Interstellar Marines

[Kvorning]

It has been a couple of years since the project started I believe, but if you're looking for AAA progress in an indie-AAA game, then you're not gonna see "much".

 

"Bozar" is currently live streaming on this week's community event: http://www.twitch.tv/zeropointsoftware

[jtr7]

.............

Edited February 19, 2014 by jtr7

[Kvorning]

http://www.twitch.tv/zeropointsoftware more live streaming, for those not obsessed with dev times. Enjoy!

[HMart]

I don't even remember how many years (is it 5 or 6?) this game spent in development, and I can see it still hasn't progressed much.

Heh. The date of the link I posted is October 26, 2009. I knew of Terri's contribution back then when that article had been posted. If the Wiki page is correct, "Interstellar Marines had a working title of Project IM and development began in May 2005."

 

* shrugs*

 

This game on its current state is not being made from 2005 till now, this is more or less a basic explanation of project IM history , IM that is the first iteration of the IM story and idea started in 2005, by kim alone, and the first tests were made by him on Unreal Engine 2, he then made a CG video showing the IM idea and proposed gameplay, that video was well received by the media and gamers and helped him gain monetary help from a cousin, he was then able to make a team of 20 developers, to turn the CG video on a real time gameplay demo of IM.

Kim asked Epic if they could use the UE3 engine for free to develop the demo for publishers, Epic said yes but made ZPS sign a contract were they could only release images, videos or the demo to the public after paying for the full engine. This was before UDK was freely available mind you, ZPS then talked with many publishers including EA and Microsoft, but all of them demanded the IP to be passed to their hands, Microsoft even said the game should be a Xbox360 exclusive, they talked with more publishers but the 2008 crisis came and that automatically closed all doors to ZPS, no publisher wanted to risk spending money now on an unproven IP from a new also unproven team, that was a great blow to ZPS, from 20 developers they went to 6 or so and a month or two later they were forced to claim bankruptcy. All seemed lost but Kim, the ZPS founder and CO, was able to start the company again, this was a totally fresh start, they could not release the UE3 demo or assets so all work needed to be remade from scratch, kim them add a ideia, they were able to amass a significant community around the game, so he decided to go full indie and forgot the publishers, and perhaps the game development could be made by monetary help from the community (just like kickstarter but before it even existed), this idea was called by ZPS AAAindie, they made a site for the game and then started searching for a engine (UDK was still not available at this time), a ZPS developer had worked with Unity before and so pitched that engine to the team, Kim accepted and work was started on a small Unity 2.0 demo. This to test the engine and to make the developers become familiar with it, that first demo was called "The Vault" a small show room of sorts to present some of the most important IM characters, enemies and vehicles. You can play that demo right now on your browser here , i don't remember right now the exact time when that demo was made but it was made some months before UDK became available so that perhaps makes it early 2009, Unity free version was also not available at that time.

After "The Vault" ZPS started work immediately on a more complicated demo (slice has they called it) this demo was to have shooting and basic weapon modification, but not movement, it came fast enough and was called "The bullseye", you can play it here, i forgot to say, at this time only 4 or 5 guys were working full time on IM, this demo was well received and made ZPS and IM be noticed, it was the first playable "game" from ZPS and it was fun, and also made the Unity browser engine side gain some rep in the process. After bullseye, the community wanted to play a IM version where you could do more then shoot simple bullseye targets, so ZPS started work immediately on a next demo called "Running Man", mind you this demos were made on Unity 2.0 and Unity 3.0 not Unity 4.2 unlike the new version of the multiplayer deadlock game, this demo was more complicated than the past ones so it took slightly more time to make, but when it was finished we could finally see a true glimpse of what IM gameplay could feel like, this was also a success among the community and also outside it, i will remind you again and that is not enough to say it seems, that this was all made with a team of 4 people with only a coder two artists and a musician and of course only with monetary help from the IM small community, and it was becoming very small at this time indeed, the AAAindie idea was not working as expected, people were not risking money understandably on a unknow game and team, so money was running low. They at this time also started work on the first version of the fourth and last demo called "deadlock", they worked on it for some months till the lack of funding forced ZPS to stop and search other avenues for money, they explained that openly to the community said that has they were making that effort and with such a small team, development on the full game and deadlock would suffer, and all was also dependent on the success of the fund raising effort, and it really did, they stopped development for a month or two if i recall correctly, only posting small updates on how things were going in between.

Then they came with bad news, the effort failed and kim add to let the team go and stop development on the game till money was available, they stopped again for some months, then kickstarter became famous at this time, so the community pitched the idea to the team, Kim liked it, and started working on it, of course work on IM was suspended and full effort was directed to make a kickass kickstarter pitch video, and imo they nailed it, but unfortunately the campaign failed, they were not a known team and they also add to fight the stigma of being a "duke nukem forever all over again" kind of game, their big ambitions also made some people frown their eyes and doubt this team could make it.

Thier inexperience on this kind of campaign (has kim said "we are developers not marketers" also made them wrongly use the unfinished Deadlock demo as the principal attraction for their game, even tho it was slightly better looking at that time then the past demos, the gameplay was just was not there.

After kickstarter failed kim and i think hecks were the only developers on the team now, but kim was not on the mood for quitting yet again, so work on steam early access was started, it was imo a success they were able to gain the same amount of money on 48 hours on steam that took them 3 years to gain on their site, and the rest is history this is already a big post.

Edited November 12, 2013 by HMart

[Kvorning]

Live streaming, give aways and upgrade keys for IM "Spearhead"

 

"Community Gathering #13

19 NOV @ 2:00AM - ZPS.BOZAR

94.75.214.12:10068

Us at ZPS just loves these Community Gatherings. It gives us a chance to meet our awesome fans and supporters!

 

As always we will be livestreaming and GiveAway base and Spearhead upgrade keys for Interstellar Marine on: http://www.twitch.tv/zeropointsoftware/

 

Remember that we will do this Gathering again later today!"