We recently did an interview with Flying Lab Software's John Tynes about their upcoming MMORPG Pirates of the Burning Sea. At the time the developers had only announced ship-to-ship combat with player avatars regulated only to getting missions. Today that changed with the announcement of full avatar combat in the game, with players able to fight with swords and other weapons with both NPCs and other players on land and also in ships. There willl be land based missions as well in the game. FiringSquad got a chance to chat with Flying Lab founder Russell Williams about this new aspect to the game which now has an official launch date of June 2007:

FiringSquad: Let's talk about the new avatar combat. Why did the team want to allow players to actually fight man to man in addition to the ship-to-ship battles?

Russell Williams: We’ve always envisioned Pirates of the Burning Sea as a game that combines sea-battles and swashbuckling combat; it’s just been a matter of timing. For most of our development, we’d decided to focus our efforts on getting the ship combat side of things up and running first, before trying to tackle a whole new side of the game. We’ve been telling our fans all this time “avatar combat is coming, but it will be after we launch.” So it’s been in the plan the whole time, we’ve just moved up the timetable.

Why include swashbuckling combat at all? Well, because it’s a core part of the pirate genre! I don’t think we’ve ever met someone who didn’t ask if they could jump onto an enemy ship to duel the opposing captain. Who are we to refuse?

FiringSquad: How hard is it to but in a new kind of combat into Pirates of the Burning Sea?

Russell Williams: The implementation is actually pretty easy because our ship combat is philosophically very similar. Movement, facing, and tactics are important in both systems, and we leveraged quite a bit of the ship combat for the avatars. We actually got the core system up and running in about a month. The hard work was the design. While philosophically similar, the two combat systems are very different, with the avatar combat being much quicker paced – at times even faster than traditional MMO combat. Making that work required new concepts (such as initiative and balance) and making these work as natural parts of the combat, rather than tacked on extras, took a lot of work.

The other side of the work, of course, is in creating animations. Great animations take time, and figuring out how the animations work with the combat system is a challenge all on its own. But our animation team is amazing, and we’re really happy with what they’ve managed to accomplish in just a couple of weeks. All of this is possible because we were lucky enough to add not one, but two great animators to our team, and their work stops me in my tracks every time I see it.

FiringSquad: What sort of influences have gone into creating the avatar combat for the animators?

Russell Williams: The first thing we did was define what swashbuckling meant. Watching movies was a big part of this process. There are a lot of great pirate films, but there are lots of swashbuckling movies outside the pirate genre: classics like Scaramouche, The Three Musketeers and The Princess Bride, TV shows like Sharpe’s Rifles, obscure films like The Duelists and On Guard, and of course, relatively recent blockbusters like Last of the Mohicans and The Mask of Zorro. We also researched 18th century fencing styles, and the weapons of the time.

Based on all of this research, we wrote up a lengthy document defining every feature of swashbuckling, from the moves, to the accessories, to the attitude and the feel. After we had a definition we were happy with, we sat down and created a vision document, outlining a swashbuckling combat system that fulfilled all the most important features of the definition we’d agreed on. After that, things just fell into place.

What’s amazing is how popular the combat system has been. It’s probably because we’ve had so much experience in designing a tactical combat system for the ships, but the first time everyone hears about the combat system, they immediately think of how cool it is, and see some similarity in other combat systems. My two comparisons are to an old Playstation game, Bushido Blade, and the N64 WWE games.

FiringSquad: Will the action be in real time or will it be turn based?

Russell Williams: Real time. Swashbuckling is about movement and timing, not clicking through a bunch of menus.

FiringSquad: Pirates of legend are known for battles with swords, swinging off masts on ships and generally being swashbuckers. How confident is Flying Lab that they will be able to put that kind of action into the combat?

Russell Williams: We wouldn’t be doing it if we didn’t think we could deliver on the expectations. We may not be able to pull off every piratey trick, but we’re confident that we can deliver the heart of the swashbuckling experience.

FiringSquad: Will there be different styles of fighting and different types of swords and other weapons to use?

Russell Williams: Yes and yes. We’re currently planning on including three different styles of combat, covering fencing and swordfighting, unarmed combat, fighting with improvised weapons, and the use of muskets and pistols in ranged combat.

FiringSquad: Will avatar combat have an influence on how a person handles ship-to-ship combat as well?

Russell Williams: Of course! No pirate game is truly complete without the ability to board an enemy ship and fight hand-to-hand alongside your crew! Boarding actions are a fascinating challenge, since they sit at the intersection of both our combat systems. It’s going to be a delicate balance making boarding feel satisfying both as a swashbuckling combat experience and as an integral part of ship-to-ship combat. But it’s also the sort of experience that no other MMO can offer, so we’re incredibly excited about it!

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