Subject: [Nel] What kind of game are you making?

From: [email-masked]
Date: Wed, 08 Nov 2000 20:19:05 +0100

Hello.
I found your project on freshmeat and it looks very cool.
You say that you are commercially funded and that the game data does not
have to be free even though the code is free.
I assume this means you are making a game out of this.
What kind of game are you making?
How long have you been working on NeL?

Best Regards,
David

---

From: Vincent Archer <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 9 Nov 2000 11:16:39 +0100

> I found your project on freshmeat and it looks very cool.

Thanks for the attention. And the questions - I'm lazy, and couldn't
find anything to put in the FAQ yet, so your questions will serve as the
initial set :)

> I assume this means you are making a game out of this.

A good assumption. Yes, we are making a game using that platform, or
we are making that platform for our game, depending on how you look at
it.

> What kind of game are you making?

We are working on, what else, a MMORPG "whose details are yet to be
announced (blah blah)". Due to the marketing plans putting a gun on my
head, I'm not at a liberty to discuss the game content and so on :(

We're trying to be as general as possible, but the emphasis is definitively
on multiplayer RPG.

> How long have you been working on NeL?

It depends on how you look at it. We've been in pre-planning stages since
march 2000; looking at architecture options, development contraints,
potentials pre-existing bits, interesting algorithms, and so on. The
real, definitive coding has started in earnest early september, which
is why NeL is not at the stage where you can see anything right sexy
on your screen now; we're busy filling in the fundations of the library.

With 9 full-time people on the programming staff, however, you can expect
things to move rather fast. We do have deadlines, which include having a
visible game skeleton within the next months, and the game proper going
beta in late 2001, early 2002.

What else can I say. We do expect to provide some form of game data quickly,
because we don't expect everyone to suddendly turn into a professional
3D modeler and artist to fill in, so don't despair yet at lack of game data
(the data will reside in a separate module than the 'code' CVS module
 available right now).

Can't say what's the "demo data" will be, except it won't be our true
game data, will be chilly, and you can expect to meet some non-flying birds
all over the place :)

-- 
Vincent Archer                                         Email: [email-masked]

Nevrax France.                              Off on the yellow brick road we go!