SoulboundStudios

Hi Timothy, great question!

The answer has to do with my specific development paradigm, which is to develop features as thin, vertical strips. Or as I like to say, we implement our features as "rope bridges", that is, the minimally functional version of something that allows us to test and validate the integrity of our designs and systems.

As an example, we need to be able to walk around in the world in order to test many of the features in the game. We could have spent time getting the male and female models rigged, animated, and equipment made for them, however we only did the male. The female has been modeled, but she remains unrigged and unanimated. We did this because we didn't need her to test the animation system, combat, etc.

By implementing only what's necessary to test our assumptions, it allows us to tackle the hard problems early in development, rather than at the end. Then, once we know we have working solutions for all the tough problems, we can go back in a stress-free, confident way and flesh out the systems we've already laid down with more content.

So I guess the short answer is, by doing all the hard stuff at the beginning.

Ummm...Brandon actually ended up being out of the office today (I need to edit the original post), but I will definitely pass that along to him.

Brandon is definitely famous in the office for getting shot in the eye with our Nerf darts. He was the first casualty of war and had to see the eye doctor to deal with swelling in his retina. We're a very dangerous place to work apparently, so now he (and several others at SBS) wear protective glasses during our wars. Beyond that Brandon has been responsible for the cloth physics, body dynamics, character movement, and thus has starred at a whole lot of naked character butts in UE4.

Hey Chia! Thanks!

There's two answers to this question. First, I (the CEO), spent the last several years building scalable, distributed, service-oriented architectures for Microsoft. During that time I came up with an architecture which I believe works really well when applied to games. Part of the secret is the use of .NET for our back-end, which allows us to create new processes that do the things we need them to do very quickly. Interaction with web services, databases, etc. is readily accessible and with cloud APIs like AWS and Google Cloud, it's possible to easily scale up the processes managing our world dynamically.

The second answer is, we're leveraging as much middleware as we possibly can. We don't believe in re-inventing the wheel, and where others have made progress and have license-able technology available, we'll be looking to leverage that.

Hey PokerFace! Glad to hear you're excited. So are we! And thanks for your support.

Right now one of the business models that is growing in popularity is the "Buy to Play" mode, similar to GW2 where you buy a game and/or expansion, and then play for free. We really like this system, but the problem is it encourages the developers to hold onto features and new content until the next Expansion, so they have something to charge for.

We use a B2P model where people buy Sparks of Life instead of expansions, specifically so we can detach the rate at which we release new content from the money. So yes, you will continuously get new content from the moment of launch until we end the game. This will come in the form of new story arcs, more and more capable and intelligent NPCs, new technology being introduced in the world such as mechanical things, and things which require a power source.

@Zunjin: Of course! Different blueprints/designs require different materials to construct. Those materials, ie. clay, timber, stone, etc... define the look of the buildings. Similarly, the animals and plants in an area will allow you to construct clothing that's conducive to the environment. Sheep, wolf, fur, cotton, etc. So wherever you go, the characters and buildings should look like they belong there.