Posts Tagged ‘news’

Class Intros

A storybord of the smuggler opening scene.

As we are all know, the Star Wars Films had some of the most distinct and well recognised introductions in modern cinema. Each had the classic Star Wars opening crawl, then a camera pan to see some space ships, generally travelling toward the planet. The most popular of these may unsurprisingly be that from the first film released, Episode IV, which showed the Tantive V being chased by an Imperial Star Destroyer.

Not to be ones to break tradition, the developers at SWTOR decided that they would incorporate similar opening crawls into their game in order to give it that real starwarsy feel. Not only did they do this, but it has been completed eight times (for each of the starting professions). This might even see players simply making one character of each class just to get a look at the beginning!

In addition to other recent news on the games other cinematics (which all look tremendous) , we were treated to another round of Q and A with the developers, where they answered a number of questions posed by the players. One big development coming out of this was that unlike many other MMORPGs, NPCs will speak out loud to players, and everyone around them will be able to hear it. How wise this feature is still remains to be seen (lets hope we aren’t deafened when talking to the same character as another player), but if pulled off correctly it should add depth and atmosphere to the game, as players will be able to overhear conversations as they stroll through a spaceport or battle alike.

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The Battle of Alderaan

One of the most recent updates by the developers of SWTOR at Bioware was that bringing to players’ attention the Battle of Alderaan.

This is currently set up as a group mission, for parties of four players at a time, to perform something of a political intervention to dethrone the king of the usually peaceful planet. Although he currently holds the rank of king, it appears that this ex-soldier is little more than a greedy renegade, ready to take advantage of his people to further his own ends.

Players get to assault his castle and will need to fight off various waves of guards and bosses as they make their way to the throne room.

To extend this mission, I will tell you that as players draw close to the throne a large forcefield is erected around the planet’s leader in order to postpone his execution further, and players will have to make their way back through the level to deactivate the power supply for this otherwise impassable barrier.

All in all it looks like Bioware is going in a good direction with these missions. As we have known for some time, SWTOR will not entirely be a MMORPG like others such as World of Warcraft and Star Wars Galaxies. Rather, it will focus more on solo play, and working together in pairs or teams of four. This can be seen from the footage of instances released so far, as almost all seem to be completed by a group of four, encompassing one of each class on their respective sides.

Hopefully as the game nears completion Bioware will release more PvE content aimed at large groups, which would surely be popular with many players. Doing so would not only allow more cooperation, but it would mean you could take along less experienced pals, to train them up in the ways of the game (and force!).

Comparatively speaking, in the SWTOR battle for Alderaan, things go quite well!

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Environment Polish

Just today the Bioware developers over at SWTOR released a long article on the way in which they polish environments, characters and objects in Star Wars The Old Republic.

This includes many aspects, ranging from as simple as making the models, to adjusting their textures, finishes and interior and exterior lighting properties. It is vital that the visual designers have all these factors perfectly in balance, otherwise the Game can be hard on the eyes and run extremely poorly.

The number of objects on screen as well as light sources has a direct effect on Frame rate. In fact, it is pretty much the deciding factor in how many fps (frames per second) a players computer will be able to produce. Therefore, to ensure a game which is as smooth to watch as it is to play, developers must analyze all possible environments to ensure that none will excessively lag, or even crash players computers.

The development team also answered a huge wealth of questions, mainly regarding the planned classes of SWTOR. These rectified many issues players had with the game and told us many new facts about game play:

-Healing spec’d classes will still have considerable damage capability, so will be viable in Solo play.
-Different companions will become available as the game progresses, so players won’t grow too bored of their smelly old Wookiee.
-Companions will be upgradable with different armour, weapons and special attacks.
-Armour can affect the class an combat technique of players, such as with Jedi Knight.

All in all Bioware has taken a positive step forward over the last week and a half to ramp up their customer relations, which has brought them back to the front of the online gaming community.

Environments in SWTOR should be easy on your eyes AND your computer.

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