and locations are constantly changing. Teams earn money for every objective they complete. At the end of a "Contract", you're still playing s special operations contractor working for Exonational Consortiums, you take that money and are able to purchase new weapons, field tech and armor.

The thing here is, we think of weapons, armor and field tech as platforms, not off the shelf products. Think Vagrant Story meets Crysis, and you're on the right path

There's more surprises on the way. We'll talk more about everything at the show. See you then!

Hola Amigoes.

Last night Echelon celebrated being alive for a little more than a year. It's been a hell of a ride. The studio space is still open and we're actually paying our own rents. This in itself was cause for celebration honestly. No one ever talks about how they stay afloat making their dreams come true, do they?

We've been taking care of business on the BPRE side as well as taking on a number of contracting jobs ranging from web development and design to application development. We even have a site show casing some of our partners and work:

http://studio.echelon-software.com

None of this means we stopped work on BPRE. On the contrary, Echelon recently completed rev 2 of our gameplay demo. We've been sending out kits to various publishers, signing NDAs, getting feedback, etc. I'm going to be at GDC hopefully doing some live demos with potential partners and scouting new talent for the team.

Finally, we relaunched the BPRE website to show a little bit more of the back story and various corporations that will have a part in the course of the game. Enjoy.

http://www.blackpowderredearth.com/

Hopefully we'll be finally doing a preview of the social networking side of our title shortly. We wanted to hold off on showing it till we had really beat the hell out of it and polished it up. With any luck we'll show the updated gameplay shortly after that, but who knows honestly. You slave on something day after day with no end in sight and then suddenly you get the magic and you know, it's done. We've had a few of those epiphanies, with hopefully more to come

On a unrelated note 2007 was an interesting year for games wasn't it. I played a bunch of games...but pretty much all of them came out in the last 2 months of 07. Which meant I was blowing through them and going onto the next. Call of Duty 4(PC), Crysis(PC) and Front Mission(DS) were the stand outs for me. I was surprised to find that I loved Halo 3, I had not been a big fan of the previous two titles, but 3 was just the perfect blend of everything Bungie had worked on up until that point IMO.

There's a bunch of stuff I am looking forward to in 08. Most of it delayed from 07 ^_^;

Armored Core For Answer is the 3rd PS3 rtail title I plan on buying, followed probably by MGS4, Killzone 2, The Agency, Little Big Planet and maybe Army of Two (I am very curious about Ao2).If all goes according to plan my PS3 will not just be a blu-ray player like it was in 07 (not that I am complaining about blu-ray because I love the format ^_^)

Anyways, hopefully we'll meet again at GDC!

And we've been keeping very very busy ^_^;

Unfortunately we're not at a point where he have a lot to share because we're still engaging in a process of discovery on many new game design elements.

I will tell you a little about how the team has grown. We now have 2 additional mappers working part time on our title. We're investing a lot of time making "checker board" maps or rather maps that are game play only.

In our 90 day run for glory, we spent a lot of time building foundation and simply getting things up and running to conventional standards. From there and since then we've begun to tune. That goes for player and weapon behaviors, maps (one of our mapping techniques is to start with a real place and then begin to customize and combine, whatever best suits the game) and scoring.

Since then we've prototyped several new game types. I'm bursting to talk about it but we've gotta hold off a little while longer. Sorry ^_^;

We've also radically advanced how weapons and armor are customized. They are quite a bit different than when we started and they are moving in what seems to be a very interesting direction. We started with how real weapon platforms are configured and have worked backwards from there.

The armor system is far less developed but also headed down a similar path.

Another thing we've begun to explore are "smart bombs". Items that players can use that can reshape combat on the ground. We've been brain storming and prototyping a bunch of new ideas. Hopefully you'll see the fruits of our labors soon but probably not as soon as you folks would like. Because we are focused on urban and sprawl type enviros with dismounted forces, we're trying to create things that will have that same effect as when Quaid deploys a clone hologram in the middle of the gun fight at the end of Total Recall. Basically stuff that won't slow down the game but is high tech ^_^

On the art side, Phil and Byungu are working out art maps, creating materials and figuring out how to push the Unreal engine to it's true potential. We're also working with the animation/design company Production IG to provide our concept art. It's been educational and very exciting. Our stuff is moving in a more science fiction direction now, but it still feels "real". That's been very important for us.

We're starting to look like a hybrid of Blade Runner and Iraq. We think that's a good thing

Finally, the social/commercial network stuff (which we intentionally glossed over in the Gamespot series) is also coming together. We're (surprise, surprise) prototyping. We do a lot of that and man do we really miss Max ^o^ He was a force of nature when it came to getting stuff into the game. Then again since he's left I haven't lost a game so every mushroom cloud has a tritium lining ;-)

We'll talk more soon folks

Well the teaser is out. It didn't show off any gameplay but it got the feeling we wanted across ^_^

We got a lot of feedback, some of it good and some of it not so good. Par for the course ;-)

But that's going to be it for a while. The next time you see new BPRE stuff it will be in the form of actual game play footage.

With every day that passes we spend time trying to push the Unreal Engine harder. We're also continually improving the level. As we've said, coming out with the show has been both a blessing and curse. Stuff we wanted to do when we started turned out to be totally unworkable or not fun when implemented and other things turned out to be great.

Then there's RoninSVC, which is a whole other ball of wax ^o^

Someone asked me recently, if you had to sum up what you are shooting for, what would it be?

Easy. A FPS of Syndicate. Different environments, combat and story, but the same fundamental concept. Feel free to touch base with us here or in the forums. Take care,

j

http://www.gamespot.com/pc/action/bpre/index.html