What? APB is not just an online version of GTA, but the first MMO player with purely social motivations.
Where? Dundie, Scotland, Realtime Worlds office, John Morland's mailbox.
David Jones, Founder of Companies DMA Design (which later became Rockstar North And released a TOP-Down-Arcade Grand Theft Auto ) And Realtime Worlds , – Real, with a capital letter Legend of the Game Industry. GTA 1-2 includes in his track record, Lemmings , Mobile Forces And Crackdown. In our interview, he calls All Points Bulletin , his new game, "Quintessence of all my game creativity over the past 20 years". APB, about which, in view of the lack of information, we practically did not talk on the pages of "gambling" – this is a criminal city saga in the style of Grand Theft Auto. The only difference is that there are no plot missions, and each passerby on https://sister-site.org/tropicanza/ the street is a living player. That is, if you try to describe the game in terms of usual terms, then yes, this is a MMO explosion, which, according to all laws, was supposed to appear on the online game. But we are the second time (the first was Star Wars: The Old Republic ) make an exception. Why – see. below.
Like the project BioWare , APB-MMO game, the authors of which do not use terms like "Grind", "crafting" and "pumping". Because all this is not here. But there are elements of social simulators like Second Life And a lot, a lot of shooting.
Despite the fact that the APB and Star Wars: The Old Republic are endlessly far from what we are used to understanding by MMOG, these are completely different games, which are based on two opposing gamememans of philosophy. BioWare believes that massive multiplayer entertainment does not have enough complex scenario and thoughtful plot quests. Realtime Worlds, on the contrary, believe that players are content.
Convoy
Quite little is known about the APB gaming mechanics-we know that the game will have the city of San Paro, two warring parties (police and criminals) and mission, which are built around the trigger network. The descent of any of them leads to a conflict between players of various beliefs. If the criminals rob a bank or steal a car, the alarm will work, the matchmaking system will be included, and a team of law enforcement agencies will go to the scene, approximately equal to the team of violators of the law. Another example is a mission to transport gold in an armored truck, behind which the whole city will hunt without any triggers.
For comments, we turned to the chief designer APB, John Morland. He explained that two main online role -playing regimes will be mixed in the game: PVP and PVE. It doesn’t matter whether you are doing a mission or just roll around the city (“our world is open,” Morland reminded), without shootings with other players will not do. This is PVP, online civil war. At the same time, the NPC in the game prescribes mission in the style of “hijacking a car” or “repulse the area from criminals”. “Here is a simple analogy: if in the usual MMORPG you are given a quest like“ collect ten wings from bats ”, then in APB battles will be living players, and not monsters controlled by the computer,” Morland explains the computer.
Realtime Worlds believe that the main thing in online games is the events that are generated by the players themselves, not developers. Best of all, we, as a rule, are remembering not a bright script, but a scene that happened to us personally – this is what Realtime Worlds put on it.
Zombies in the city
APB-a game designed for a wider audience than online shooters or standard MMORPG, and the Realtime Worlds task-to make any player easily finds a niche and classes in San Paro.
Law enforcement agencies are responsible for patrolling the territory, the search for criminals, the protection of thousands of winging around NPC. Criminals hunt civilians and their cars, robbing banks and stores. The release of San Paro will consist of two large districts, Havalynd (Business Center) and WaterFront (tourist and entertainment complex on the shore of the Gulf). Each – with an area of a square kilometer, inside – forty quarters. Those, in turn, are comparable in size to the average card in a multiplayer shooter.
According to Morland, APB will use a completely new development model: instead of the usual release of addons with a gradual expansion of the card, developers, in close cooperation with players, intend to create new city areas with unique game modes. One district will be completely sharpened under street races, the other under parkour, the third and fourth – for the war with a zombie ..
“Our goal is to give players the widest selection of interesting classes in which they will be able to realize their characters and the possibilities laid down in the game. We do not want to simply expand the city area and increase the number of missions ".
David Jones (and the whole company behind him) hates traditional MMORPG models and considers the ideal of online game Counter-STRIKE : APB will introduce tough restrictions on the amount of weapons and objects transferred with them, the number of character parameters will also be limited (one lifar), and the difference between a beginner and advanced player will be in tactical skill, and not in the parameters of weapons and armor.
Dueling union
That's right – there is no pumping of characters in the APB even in the minimum degree in which it was presented in Crackdown. For the execution of missions, they give money that can be spent on the purchase of new weapons or cars and upgrades, but the main achievements in the game are social.
The player is fighting for his actions to earn a reputation in the online community. The best fighters will put statues in public places – the skills of handling a graphic editor in the APB are no less than the possession of firearms. If you do not want to mess with the creation of a noble person Avatar, you can spend game money and lie down to the master on plastic surgery. The APB auction will not be sold, but the clothes and design samples created by other players-tattoos, patterns for cars … You can become a fashionable designer and force the entire population of San Paro to wear jeans or jackets with your label.
Castomization also applies to cars – in APB more than thirty cars, each with numerous modifications (from wheels to stereo -columns) plus patterns and logos. Here it will be, so to say, crafting – in the game the time is valued not spent on the performance of monotonous tasks, but the individual abilities of the participants.
The level of individualization of characters is one of the reasons for the introduction of a limit of 100 players per city (although it will be possible to switch freely between different online versions of San Paro). With a larger population, the engine Unreal 3 I simply could not cope with so many details.
Another reason is the subtleties of matchmaking. There are no expectations of APB and boring lobby, there is an instant selection of candidates for individual and group duels. Moreover, if the game decides that one of the players is quite experienced and well equipped, it can shake it with four newcomers armed with only pistols. If the same gang of criminals successfully moves away from the persecution, then additional groups of police officers who are recruited from random players can connect to it.
Those law enforcement officers who do not respond to urgent challenges will fall, their tasks will begin to go to other groups; Criminals, unlike their law -abiding enemies, can fight not only with the players of another faction, but also with each other. All types of gaming activities are organized in the league – there is even a league for theft of cars waiting for their champions.
“The scale and diversity of the game are not contrary to each other,” Morland says. – Matchmaking – part of any of the types of gameplay we proposed. Both the mission and free activity in the open world are pre -set by designers – all this ultimately boils down to duels between players. In the online game, not only different types of interaction and goals that we achieve, but also the relationship that are built between the players are important.
APB.FM
And indeed, despite the fact that 100 people are a funny figure by the standards World of Warcraft , In online games, it is not only in the number of involved, but also in the credibility of the game world, in the possibilities of customization, thanks to which people perceive each other not as targets, but as a personification of someone's “I”.
Among other things, developers are looking for ways to integrate existing social networks with APB capabilities. So, an agreement has already been concluded with the Last music site.FM. Driving around the city, you can listen to music from a personal mp3 biblioteum-if such a track is in the archive of another player, then he will hear a melody coming from a stranger car. And if there is no similar song, then the APB connects to Last.FM and looking for similar performers. You can also set individual settings – the option “Jamaic psychedelic rock is always heard from my car”, of course, will help your avatar stand out from the crowd.
You can compose and record your own anthem in a music editor, which each of the opponents you killed will have to listen. All communication – through the voice chat ("To print in APB"). In cooperation with the American company Vivox, a system of three -dimensional positioning of the vote has been developed – the teams shouted during the shootout will be naturally inscribed in the city landscap. The character's voice, by the way, is also configured individually.
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According to Scottish developers, the economy, mission and the plot can be left on the conscience of the players themselves. The main thing is to provide them with a “sandbox” and more editors, and then users will figure it out and organize. Now it’s hard to say whether the authors will be able to interest players with an online game without pumping characters (although it may turn out that there will still be a pumping – only hidden) and how effective the basic mechanics will be. But it is clear that the clumsy MMORPG mechanisms are far from the only route for the development of multi -user games, there are other ways … And we really, very much need developers who have enough talent and courage to engage in such projects. Especially similar micro -revolutions are valued in MMOG, where the absence of orcs and magic is considered the height of non -conformism and courage. If Realtime Worlds succeed, then I want to believe that the exceptions similar to the described will appear in this section more than twice a year.
[Break]] Brief History of Time
Officially, Realtime Worlds has released only one game, but this company has people who invented GTA and LEMMINGS
In 1988, David Jones with Russell Kay, Steve Hammond and Mike Dailey founded DMA Design, which became famous for the game Lemmings and the first two series of Grand Theft Auto. In September 1999, DMA was acquired by the publisher Take-Two Interactive and it was included in the composition Rockstar Games. Jones with a dozen colleagues left Rockstar and worked in Rage Games , Scottish department Rage Software. In 2002, during the financial troubles of Rage, Jones bought Rage Games and renamed it into Realtime Worlds, retaining most of the employees.
In 2002, the company number 75 employees (mainly DMA veterans); Today, their number has been off for 200, Realtime Worlds – the largest developer in Scotland. Success came to them after the release of Crackdown in 2007, which led to the influx of new investments.
In April 2009, the former Take-Two top manager Gary Dale became president of Realtime Worlds-David Jones lost his post and moved to the position of creative director. At the moment, in addition to the APB, the company is engaged in the development of another project, the details of which are not disclosed.
Superheroes in the big city
Crackdown is the first game Realtime Worlds, a superhuman parkour-symbol that still has no equal
Although released on the Xbox 360 Crackdown was accepted by the general public for the GTA clone, this game has little in common with the gangster simulators and much more resembles the best interactive comic adaptation. If it were used, it is not to move around the city, but to play titanic bowling (explosions, metal rattle). The main and most pleasant pastime was not shooting criminals (since both the structure of the missions and the mechanics of shootings in the game were very conditional), and the impossible jumping on the roofs of skyscrapers and hunting for the green spheres of dexterity. As the Agility parameter developed, we allowed us to jump higher and further, and by the middle of the game, with every flying from the roof to the roof over the streets of the Pacific City streets, it really took breath.
The online cooperative for two players was also dedicated not so much to street racing and riding the city from the criminal element, as an extreme superheroic amusement. You were strong, like a halk from The Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruption , and free, like Peter Parker in Ultimate Spider-Man. And there were two of you!
If for some reason Crackdown passed you past you in February 2007-feel free to buy it now. In this game there is everything that the authors did not succeed Prototype And Assassin’s Creed.
Game-fasteners
APB place in the global structure of online games
World of Warcraft
Considering how much time it takes to get to the last level in WoW, Jones seriously thought about whether it was possible to make an online game without a grain at all.
Counter-STRIKE
Favorite game of Realtime Worlds: All plot stress in it is created exclusively by the forces of the players themselves.
GTA 4
The goal of the developers is to create a game that is not inferior in the accessibility of GTA, but at the same time to put all the responsibilities of the enemy and friendly AI on the players themselves. Like most design functions.
SPORE
As in the main single -user online game of our time, players in the APB are given the opportunity to stand out from the common gray mass using the built -in editor. While talented users are creating, mediocrity are in line for content.
Second Life
APB is like if the dull utopia of Second Life was overwhelmed by a wave of crime.
Forza Motorsport
The APB will have the same online auctions of customized cars as in the famous car symbolic Turn < 10 Studios for Xbox 360.