The Conduit - Official Thread

[thas]

I havent been posting because there is nothing to talk and I am usually watching the awesome leafs. You guys are just rambling, even Vash(Sort of) and DD is rambling a bit. Not to mention this post is pointless too.

[DaRkDiAbLo]

Not to be rude, but technically we haven't really been rambling about nothing. From basically where I started "rambling" I mentioned some ideas about the online experince of the game and some ideas and thoughts about how they may do it. No offense thas

By the way, I like DD, haha.

[iOwnage]

Originally Posted by DaRkDiAbLo

Oh well thats good, I think that is a very good amount of players... 8v8. I wonder if they are going to also have it like 4v4v4v4. Thats would be sweet.

Or even 2v2v2v2v2v2v2v2. Team up with one other guy, and go with against everyone else. Stealth and surprise would be a big factor in this type of mode.

[laserbeak4]

yeah or pin the tail on thas

[DaRkDiAbLo]

Well I was reading somewhere that what if it was every man for himself? That would be pretty cool too.

[laserbeak4]

FFA hah? that would be cool. if there were maps with sweet hiding spots.
sniping and gappling withthat plasma gun :P

[vashivihan]

Originally Posted by DaRkDiAbLo

Well I was reading somewhere that what if it was every man for himself? That would be pretty cool too.

that mode would be called deathmatch. it has been in every fps known to man. its not anything new.

[DaRkDiAbLo]

Vash I remember how you were posting those great interviews from wiirincontrol, but I couldn't remember (and was too lazy to go back and look) if you had only posted 2 or if you had gotten all three... so even if you have already here is the Third interview...

IW = Iran White

EN = Eric Nofsinger

IW: I must say, The Conduit looks REALLY good compared to other games on the Wii.

EN: Yeah, for sure, and it’ll only get better. Something that we’re already focusing on is key features in The Conduit II. That is an area where we really want to push some new boundaries; the next time out. We feel like we did a lot of boundary pushing this time and we don’t intend to rest on our laurels. There are a lot of things that we wanted to do, but came about too late in the project to incorporate into this version that we plan on having in the next version.

IW: Alright, sounds awesome. One thing that sounds very intriguing that you’ve stated in the past is that you’ve been working on unique death scenes for each type of enemy as pertains to each type of weapon. How is that coming along?

EN: Actually that’s coming along really nicely. We have a lot of unique animation types for each creature, as well as what just recently came online, which was a lot of visual effects that are tied to each unique weapon. I think that it will make for a nicer payoff when you kill an enemy with a specific type of weapon and they disintegrate in a unique and visceral way. I think players will appreciate that. I mean it just doesn’t seem quite as canned. It’s the type of thing that we’re hoping to pepper throughout the entirety of the game.

Again, that was another suggestion from fans. When we were showing The Conduit to folks at PAX, we got feedback like: “This was really cool, but we wish that the death animations were more spectacular”. We gave it some thought. I mean we didn’t want to do it just to do it, so we tied it to gameplay a bit, and now have it tied specifically to weapons. It’s a meaningful payoff.

IW: Yeah, well having played Medal of Honor: Heroes 2, which is so far the best First Person Shooter on the Wii, I for one am excited about that. I mean on that game, you shoot a guy, they all die the same way, then they disappear. That’s that. From what it sounds like, what you guys are working on is a huge improvement.

EN: What you’re seeing now is pretty spectacular, but what will be in there come November; what we’re shooting for as our next milestone, is that all of that will be included and done. Those are polish items really though. You know, the Devil’s in the details. You really have to spend a lot of time tweaking the work, and we have. And we’re going to continue to spend a lot of time just working on making things perfect.

IW: Also, around the same time that you first mentioned that, it was revealed that during the continued quest to maximize the Wii hardware, the team found an extra 3 MB of RAM to work with. Have you settled on how it will be used? And to what extent will that discovery influence the final product?

EN: It definitely did improve all around. Every single day we go up to the wall of what we have for memory. Then we optimize, and we free up some more space, then we’re back up to the wall again. So that was a big big coup when we freed up that 3 Megs, but it was quickly gobbled up again. It’s pretty easy to gobble up that space with more textures, or other effects. It’s been our approach to use that space wisely. We’ve already allocated it many times over, found a way to maximize further, only to gobble it up all over again. And we’ll do that all the way to ship. We want to have as much cool stuff in the game as we can, and that’s really the only way to do that; to continually iterate.

IW: Speaking of the final product, much ado has been made about these beautiful graphics of The Conduit so far, and the fact that the game is still in a relatively early state. But they look so incredible already for a Wii game. Is it safe to say that the amazing bit that we’ve seen so far is close to what the finished product will look like? Or is there a lot more work left to be done still from a graphics standpoint?

EN: I’d say it’s close, but there’s still… You know, every day I go in and look at what the team’s done and they’ve advanced that much further. We’re always coming up with new techniques to push things, and really, what’s been shown to the press so far has been a relatively small portion of the game. At the Nintendo Media Summit we showed one full level, and on all of the previous times we’ve only shown 1/4 of 1 level. So there’s tons of stuff that folks haven’t seen. And those levels we feel are pretty cool, but there are ALOT of neat locations in the game throughout D.C. and other places. We’re really going through the process of tightening that up.

One of the areas I’ve seen the biggest improvements that I think will make a big impact on people is in the texturing and the implementation of our new detail mapping that allows a player to get up really close to a texture. It looks really nice. We’ve made some really big leaps and bounds with our Dynamic Lighting. So when a player goes under lights and things like that it’s always reactive. We’ve made sure that we’re going in and are carving lots of details into our normal maps to make sure it’s picking up on those lights. And then with visual effects, a lot of stuff that was shown so far is really cool, but a lot of things like the death animations, when they’re all online, I think people will be very impressed with that. It’s eye candy.

But really, what it all comes down to is gameplay. We want to push the game for all it can do graphically, but that means nothing if the game’s not good. A lot of our focus is on making sure the game plays really well. We continue to listen to people. Even at the Nintendo Media Summit, people were saying that things looked kinda dark, so we went through and introduced a new system that allows players to do some gamma correction, move sliders and really make the game look good no matter how your Television set is configured. We’re really trying to listen to what fans are saying, and incorporate every little bit of feedback that we can.

Has there ever been a game developed where nearly every single day, the previous limitations of a console are redefined? In the Martial arts we call such a thing, "Walking the Swords edge between life and death". These guys are giving everything they've got; and the Little Engine that could that we call the Wii is on that edge every day at HVS. Stay with us for Part 4 of this interview, where we learn The heart of the Developer, why they are so determined, and what this game really means to High Voltage Software deep down, as well as gain some insight into the Conspiracy Theory aspect entwined with The Conduit. See ya then!

http://wiirincontrol.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=112 ushing-a-console-to-its-limits-the-new-standard-being-set-by-high-voltage-software&catid=16:team-news&Itemid=107

[thas]

Originally Posted by DaRkDiAbLo

Not to be rude, but technically we haven't really been rambling about nothing. From basically where I started "rambling" I mentioned some ideas about the online experince of the game and some ideas and thoughts about how they may do it. No offense thas

By the way, I like DD, haha.

I fail to see where the offence is in what you said there, you were making a point. Atleast thats the way I see It.

Originally Posted by laserbeak4

yeah or pin the tail on thas

I can be random too....

Didn't see any of the newer images here so:





Is it me or do I see blood, oh juicy blood. Hellow rated M nice to meet you, how are you today?

Death animation video for the conduit right here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jPX92...capture-deaths

[laserbeak4]

lol bacon. that's random alright. Nice shots and one of them is M rated for sure lol.
@DarkDiablo:
Nice post. i don't think we've seen that. Thanks. it'd be sick if they wrote the whole game in ASM!!!

[DaRkDiAbLo]

Ok Woo Hoo those screen shots are great... Boo to that the blood isn't all that realistic, and is that a targeting system with the scope? Why would they have that?

[thas]

Originally Posted by DaRkDiAbLo

Ok Woo Hoo those screen shots are great... Boo to that the blood isn't all that realistic, and is that a targeting system with the scope? Why would they have that?

I think the blood look pretty real. Why wouldn't they have scopes, the game does have snipers.

[DaRkDiAbLo]

No, haha, I didn't ask if they had scopes. I asked if the was a targeting system with the scope. Like... lock-on. Because if it does, thats kind of stupid. It takes the fun out of it.

[Caliko]

Originally Posted by DaRkDiAbLo

I asked if the was a targeting system with the scope. Like... lock-on. Because if it does, thats kind of stupid. It takes the fun out of it.

It would especially with the addition of MotionPlus.

[cooperjs1]

How can you tell if the blood looks realistic from an inanimate picture. Maybe it looks realistic in motion. Such negativity.

[Caliko]

Originally Posted by cooperjs1

How can you tell if the blood looks realistic from an inanimate picture. Maybe it looks realistic in motion. Such negativity.

When people talk about the Wii, they try to be as negative as they can. You just have to ignore it and move on.