Fallen Earth: Beyond GenCon '07

Fresh off GenCon '07 trip, Cynagin graced the boards with the regular QotW feature. Many serious, and not so serious, questions answered and analyzed..especially pizza making techniques:

So we've returned from GenCon alive for the most part, though convention crud has claimed two of the four who went. We all had a great time at the convention and we got a lot of wonderful feedback from folks there about Fallen Earth. Specifically, thanks to DarkTreader and Taelanna for stopping by and dropping off mead for us to enjoy (which we did Sunday evening back at the hotel). It was great to put faces with the names and to be recharged by their enthusiasm. Working a booth at a convention for eight hours a day, being friendly and explaining the game over and over again, is much more fun with folks who already know what you're talking about.

We had our new trailer in the booth running on one of the screens, but after getting some feedback we're working on making some tweaks to it. Some fonts didn't turn out so well, a change to black and white from color ended up being a bit odd, etc. Not big content changes. We should have that up tomorrow.

Now we're looking ahead to Dragon*Con next weekend in Atlanta and the Austin Game Developer's Conference the following week, so things are pretty busy around here. Also in October we're going to the Virtual Worlds conference in San Jose.

And now some Questions of the Week:

1. With it being 4 days after Gen Con, 7 days till Dragon Con, 12 days till the AGC, what is the mood like in the Icarus camp and what is everybody up to at the moment? Giddy excitement and happiness or busy and frantic?

The spirits are high coming out of a successful Gen Con. We're working on perfecting the tech used in conflict towns, working on dynamically determining merchant prices, adding story elements, and doing some neat things with players renting out buildings. All in all it's not that frantic around here, though we are busy. Most of the frantic comes more from organizing booths, making sure machines are available and working, setting up travel arrangements, etc.

2. Are there any plans for a dev blog as we get closer to release?

Yes, it's been set up but we haven't really made much use of it so far. Once things settle down from convention season we'll take a look at what we want to do with it exactly.

3. And do you still read this thread? Cos it's bloody long now! I feel sorry for the poor soul who has to find the question of the week, maybe it's time for a new one! lol No wonder it became pictures of the week! Too much effort int it!

Yes! We read it every week and cut out questions we know we can answer to a file that we pick from when we do each Question of the Week segment. Since we've picked through the early questions pretty well to find the ones we can answer without fear of contradicting ourselves later we tend to pay more attention to the more recent posts these days. We'll get to those older questions we haven't answered yet as we get more things in Fallen Earth nailed down.

4. We got zombies.. So... Will there be "vampires"? Or other wildlife... only seen at night...

No comment, other than to say there is a villain faction called the Cult of the Dead.

5. How much work is being put in to combat animations?

In the near future we will be putting a lot of work into combat animations. We have a lot of animations left to do so it's very high on the priority list currently. Luckily our motion capture setup makes this much easier than it would be otherwise, and we've got some guys from a nearby martial arts school who are going to help us out with some of it.

6. Can I make pizzas out of my enemies?

There will be no support of player cannibalism. That tends to steer us back toward an AO rating and we don't want to do that.

7. More importantly, can we make poisoned pizza?

YOU DARE OFFEND THE PIZZA GODS BY POISONING PIZZA!!!!!!! You, sir, are a vile cur and I bid you good day. I SAID GOOD DAY!!!