Monday, April 7, 2008

X-Power: Interview with N+ creators Metanet!



Dutch website X-Power has had a great interview with Metanet software. After several angry interviews with other websites, the people at Metanet have had a nice, slightly calmer interview here.

Some excerpts:
XP: Can you confirm to us that a patch is in development in order to fix some of the more drastic bugs, like the supposed save game glitch? Other bugs vary from the infinite sound loop of a rocket if you leave the replay too soon to some graphical errors, among other things.

MNS: We are planning on releasing a title update, however we’re not sure what it will include, and since it needs to be approved we can’t say for sure that it will be released.

The save “bug” is unfortunately not a bug; there are hundreds of rules detailing what your game can and can’t do. One of these, unfortunately, is a rule regarding saving – limiting the frequency of saves to once per X minutes (not sure if the actual number is NDA). As a result, we weren’t able to save after each episode, since you can beat an episode in less than X minutes. Instead, progress is saved when you return to the main menu – a bit awkward, and most damaging was the fact that this was a last-minute problem which caught us off guard, and thus we didn’t have time to get any sort of menu or screen to notify players about this!

If our request for a waiver is successful, we’ll be able to fix this “bug”, along with several dozens of other lesser items (like the sound loop).


XP: For that matter, do you remember who was responsible for the infamous 14-4 level? Be prepared to receive hatemail if you reveal to the Internet who imagined it, though!


MNS: In hindsight, the placement of this level was a mistake. We’re notoriously bad at judging the difficulty of levels, especially with those homing rockets – they’re not really a big deal once you learn how to deal with them, however we didn’t give players enough experience to develop this skill beforehand!

XP: I’ve heard that you’ve shown a vague sneak peak of your next game during the Games Developer Conference this year; I think an article of Gamasutra brought this up… Are you willing to reveal whether or not you’ll change genre with this one, and whether you’ll maintain the simplistic approach?

MNS: Hmm… We don’t remember this. Robotology is going to be a 2D physics-based platformer, but the physics will be much more involved (with grappling hooks and articulated/simulated robots walking around), and the graphics will be more complex.


It's a long and great interview. Hopefully Robotology will eventually make it to XBLA (Currently set for PC, other platforms will be dealt with later on) but until then we'll have to wait.

Source: X-Power Interview with Metanat (Part 1 - Part 2 at the bottom)

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