UnrealSP.orgRECIPROCITY: Joining me today on the topic of the upcoming SP Firestorm is it's creator, Turboman. Give me a little bit of background info on Firestorm from the developing side.
TURBOMAN: Well, in short, Firestorm is a singleplayer mod that follows the events of p849 after RtNP. It is designed to run in both Unreal as UT.
Ah. Can you offer us a little bit of intro to the events?
Well, to summarize it a bit short, the player fails to escape the planet once again and is captured by the UMS. From here things pretty much change as the player discovers the UMS' plans and becomes the most wanted person in the universe. Other then that the player is also confronted with a mysterious nali who seems to be interested in the player's capabilities. This results in the player returning to napali, both to evade the UMS forces as to search for the nali.
And as the screenshots reveal, the UMS are hot on Prisoner's tail even on Na Pali.
That's correct, that's correct. The UMS is very concerned that the prisoner will find a way to leave the planet with the classified information, although the prisoner is not the only reason why they are on Na Pali, though i'm not going to reveal that :P
;) Gotcha. Tell me about the some of the new features this SP pack is going to bring to the table that you're particularly proud of.
Of the new pawns and items the player will encounter, enemies like the dragon or weapons like the firewind are my favorites.
What, pray tell, is a Firewind, good sir?
A flamethrower-ish weapon which you can roast enemies with. It also has some other functions that you'll have to discover yourself :P
A dragon? A flamethrower? Am I mistaken or did I happen to see some WIP pics of enemies alight? Firestorm certainly lives up to it's name.
That's correct. Enemies can burn and light up like a Christmas tree which is why the name 'Firestorm' is so cool.
Agreed. Are you bringing anything new to the Nali this time around since they're playing such a great role?
Definitely. The player will cross completely original nali temples and settlements that will give a different insight on our beloved race.
Awesome. I understand this one's been in development for a fairly long time. How has developing this been?
Well it has been in development for a long time but i haven't really worked on it actively. Over the time it also slowly evolved from a simple 3 map mappack into a huge campaign with all kinds of new features.
Purely your own work?
All the level design and art is my work. Although most of it would have been impossible without the help of Asgard and Zora with their coding skills.
Yeah, the code of an SP can really make or break it. I understand you were trying to keep the feel of the original Unreal with this one. How do you balance that with incorporating new elements into the design?
well that was a difficult one for me. What I try is to keep gameplay and style as close to the original game as possible by making sure the new stuff fits well into unreal and they're only there as an extra instead of playing a really important role in the game.
All in all, how do you feel about the pack? Also, with all this reaching back to good old days of Unreal, one would feel that our technology is showing age. Do you feel it will fall to a new age of 'prettier' and more complex games? If not, why?
well that was another concern of mine. The graphics are dated and a lot of games try to achieve prettier graphics these days; I'm actually very disappointed in current day games because most of them lack any innovation other then graphical innovation despite that the technology can offer alot more. Which is why I hope to make Firestorm stand out in other aspects then the graphics department.
The reason I still play Unreal is because the brilliant gameplay that just makes it a timeless game instead of stuff that you simply play once and then throw away ;)
So I believe Firestorm won't fall against current day games with better tech since there hasn't really been any game up to date that matches the complexity of Unreal.
:D Do you have any last sentiments to throw in? When should we start raiding Unrealspvault.org for the campaign?
Well, everyone who enjoyed the original unreal and felt disappointment that the game was discontinued after the events of RtNP will definitely have to try this to relive the old unreal again :D
You can expect a release very soon.
Alright, thanks for the interview.
You're welcome :D