Relic Entertainment Interview

The Man at Relic

FiringSquad managed to sneak Alex Garden, founder and CEO of Relic Entertainment, away from his hectic "near gold-master" days to answer a few questions for us and give us the latest scoop.

FiringSquad: Does Homeworld run faster on Direct3D or OpenGL? What cards/chipsets get the best speed with this game?

Alex Garden: The frame-rate / API relationship depends on the card. In D3D, we get better frame-rates with Riva-TNT cards. With Voodoos and Voodoo2s we get better frame rates under Open-GL. We've tested the game with just about every card out there and we get the best speed currently with Dual Voodoo2s.

FS: Will 3D sound be supported? SB Live or A3D?

AG: We've got great 3D sound support in now for 2, 3, 4 speaker systems, plus Dolby surround. We're also supporting EAX (SB Live) and A3D.

FS: What multiplay game types are there? CTF, King of the Hill (section)? etc?

AG: We've got a whole host of multi-player options, but most of them are brand new game types. Two examples are Bounty Hunter and Chess. In BH, each kill scores a bounty in Resource Units (RU's). The size of the bounty a ship gives over depends on how well the player who's ship died is doing. On the surface, it seems really simple, but it totally eliminates the "guy who is winning keeps on winning" syndrome. Very good players end up being the target of almost all the attacks due to the high bounties they give up. The players who are dying, end up doing better because everyone leaves them alone. This play mode allows very good and relatively new players to have challenging games. In Chess, you start out with no resource collectors, and a very large but fixed fleet. This game mode forces players to really use their environments to their advantages to set traps for their opponents and minimize ship loss. Homeworld's interactive resources really come into play in this mode.