Interview With Zero Point Software, Developers Of Interstellar Marines

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QuoteMy name is Paul Allen, I'm the Producer on Interstellar Marines and have been with ZPS for around a year. I initially started as a Community Manager, and changed to producer a couple of months ago.

QuoteFirst of all we're completely community oriented. We use an open door development policy, which means we are as open as we can be in terms of the information we release. Of course we keep things back from time to time so we can spring a surprise ;) but if you have a question post it up on the forums and you'll get an answer. We have a large number of behind the scenes videos on our youtube channel which show life in game development, and we can be reached through our forums by community members. We are a small team, and we're fighting hard to produce this massive game. The reason we've been able to do that is because our amazing community has supported us wholeheartedly every step of the way.

QuoteAs a game we will have multiplayer, singleplayer and coop elements, all of which will blend together into a realistic sci-fi game which will take the player from their initial selection and training as an Interstellar Marine, through mankind's first contact with a sentient alien species and the levels of action and deceit which surround that. It's an enormous story, which when complete will pull the player in and immerse them in the world we are creating. Right now we are developing the multiplayer part of Interstellar Marines which we're using to build the tech for singleplayer and coop gameplay.

QuoteFrom a Unity perspective we've had relatively few difficulties with our Linux build. There is one mouse stutter bug which a number of players have encountered that is a known Linux issue with Unity. As it's a Unity bug we're first of all finding workarounds while Unity look into it.

QuoteNot all all :) Unity and ourselves have grown side-by-side to where we are now. We did originally use Unreal several years ago, but had to switch engines due to Unreal's high licensing costs at that time. Changing engines cost us around two years in development, so it's not something we would do again lightly.

QuoteAs we are a small team internal knowledge of Linux is limited, so we are working right now on improving that. This also affects technical support, as the regular tech support person (me) is still getting up to speed on Linux, so it can take a longer period to get an answer to a Linux-related question. This will improve over time as we release new updates and learn more. We also had to upgrade part of our middleware to handle Unity, which proved to be an interesting ride! Overall though it has gone reasonably smoothly and we've not encountered a roadblock that we've not been able to overcome. The sheer amount of love we've received from the Linux community has been awesome, and shows that working to support Linux was a good, positive move for us and the community.