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DGDN » Features » Interviews » Interview with Reverie Entertainment
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» Interview with Reverie Entertainment
- Interview Date Feb-25-2003
- Interviewer: Knight_B
- Views: 3545
Reverie Entertainment - Short Biography
Reverie Entertainment is a game developer consisting of Age of Kings Heaven Forumers. They once decided to crash into the game developer scene. Now they are heavily working on their current project "Dawn of Fantasy", a fantasy based real-time-strategy game.
The Interview
This article is based on talks between me (Knight_B) and the Art Director of Reverie Entertainment, Kristo Vaher. The article will be based around the team itself and it?s history but the focus will be on their upcoming project Dawn of Fantasy. A game that that is uniqe in the fact that it?s being developed online by a team who were spawned in the scenariodesigning forums over at Age of Kings Heaven (www.ageofkings.com). But hey that?s nothing new, I mean mods are being developed by teams who were formed online. But another thing that makes RE unique is that they are not doing a mod, they?re developing a new fresh RTS (real time strategy) game from scratch. They?ve even got their own grapich engine coded by their programming guru John Lockwood. The materials I?ve seen so far are magnificent, if we looks to the fact that entire Reverie Entertainment conscists only of ten staff members and one soundstudio. And some staff members also recieved job offers from already established game companies, that really shows how professional these guys really are.
Well to start with some history and background about the team. As already mentioned the team were spawned from AOK Heavens forums. It all started out with that Micah Hymer started a thread with the name ?Let?s create a game? which turned out to be a succes with over 250 replies in less than two weeks. The volunteers for the project soon moved over to a new forum (later referred to as Red Forum) which were created only for the project. At this point the game was nothing but talks and dreams but soon an attempt to organize were taken by Micah and he realised that there was no way that the game could be developed in Red Forum and announced a split and called for people with the same ideas to join up with him. The people who joined suprisingly enough turned out to be the most talented people from the original bunch of people. That were the start of Reverie Entertainment. During the time from then to now some people has quit and some have joined the ranks of RE. They even had to remake almost all graphics five months ago (It was four when we spoke of this but now is five), because of new standards for the engine with higher polycount.But that meant no real harm to the project other than a delay in the development scheduale. And I thinks that if you looks at the screenshots from Dawn of Fantasy I believe that you?ll be ready to agree with me. Since the project is ?online? I?ve asked how they communicate inside the team and I?ve been told that most communication goes trough email and MSN Messenger. Which actually suprised me a bit since I could and can?t still imagine running a such a large project by mail, MSN and of course their forum. RE also have outside helpers such as Ex-T from the legendary Scn Punk Team. He?s helping them with the development of their very promising scenarioeditor.
Let's move over to their project which as you already know is named Dawn of Fantasy. It will be an RTS game based on the ?regular? fantasy which means towards the Tolkien direction, they are not going towards ?modern? fantasy like Blizzard did with WarCraft 3. Going towards classic fantasy means that you will have humans, elves, dwarfs and lot?s of other races. But that also put a limit for taking out the wheels to far so that you don?t go to far away from the basics in fantasy and turns the game into a mix of everything.
The races are already set. They are: humans, dwarfs, elves, orc?s, dragons, Maakvir, Minotaurs. And from what I can understand from the information I?ve been given, will the layout be as expected with Humans as the race with equal skills in both melee fighting and archery, while the elves of course will be masters of archey, and the orcs will do what orcs do best. Berserk with melee weapons and use a minimum of archery. The dwarfs will be equipped with axes and other yet unknown weapons but the axe will be their main weapon. Moving over to how the races lives and such. with the humans, they will live in villages and citites in houses like usual. The dwarfs aren?t decided yet. The elves will as elvess do, live in the tree?s, but that might change as there is still discussion about that. There is one unique factor about this possibility actually. As far as I understands this means that the elven buildings only can be built in already existing tree?s which creates a number of tactical opportunities such as you can limit the elven?s from expanding by just cutting down the woods. But I think that there will be ways to plant new tree?s and stuffs since else this fact could disturb the balance between the races but it will be intresting to see how the guys over at Reverie Entertainment solves that. The orcs will live in tents, that is understandable since the orc?s are nomads who lives on what they kill and steal. All races will have access to sea units but the primary focus in the game will be on land so from what I can understand boats will only be used for transportation and will only have a minimum role in warfare. Although the Maakvirs will be living underwater meaning that they will have their buildings underwater also, not much are yet known about these mysterious creatures but they seems to be worth waiting for. The dragons will live in the mountains and they will have the most powerful unit in the entire game, the Royal Dragon. And at last the stunning Minotaur beasts, not much are known about this race either except for their looks. If you are unfamiliar with the Greece mythology from which the Minotaurs comes from I can inform you that they looks like a bull. Well it?s an intresting mix of races that Reverie has been able to put together and it will be intresting to see how it all will be put together once the game is released.
There will be one campaign per race and they will all be chapters in a grand story. Nothing is known about the grand story except that obivous fact that it will involve all the mentioned races. Moving over to the scenario editor. I?d like to start that with a quote by Kristo Vaher: Also, what we? will do, is that we will make map editing fully customizable. I mean truly, totally, customizable in any way possible.?
If that is true then we might have a new hit coming up, it might even reach as high as Age of Kings in the designing sky. Also considering Ex-T?s involvment in the development of the editor show?s the ambitions of the guys at RE, since Ex-T know?s what an map editor should be like.
Well that?s basicly all the information I?ve managed to get my hands on. And now it?s the time judge wherever this game is a possible hit or not. As already mentioned Reverie Entertainment is unique. But that does not promise that they will succed with their game. Developing an game online can be hazardous since conflicts that in real life seems like nothing can online lead to teams splitting up or disbanding. But on the positive side is that Reverie seems to have a team of intellectual equals, meaning that there aren?t too many differences in their ideas which looks promising since then there aren?t so much things to eventually argue about if everyone has almost the same opinon. Now we have reached the end of this article and I hope that you have had as fun reading it as I had writing it. And let?s hope that Dawn of Fantasy will be as good as it promises to be!
This article has been written by: [DGDN]Knight_B
It has official support from Reverie Entertainment, which granted the use of their pictures in this article.
Related Links: Reverie Entertainment
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