Rampant Games’ Jay Barnson Guides of Tour of Void War

By Michael Lafferty

“I think we have gameplay in spades, and it is what I am most proud of”

Space has a lot of undiscovered treasures. Most require searching the farthest reaches of the galaxy to find them. Then there are the ones that land in your lap – in a manner of speaking.

Void War is the PC title developed by Rampant Games. It is more than your ordinary space experience, offering an option-rich gaming package.

Features of the game include:

•  Two different multiplayer modes allow you to prove your skill against the best pilots in the Galaxy (or at least on the Internet).

• Single-player modes include a free-for-all practice mode, and a campaign game sends you on an adventure through deadly battlefields against unique opponents.

• Intense 3D battlefields in space - fly and fight through asteroid fields, space stations, and bizarre deep-space anomalies. Whip around hyper-gravity wells and coast past your enemies.

• Six unique spacecraft to master, each with their own strengths, weaknesses, and special abilities.

• Lethal "Boss" enemies will challenge your skills to the utmost in campaign mode.

• Fast action, with easy-to-learn controls.

But what lays at the heart of this title, and what will draw players looking for some space combat action to this game? For those answers GameZone.com turned to Jay Barnson, creator of Void War (lead programmer, owner/founder of Rampant Games).

Question: Void Wars can be played in a variety of ways, single or multiplayer seems only to rub the surface of what players can accomplish. While in single-player mode, gamers can undertake  "free for all" practice mode or enter a campaign mode. Can you briefly explain the story behind the campaign mode? How many levels will there be?

Jay: A mysterious alien starship has entered the civilized space, heading deeper into habited territory. Some claim it's on autopilot, completely unmanned and ripe for capture and exploiting of its technology. The governments are remaining neutral, waiting for the dust to clear from as a bunch of over-armed mercenary fighter pilots get into a shooting battle in a race to stake their claim on the find of the century.

Lance Dawson is a combat veteran who keeps a cooler head and sanely decides to remain uninvolved. His girlfriend, who believes the alien starship may provide her with a clue as to the whereabouts of her long-missing eccentric scientist uncle, has other plans. Wackiness ensues as Lance goes after her, and runs headlong into a cast of amusingly bizarre characters... most of whom are trying to shoot him.

Q: In multiplayer mode, is there a co-op mode, or is this mostly head-to-head competition? How many different multiplayer games or scenarios will there be?

Jay: There is a "Free-for-all" mode and a team-vs.-team game mode. There are over a half-dozen different battlefields in multiplayer play, each with different challenges and things that will make your ship go crunch while you are dodging incoming fire. I guess its a little ironic that "Void War" consists of battlefields that are anything BUT empty voids. There are space stations, dry docks, debris, asteroids, gravitational anomalies that push and pull on your ship, and even a 'space junkyard' to fight in.

Q: How many classes or races are available in the game? Does each class have unique properties and how did you achieve a balance between the races?

Jay: There are six very unique ships to fly. Each ship has different flight characteristics such as acceleration, handling, shield energy, hull strength, blaster positioning and sequence, etc. Each ship also has a unique 'special ability' in combat. For example, the Tempest has a short-duration shielding device that renders it almost invulnerable for a short period of time, but during that time it can't fire.

Balance comes from lots of play testing. I originally thought the Tempest's shield would be purely a defensive weapon. In practice, play testers have discovered that the Tempest's high speed and acceleration coupled with invulnerability turns the entire ship into a weapon in a head-on collision.

Fun stuff!

Q: How does a player level up and what is affected (is it their ship that receive upgrades, or does each player carry new skills from ship to ship) from leveling?

Jay: Players can upgrade their ships temporarily from pick-ups found around the battlefield. But otherwise its an action game purely based on the player's own skill - and that of his teammates in team battles. It's the man, not the machine. In spite of what the testers say when I repeatedly gun them down online...

Q: Can you tell us a bit about the graphics engine used to render this game? What did it allow you to do that will give Void Wars a unique look?

Jay: Void War features a custom graphics engine in Direct 3D. Rather than going ultra-high tech with transparencies and so forth, we were trying for more of a retro, Buck-Rogers-y feel. That's why the instrument panel is metallic and black, and why there's the rocket-ship style particle-system engine effect.

The latter proves important in gameplay as well, as it gives a perceptive opponent a clue as to how a ship is starting to maneuver.

Q: Tell us about the control settings of this game? It is a space-combat game (and yes, that is a simplified classification), so will players be able to employ game pads or joysticks, or is this a keyboard-driven title? If the later, will players be able to rebind keys?

Jay: Void War supports joystick and gamepad. However, making it playable with just a mouse and keyboard was very important to me, as most gamers these days don't have a joystick. I actually DO prefer the precision that the mouse provides when turning and shooting, but there's just something more exciting about playing Void War with a joystick or gamepad.

Yes, most keys will be remappable, so players can get Void War's keys to match their favorite game as far as applicable. I'm fond of the standard WASD-style FPS key bindings, so even though they aren't a perfect match, that's what I use.

Q: What are the environments like in Void Wars? Are they completely fictional or based on existing or known territories?

Jay: Void War battles take place in "Void Points" - areas in space where the boundary between 'real space' and 'void space' becomes so thin that its easy for a ship to slip between them to take a 'shortcut' through Void Space, arriving at a destination Void Point FAR faster than they'd have arrived through other means of transportation. By way of comparison, the same distance traveled in mere hours via Void Space would take days or weeks in Hyperspace (the other popular method of interstellar travel), and would take LIFETIMES using conventional acceleration.

Unfortunately, the value of these "void points" has led to quite a bit of fighting over who has the rights to use and operate these little nodes. Every standard Void Point now has a 'barrier field' that prevents non-compliant ships (such as ships shooting each other) from exiting the immediate area.

These Void Points have gotten pretty busy, with Space Stations, Dry docks, and mining colonies so close to the fighting. The thin boundary between real- and void-space has resulted in the natural creation of certain gravitational anomalies as well, such as grav-wells, which suck unprepared ships into their field.

What it all boils down to is that the environments of Void War are *BUSY*. Fighting in wide-open space is kinda boring. So we give you fields of debris, asteroid fields, and so forth to test your flying ability, and to give you things to dodge and to dodge behind. We also have an arrangements of "pick-up" items in each level, which are a challenge in their own right to acquire while flying and fighting in an area.

Q: What was the biggest challenge you faced in creating this title?

Jay: A lot of it was getting over the learning curve of producing a game as a small, part-time, independent studio. Previously, I've only worked on big-budget titles that had publishing arrangements with major publishers (or I worked within a studio that was part of a major publisher) before the first line of code was written. You simply can't make a massive multimedia

extravaganza with every feature anyone can possibly think of. Instead you have to develop a laser-sharp focus on what are the KEY elements that will make this game fun, exciting, and new. I think some of the big-budget game developers could probably use this kind of exercise, so they won't lose these key elements in all the noise that comes with doing a really massive game.

Q: What aspect of the game are you most proud of?

Jay: When I created the original design for Void War, it was to meet a need. I was sick of waiting for someone else to create this game. I'd joined several friends who were fans of the genre who all had the same grumbles about what was missing.

Now that Void War is almost complete, I find that it's more feature-rich than I originally anticipated. It's grown as a result of several talented people adding their touch to it. But the core elements - the intensive action focus and challenge to a player's flying and shooting skills - remain solid and exactly as I'd hoped they'd be. Gameplay's not something that's easy to advertise in a screenshot or in a bullet-list, but it's the most important thing in a game. Everything else is gravy. And I think we have gameplay in spades, and it is what I am most proud of.

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