Bet On Soldier – Publisher interview
Bet On Soldier – Publisher interview
Jason Harman, Technical Manager, Digital Jesters
Here at EIEF, there’s loads of publishing and coding chaps knocking around, all keen to have a chat about their latest game. We managed to corner Jason Harman, Technical Manager for Digital Jesters and have a chat to him about Bet On Soldier, the soon to be released FPS from Kylotonn.
BoS is in the final polishing stages right now, prior to release, so Jason is being kept very busy with the QA (Quality Assurance) side of things. As Kylotonn are a French developer, there’s plenty of work involved in making sure certain aspects of the game translate properly… For example, the Preview Code we covered a few weeks ago had some problems with the subtitling being in ‘Franglais’… and that is just one of the small wrinkles being ironed out prior to the game’s release.
From the outset, Kylotonn have always aimed BoS to run high-end machines as can be seen from the highly detailed graphics, implementation of the Ageia PhysX engine and the support for AMD 64 bit processors. Seeing the Ageia PhysX engine in action is really something quite impressive and Digital Jesters are keen to point out that Bet On Soldier is the first game on the market to support the upcoming PhysX cards that will be out in a few months time. To get the most benefit from the 64 bit extensions, players should have a copy of Win XP 64 installed as well… so the game really is aiming at high end stuff.
On the physics side of things, Jason was rightly proud of Bet On Soldiers implementation of the Ageia PhysX engine, which has had an impact on the way the game plays. Shoot a barrel in BoS and it’ll spin around spewing flame like a demented rocket, the jet of flame propelling it all over the shop like a dropped bottle of lemonade in Tesco’s car park. If you’re lucky, this will take out a few enemies, or even ricochet into another set of barrels and blow them up in one almighty explosion. Killing off the bad guys in this way earns you that coveted bonus cash for stylish killing and, as we know, cash is what BoS is all about.
But those of us without top end gear needn’t feel disheartened as DJ and Kylotonn are working on making BoS playable by the lower end rigs too.. you just won’t be able to have all the nice graphical touches in there and the physics will have to be ramped down somewhat too.
One of the topics not covered in the preview was the multiplayer side of things, and again, this is a little different from your standard FPS deathmatch affair. Bet On Soldier will have just the one mode of multiplayer, which is a tricky to describe amalgamation of deathmatch, team deathmatch and Bet On Soldier’s single player, money driven game. Confused?
The idea is that up to 32 players will play on each side, working as a team to capture ticket points on the map… a bit like UT2k4’s Domination mode. Each player will earn money for kills, just as in the single player game, but the money also goes into the team ‘pot’. When there’s enough cash in their, any player can then choose to challenge another player in a Bet On Soldier deathmatch, just as you do in the single player game. Both players make their way to the arena and slug it out, the winner walking off with the pot for his team.
The clever bit is in the tactics involved in just making it to the arena. You’ve got to cross the battlefield to get there for a start, so an organised team might defend their BoS player, making sure he gets there with as much armour and ammo as possible. On the other hand, your team might want to rush the enemy, hoping to either stop their soldier making it to the arena, in which case he loses by default, or spank his armour and ammo so he enters the fight in a weakened state.
For the multiplayer there are six different classes of soldier with the engineer probably being one of the most important. He’s the guy who can quickly capture ticket machines, taking a fraction of the time anyone needs to get the job done. He’s also the guy who can repair your armour on the fly, very handy when you’re low on cash and there are no health top-ups in the game.
Right now, Kylotonn and Digital Jesters are in the frantic final days of polishing the game, something Jason was particularly keen to point out. The code he was showing is a far more recent build than the multiplayer code running down in the games on arcade area, and that is more recent than the code we previewed a few weeks ago. Comparing these different versions, it becomes clear that the polishing work on BoS is progressing very rapidly and all those little tweaks and tucks are being made to give a satisfying and polished end result… and we won’t have to wait much longer as Bet On Soldier is due out in September.
For more on Bet On Soldier, check out our Hands on Preview and our first look.
