Camelot Unchained - Interview @ MMORPG

MMORPG interviews Mark Jacobs about the development of Camelot Unchained, focussing on the crunch mode the team is in now, in order to get ready for beta.

MMORPG: How are the first days of Beta crunch going?

MJ: Great so far. No blood has been spilled, lots of good food has been prepared by Lady J (as I type this, she is headed here with carnitas, tacos, lots of fun side dishes), and the code and art assets continue to fly out of the studio. Hopefully, we’ll be able to lasso those and get them into the game before they fly away and we can’t use them in Beta!

In all seriousness, everything is going fine. Important elements of the game are being added, and it’s nice to see us be able to begin to shift our focus away from just making a great engine to making a great game. It’s been a long time since we’ve been able to really focus most of the team on making game assets, rather than having a real split between engine assets and game assets.

 

MMORPG: Alpha seems to have been the foundational tech testing phase, which a little bird told me CU absolutely excelled at! Beta sounds like it will be the first phase where CU starts to mechanically and physically resemble the game it will become, is the team as excited as the backers are to see that to come to fruition?

MJ: Oh yeah. We want to start putting in more game stuff just as much as our Backers want to see us putting in more game stuff. It really is a two-way street, as most of us are gamers and MMORPGers as well. On a personal level, I’m happy that we are going to have the first bits of crafting in the game in time for Beta 1. I’ve been working on the spreadsheets for quite a while, and it’s nice to be able to see it in the game, even in a very rudimentary form. And again, as most of the team are gamers, and some are hard-core MMORPGers, it’s great to be able to see some of the things we’ve talked about wanting to have in an MMORPG in our own game.

Thanks Couch.