Exclusive Sword of the Stars Developer Diary – Part 1

“A space strat game that went over every aspect of the 4X genre and asked the simple question. “Is it fun?” If the answer was “yes” then we kept it. If it was “no” and we couldn’t think of any way to change it, then out it went.”

Space may not be the final frontier when it comes to the video game genre, but a well crafted space game is certainly a thing of joy.

Sword of the Stars, a PC title, is planned for an early summer release and looks to be counted among the well-crafted space games, opening vistas to the imagination while giving players an entertaining and challenging gaming experience.

Features include:

• 4 races - Human, Hiver, Tarkas and Liir - each with technology advantages and disadvantages.

• Each race has a unique mode of transport between star systems, creating very different styles of play, depending on what race you choose to control.

• Slider bar controls and simplified interface to avoid the confusion of other games without sacrificing depth of gameplay.

• Over 150 distinct technologies to research on a dynamic tech tree that changes from game to game. While the core technology of the tree is consistent, certain offshoots are random from game to game. There is no perfect path up the tech tree to memorize and exploit, because the path keeps changing!

• New technology reflected in detailed ship models, weapons and combat effects. Over 40 weapons from six different weapon classes, in various size classes, from point defense, turrets, and massive spinal mounts!

• Players can design and build ships from three size classes - Destroyer, Cruiser, and Dreadnought - by mixing and matching ship sections (command, mission, and engines), then outfitting them with armor and weapons to suit their preference.

• Up to 8 players can play against the AI and one another over LAN or online.

• Choose from a variety of scenario campaigns to play alone or with friends, each adding more color and depth to the Sword of the Stars universe.

But to truly understand the game from the inside, it is better to go inside and what better way to do that than with the developers chronicling what they are bringing to the game, as well as detailing the state of the development.

In this exclusive GameZone feature, we turn to the Kerberos team for an up close look at the making of Sword of the Starts.

Kerberos Productions Development Diary
Sword of the Stars – Entry 1

“To the beginning and back again.” Or “How did we get here from there?”
By Martin E. Cirulis, CEO/Lead Designer, Kerberos Productions

With Sword of the Stars merely weeks from completion and with everyone here bursting with pride, and a little fatigue, with how it has turned out, I suppose it is as good a time as any to look back and talk about the forces and desires that brought Kerberos Productions and Sword of the Stars into existence in the first place.

The core of the Kerberos team came from a happy coincidence that brought a lot of similar-minded and enthusiastic designers, artists and programmers together on a space combat team at a great l’il developer called Barking Dog Studios in Vancouver. It was a two-team company and our team’s first game was Homeworld: Cataclysm, the semi-sequel/side-story game to the now classic Homeworld. At Barking Dog the team cut their eye-teeth on Cataclysm and then moved on to put our own twist on a young-adult space combat game based on Disney’s Treasure Planet. We were just finding our own place in the genre when fate intervened and Barking Dog was bought by Take Two Interactive and turned into Rockstar Vancouver. They were exciting and heady times but after a year or so it became apparent that the types of games we loved best (combat strategy and tactics in space as well as anywhere else) were not going to be a priority with our new employers and so people began to drift away from the team towards other projects.

Then there came a day when a group of us who had departed were sitting around pondering the future and we realized with dawning horror that probably no matter how good of a gig we all picked up at various new jobs, we were VERY unlikely to ever be lucky enough to serve with a bunch that worked this hard and strived so hard for something cool in every project they had gotten. Never mind finding another group and rebuilding such an intricate web of in-jokes. So in the end, what has so far been one of the more monumental decisions of our lives was really a matter of little choice. We wanted to make games, but we didn’t really want to make them with anyone else. The snarling roar of the three-headed dog of game development made itself heard for the first time amongst the clank of beer mugs and Kerberos Productions was born.

So six of us started the core of Kerberos and very soon we had the game we wanted to make. We would take all our experience and insights and apply it to the genre we all played the most on our off hours: a 4X strategy game. But not a graphically conservative, stodgy, spreadsheet 4X game! Instead we would go back to the basics and simply ask, if the genre’s pioneers had today’s computing firepower when they made the classics of space 4X games, what would they have done? And thus Sword of the Stars was born. A space strat game that went over every aspect of the 4X genre and asked the simple question. “Is it fun?” If the answer was “yes” then we kept it. If it was “no” and we couldn’t think of any way to change it, then out it went.

Of course the way to Debtor’s Prison is paved with great game ideas …or something to that effect. We had a great idea, but we also needed a great plan n… a business plan. And one that didn’t careen into foolishness’ like private offices or thousand dollar chairs. In fact the safest thing of all was to avoid having an office as long as possible because we had decided one thing from the start; come what may, hell, high water or publishing contract, SotS would see the light of day. While some of you out there may scoff at that, (and yes people still do “scoff”…mainly Shakespearean actors, but still) saying “well of course EVERYONE plans on publishing their game,” the truth of the matter is that most start ups begin with a ticking clock of how long they can last without financial support and from the start most are not really angling for their game, but for a contract. For us it was always about the game. A nice fat contract that would have let us race $1,000 chairs through private offices would have been great, but if that was not to be, we would still be optimizing every penny of savings to get us as close as possible to the finish line.

And so, for the first year there was just the six of us, working from our home offices, building up the MARS engine from the riskiest parts first so that when we would demo the game for people, there would be no doubt that we could do all that we said we could. This was the toughest part in terms of staying on course with everyone spread out, but it was also the most rewarding as every week at the big meetings in my living room, the game grew and grew and for the first time it was all ours. A feeling both exhilarating and scary. We were getting some interest out in the world, but we were still mostly a stealth project. We also saw that while there was publisher interest, that wasn’t quite the same as publisher comprehension and so another decision was made: That we would only form a partnership with a publisher who “Got” what we were trying to do. All the shelf-space promises in the world won’t keep you from getting lost in the shuffle if your publisher can’t really figure you or your market out.

After a year of hard work on some side projects and shrewd guidance from our CFO, Kerberos was ready to expand a bit and come out of hiding. And so six became twelve, not a rich twelve but a happy twelve (at least, I tell them they are happy and just because the office is back of a shop and we all sweat, the term “sweatshop” is a gross oversimplification). This past year has been where everything came together. Where all the parts, dreams and ideas meshed together into an A-list title made on the leanest of budgets. At Kerberos, everyone works on the game. CEO is just a hat I wear when I am ducking out on Design work.

As the new year approached, we started to get a lot more attention. Our website went up (http://www.kerberos-productions.com), forums started (http://www.kerberos-productions.com/forum/index.php) and our amazing, growing fan base even put up a wiki-site dedicated to SotS (http://sots.rorschach.net). And the best Christmas present of all was in finally finding a publisher who really got what SotS and Kerberos Productions are all about. Lighthouse Interactive shone out of the winter clouds like … well like a Lighthouse (Someone had to say it! Stop groaning!) With this alliance forged, the future of SotS was safe and secure and we could concentrate fully on polishing it to a final, nova-like, shine while Lighthouse prepares to distribute us all over the place. It is great to find a publisher that wants to take a new franchise forward without hesitation and help it grow ever upwards in future expansions and games.

And so that brings us all the way back around to the end of the beginning. Everything here in Vancouver is going at a hectic pace and the Sword of the Stars has grown into something more epic and fun than even I could have imagined those long months ago. With release coming in the second quarter, despite breathing, eating and … ummm … sweating Sword of the Star’s every moment of the past two years, I can honestly say the thing we are looking forward to most (well “most” after sleep … and finding out if we still have significant others and families) is playing this game online with all of you!

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