/ Previews / Shooters / Experience / Page 5
	I'd like to take a minute to thank the friendly conspirators at The Whole Experience.

Jeff Connelly was a great help in answering all of my questions about the game, and I owe the informative and interesting parts of this preview to both him and the entire Whole Experience team - you guys rock! The interview responses from Jeff are really amusing and informative, so it'd be a waste not to read the full text below!

1) What kind of system do you expect Experience to require for running the game fairly well? (Fairly well being defined as around 30 fps at 640x480x16)

Experience should run reasonably well on a PII/266 with some form of hardware acceleration (TNT2 or Voodoo3).

2) In an older interview you expressed your desire to port the game to the Dreamcast, but mentioned its hardware limitations. Now that it is finally out and the specs have changed, do you foresee a PC comparable version eventually being released on the Dreamcast?

The chances of Experience coming out on the Dreamcast are looking less and less likely. Its a cool machine and we have been playing games on it down at the office but right now we are putting all of our energy into the PC version and have little time left over to develop for the Dreamcast. The X-box sure is looking appealing.

3) Are the Bio-Beasts in cohorts with the evil monkeys?

Why yes, yes they are. I mean no. Who are the monkeys again, do you mean that old TV show?

4) In all, how many different weapons are planned for Experience?

Experience will have at least 24 unique weapons to choose from. Weapons are designed to work in conjunction with other weapons and devices to form cool combinations. Devices play a huge role in Experience. They can be used to set traps, track opponents, set up defensive armaments or further modify certain weapons and devices. Really I can't talk about the weapons in Experience without talking about the devices that work with them.

5) Can you give us an idea just how interactive the environment will be? (i.e. can wood be burned or chopped, can you dig dirt, etc.)

We are working on having the environment be as interactive as possible without destroying gameplay. Its not very much fun to hunt other people in the woods when all the trees are burnt down. We are still working at creating the balance between realism and fun.

6) It's a neat idea that you have to actually practice a skill to become proficient at it, but is there going to be enough of a balance to keep people from getting bored with practice, and conversely, not becoming too powerful?

Characters do not become more proficient with weapons and devices at the character level - i.e. they do not gain experience or go up in level. What we are saying is it's up to the player to become better by playing and experimenting. If you have ever played the card game Magic the Gathering you know that you as a player never become more powerful although your experience does help in creating decks that have the potential to pull off very powerful combos. A true master must have a deep understanding of each weapon and device in Experience. A combination of strategy and skill is required to attain Master Status.

7) If the world of Dagoth Moor is a virtual one, can characters physically (in their real world) take any damage? What happens when they are virtually slain?

The creatures of Dagoth created the virtual world of Dagoth Moor. Each "energy sphere" (any living creature to enter Dagoth Moor is represented as an "energy sphere") enters Dagoth Moor by using a mass transfer device which is located in each of the energy spheres' Tower of Creation. The Tower of Creation is where all characters creation takes place - i.e. in your energy sphere form you can choose characters, weapons and devices and you can choose different combat simulations and training exercises to test your new character setup. When a character is killed in Dagoth Moor the energy sphere is kicked back to the Tower of Creation on Dagoth. So to answer you question, no, energy spheres never take damage in the "real world" Dagoth. Damage is only taken by the virtual characters in Dagoth Moor.

8) Hey, can we proclaim Experience is twice as virtually realistic as other games because it's virtual for us and then virtual for the characters we control?

Basically Dagoth Moor is another dimension...think about that for awhile. A world inside a world inside a world.

9) How frequently will combat ensue? Are there generally a lot of enemies in each battle?

This depends on some of the different gameplay modes and characters created but as a rule we are focusing creating an atmosphere where poking your head out from behind a tree or making a rustle in the bushes is scary and could possibly give your position away. This is by no means another frag fest, thought and preparation are keys to success. It's like hunting, there are often pauses between confrontation. During this time players are tracking naturally (foot prints) or using various tracking devices (heat sensing), setting up traps/tricks (remote explosives, spying cameras) and various defenses (hard holograms).

10) If possible, can you run us through a sample enemy encounter and battle?

The setting is a heavily wooded forest with strange living plant life everywhere. Giant boulders the size of quagmire huts are strewn about the dirt forest floor with ample places to hide and setup spying and teleportation devices. There are many ambient sounds on this chunk of planet so the sounds I make during movement are not too much of a giveaway. My strategy going into this battle is to keep moving and setup a surveillance system throughout as much of the area as I can. By carefully placing spying cameras and teleportation devices next to each other I can monitor my opponents as they move through the woods and quickly teleport in to strike. One of the reasons I must keep moving is to gather more energy to power the process of downloading these devices. Downloading is not cheap but this particular chunk of planet is very energy abundant. As I am making my way through the landscape, laying trip wires between two trees where I know many enemies gather food and energy, a heard of 4 quagogs hops across my path. I kill two of them, gather the flesh chunks and save them for later in case I need to heal myself if things don't go according to plan. Just then I notice some movement in one of my surveillance screens and see that it is a heavily armored Mukoden (very tough species) with some very big guns, some sort of head mounted device that looks like a heat sensor. The time is right, I pull out my blow gun with explosive tipped darts and plan to teleport in, hit him hard and teleport out. If all goes right I should be puffing on some quagmire herb by sundown...

11) What sorts of tools will ship with Experience to allow people to create their own scenarios? (or talk about what tools are necessary to modify the game, if they are not all included. I realize you probably aren't shipping 3dsmax with the game…)

We will include the full version of the scene editor. This allows people to bring in geometry from different modeling/animation programs, place lights, sounds, adjust detail textures, cubic environment maps, AI characters, etc... We will also include exporters for Alias, Maya, 3ds Max and possibly SoftImage. All formats will be open so programmers can create their own converters if they need them.

12) Exactly how "alien" will the architecture and environments be compared to our Earthly structures and landscapes?

The structures are all pretty unique. It's a lot of fun to design some weird mud hut with branches growing out the top or creepy, scummy cyborg facility with demented, half working bio-mechanical experiments lurking about.

13) I think it'd be neat if a monkey would jump on your back during the game so you could say, "Hey! There's a monkey on my back!" Will that ever happen? If you haven't thought of it yet, trust me, it spells "E-A-S-T-E-R E-G-G".

You're SO right...after I read your question its all that I have been able to think about. -- my partners are starting to get kind of pissed at me lately...during design sessions I'll be like "hey what do think about having a Monkey riding around on you back" or "I still think the Monkey idea would be cool".
Its time to break free from the genre trap and create a whole new one. :)

14) How can you tell when the alien life forms are damaged? Do they bleed, bruise, or scar in the same manner humans do?

They bleed, some whimper and cry and all and you feel real bad once you've killed them. No, seriously, we are still trying to decide if we want localized damage or not. This decision will play a big roll in the final animation and damage sequences. Blood? Definitely!

Thanks again to the Whole Experience team for making this preview possible. Visit their site and express your love for each and every team member. They deserve it.

The Whole Experience