We chatted with Bill Tiller, CEO and Creative Director for Autmumn Moon Entertainment about his work on ‘A Vampyre Story’ “A Vampyre Story 2′ and an unannounced upcoming title. We’re very excited because he mentioned that their latest “unannounced” game “should appeal to fans of Lucas Arts adventure games”. Amongst our conversation I used my Jedi mind tricks to sway some screens (found above) our way. Below is our fireside chat* with Mr. Bill Tiller himself.
*No logs, twigs, or firewood were harmed.
So right now we are working on three games, yes three games so that is why I haven’t had time to update our web site. So AVS1 is till in test and we are optimizing the engine code for AVS1, AVS 2 and our third game. We are also doing final pick line recordings to cover anything we missed or to help fix puzzle bugs. But most of our artists are working on our new unannounced adventure game and a Vampyre Story 2. AVS 2 was designed two years a go so that really helped us just jump in to AVS2 without much preparation or preproduction. To accommodate doing three games we expanded from five people in house to eleven in house people. And we about that many out of house now too. We also now have a business manager and president, and he has really helped us grow and get more organized, and soon will get us involved with investors to help expand the business even more. We also have a new background painter, rigger, programmer, writer and two engine programmers. So it has been an incredible last six months and exciting things are starting to happen at an alarmingly rapid pace. We are stressed out but actually having a lot of fun at the same time, which may be hard to believe. But I am excited how the game is turning out and everybody has just worked their butts off trying to get this game out the door. In a way we kind like the Blizzard business plan in that we don’t release a game till it has reached a certain high level of quality, because we want to have the reputation of putting out a few games, but of high quality. So that is why the game has been delayed. It’s there at that level now, and the game pretty much matches what I had envisioned in my head. It isn’t perfect but I think it is going to really entertain people and I think most people will like it, hopefully a lot. I’m really proud of it.
If you don’t know by now, Darth Vader will be an exclusive character in SoulCalibur IV on the Playstation 3. In an interview with the Director, Katsutoshi Sasaki, PlayStation.Blog allowed him to spill his Republic Credits on everything he knows about Darth Vader.
Release Date: July 29th, 2008
System: PS3 (with Vader), Xbox60 (with Yoda)
In working with LucasArts, they said they are eagerly anticipating their characters to be recreated in the Soulcalibur universe. They allowed us to create Vader relatively-freely. The trial and error process to build Vader is definitely a fond memory for all the Soulcalibur IV animators and game designers.
Another challenge that we encountered was how to implement the “Force” from the Star Wars universe. If we were to use the Force in gameplay, we had to make it as an absolute power just like the movie. However, if we didn’t set any limitations on it, the game’s balance would have been completely off. Ultimately, we created a Force gauge to put a limit on using the power. However, we felt players would be frustrated if they couldn’t use the Force on an empty gauge, so we are allowing them to use the Force but it will be counted as a penalty against their character. I think it was good compromise and can be used as a tactic.
The possibility of seeing additional Star Wars characters is possible, with PlayStation Network add-on’s. Sasaki menion’s that LucasArts is “eagerly anticipatiting” their characters to be released, so could there be additional Star Wars playable characters? I say, please add Watto!
Recently, Lucas Arts laid off numerous employees and one of them supposedly spilled the beans to Kotaku about upcoming titles. Here are a few that are in the works according to Kotaku and the disgruntled ex-employee:
- KOTOR 3 (They say it’s an MMO)
- Battlefront 3
- The Official Indiana Jones game
- another LEGO game based on the Indy universe
- a lightsaber game for the wii (but no lightsaber peripherals)
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