We recently had the opportunity to sit down and interview independent developer Derek Smart, whose veteran works date back 14 years, to the somewhat controversial Battlecruiser 3000AD. We spoke to him about his upcoming MMO Line of Defense. We’re taking a bit of a different approach here, as this interview is far more technical than ones we’ve performed in the past. Let us know what you think, and if you would like to continue to see more content down a technical avenue.
AO: I’ve noticed that you guys are using the Havok Vision engine. What sparked that decision? Has your previous work utilized the same engine?
Smart: We have always developed our own game technology in-house; only licensing middleware such as audio, networking and other miscellaneous tools. For Line Of Defense we started doing the same thing when we started the project.
The original plan was to build on the in-house custom game engine that powered my last two games (All Aspect Warfare & Angle Of Attack) released in 2009.
After careful evaluation of that plan, it was determined that it would take too much effort to bring that engine up to speed and have it targeted for a game due out in the 2012 time frame.
So, we started developing a brand new game engine from scratch. After several months of doing that for the game’s prototype, I determined that it would take too much effort to complete, remain competitive – and release a game within a reasonable timeframe. Things weren’t progressing fast enough and so I scrapped over six months of work and we started from scratch on the engine development.
