NetDevil’s Scott Brown maps out the progress on Auto Assault
By Michael Lafferty

“Much of our design caters to the casual gamer.”

Road Warriors, Mad Max – movies predicated on vehicular assault of the most deadly sort. Who didn’t watch those movies, thrill to the notion of building up a powerful vehicle and causing carnage across a landscape.  

Apparently someone at NetDevil did. Coming soon (**) to a PC near you, a post-apocalyptic world ruled by combat assault vehicles with fully destructible environments. The game is a massively multiplayer game called, appropriately, Auto Assault. 

The game uses the Havok 2 physics engine to realize a world that looks amazing. The game will cater to both the casual and more hardcore players. But don’t take our word for that …

Scott Brown (Auto Assault's project lead and NetDevil's president) took a pit stop long enough to talk to GameZone.com about the state of the title.

Question: The last time we spoke was way back in August of last year. The game is ramping up for launch later this year, but between now and then we have E3. What changes and/or surprises are we likely to see come May?  

Scott: Since last E3 we have done a complete graphics overhaul, improved the performance of the application and added tons of features and content into the game. We have a number of different features we will be showing off at E3 but I don’t want to spoil the surprise.

Q: Have any gameplay elements changed?

Scott: The controls of the game have changed only slightly since E3 based on game play feedback. At last E3 there were no missions to play; you could drive around the environment and get a sense of combat. Now you can actually play the game and get a truer sense of what playing Auto Assault is all about. We have remained very true to our original concept so the game is still what we imagined it would become.

Q: The success of recent launches also seems to carry with it a warning. The communities are getting bigger and that can mean lag when it comes to flooded servers. How are you preparing to deal with those issues?

Scott: NCsoft is very experienced in launching massively multiplayer titles. Auto Assault will be their fifth North American MMO launch*, so they know what to expect and how to plan for surprises. Their Ops team and network infrastructure are both top-of-the-line so we have confidence that we’ll be able to launch with no major issues. We’re working with the same team who managed to launch two MMOs on the same day last year with no major server downtime.

Q: Will there be any themed servers in place?

Scott: This is still being determined. Since PvP is a part of all users’ game play and since it is consensual we are still unsure of the value of a PvP vs. a PvE server. We are also looking into the demand for RP servers as well. We will be looking for feedback in our testing phase to help us determine which way to go. 

Q: What elements are you working on now to prepare for the beta?

Scott: Network optimization and improved client graphics performance on lower end machines. We also have some test clients that allow us to simulate LOTS of players to help try and find bottlenecks now before we open the floodgates to players – we want to make their first experience as positive as we can. The starting content is pretty close now, so we’re working hard on getting good higher-level content.

Q: Will there be a level cap of any sort to player avatars?  

Scott: Yes; we will determine the right place to cap levels during our beta test.

Q: It seems one of the elements of the current MMOs that has really caught on has been how they are catering to the casual gamer. How will Auto Assault address that?

Scott: Much of our design caters to the casual gamer. You can play most missions in the game solo or in a group. There is no death penalty, you are just returned to your last repair station and play from there. There is little travel time, you can always pull up the world map and go straight to any map you have already unlocked.  The combat system has been developed to make the player feel powerful at all times, winning more than losing, and defeating multiple enemies at a time. Our controls are also very easy to learn and should be familiar to anyone who has played vehicle games on the PC.

Q: With the game getting so much closer to launch, and the hours of the dev team getting longer, what aspects of the game are sustaining you and filling you with excitement?  

Scott: Being able to destroy just about everything you can see is still really fun. Each time we log in to the game to test something we end up playing and just driving around blowing things up, trying to make jumps and seeing how far you can throw infantry bodies we run over. Can’t get enough of it!

* Other titles launched by NCsoft in North America: Lineage, Lineage II, and City of Heroes. Coming this year: Guild Wars, Auto Assault, and City of Villains

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