Interview with Jason Hough of  Zono Inc.

Interviewer: Gabe Andreescu
Jason Hough, Designer, Zono Inc.

1) Tell us a little bit about the Metal Fatigue's storyline.

The story centers around three brothers. They are all with the side of Rimtech as the story begins, but as the opening movie shows, they become separated and each end up on one of the opposing sides. Each campaign in the game follows the story of one of the brothers, and tells the same tale from a different point of view. These brothers are played out in the single player game as crews for your combots.

2) What stage of completion are you at right now?

We're just completing alpha.

3) Describe some of the features that the new 3D engine has.

The engine is full 3D, and supports essentially every 3D api in popular use: Glide, D3D, OpenGL, and PowerSGL. We have realtime shadows, dynamic colored lighting, and an extremely advanced animation system.

4) Is there a resource gathering system? What does it consist of?

There are two resources the player must manage. One is Metajoules, which is the form of currency in MF. You can gather Metajoules by mining lava pits, which are found on the surface and underground layers of the battlefield, and you can build Solar Panels in orbit, which collect Metajoules indefinitely but at a slower rate. The second resource is manpower. Manpower is based on the amount of personel needed to run everything you build. You can build CryoFarms to generate more manpower.

5) Can hardcore RTS fans expect a challenge from the enemy AI?

We think so. One of the nice things about the AI is that we have multiple AI commanders, each one with slightly different personalities. This means that the player cannot expect the AI to act in exactly the same way everytime. So, for example, you might play one mission and hardly get attacked, and when you finally go after the enemy you find an extremely well defended base. The next mission you're expecting the same non-aggressive behavior, when suddenly the AI starts coming after you relentlessly. In all there are 10 different AI commanders, and within themselves they have a lot of random factors in the way they make decisions.

Most importantly, the enemy's AI is not purely scripted -- Mark Baldwin of "Panzer General" fame, has created a task based AI system that evaluates the game DURING gameplay and changes its tasks and goals in response to YOUR actions! Essentially this means you can't expect the AI to attack you with the same X number of units, from the same area on the map, at the same time in the level, each time you load up that level -- its going to be more robust, its going to use different strategies against you as you play that level differently yourself!

6) Is an online gaming service being offered with Metal Fatigue? Or another multiplayer service?

I believe Psygnosis is working out a deal with one of the multiplayer services, expect an announcement about that soon.

7) You previously mentioned the combots' ability to reconfigure themselves during the heat of the battle. How does it work?

Combot arms can be amputated by melee weapons during a battle. So, lets say you are fighting an enemy combot, and you're using 2 axe arms in your config. You might lop off, say, his laser sword. At that time you have a few options. You can eject one of your axe arms and pick up the laser sword, or you can have one of hour Hovertruck's come out and pick up the sword and carry it back to base for research and later use. Toros's and Leg's cannot be amputated during a battle, but sometimes get left behind after a combot dies. These cannot be attached in the field, so you must bring them back to base and re-configure the combot at the Assembly Bay. Note that you can immediately use any enemy part you pick up in battle. But, if you want to build that part yourself, you have to research it. Each of the 3 sides has it's own unique set of parts.

8) When is the scheduled shipping date?

The official release date hasn't been set yet, but Psygnosis is saying late Fall.