The creative designer for Victory: The Age of Racing sat down and answered our questions about this upcoming game.
We first saw Victory: The Age of Racing at E3, 2009 and were very impressed with the look of the game. A racing MMO that will be accessable MMO/FPS style through the gamers first platform. Well the game has come a long way since then and we wanted to check up on it and see how close they were to realizing the project. A small studio in Italy called Vae Victis (As proclaimed by the Gaul leader Brennus in 387BC) is the maker of creater of the project and Antonio Moro the crative designer was kind enough to answer some questions about the game for us.
Q: Being the Creative Designer, are you happy with the game so far and is the development cycle at the stage you expected it to be at this point?
A: Yes, I'm really happy with the results until now. We're a really small development team, 15 people, but I think that we're creating something really new, with a lot of new ideas in it, and this is very important: for me as a professional and for the players.
Q: The graphics have always impressed us in screen shots and the sneak peek videos. Can we look forward to them looking that smooth and beautiful in game?
A: Absolutely. The first screenshots were created with all the effects turned on at the maximum detail.. we're now trying to lower as much as possible the hardware requirements to have that beautiful graphics also on computers that are not the top of the line.. we're developing a free to play game that will be hopefully played by millions of players: the hardware requirements are one of the key factor to have a success and we're working hard to produce a game that is scalable and so playable by the vast majority of gamers out there.
Q: Will the game support game controllers of any type like game pads and steering wheels?
A: Actually the game controls are one of the key innovations of Victory: we've developed a new system that lets you control your car just with the keyboard in a way before never seen: you use the usual arrow keys, but you really feel the car and you can finally drive it as you're using a steering wheel, thanks to a series of driving aids that we've developed.
Not only that: you can connect your favorite gamepad (Xbox 360, Logitech, PS2, PS3 gamepads are supported right now) and use it: you will race with "keyboard" users without even notice thanks to our system, we don't want to divide the players by the controller used and we're working really hard right now to balance the game for the different controller types.
Finally you can use your mouse to control the game: we're very proud of what we've developed here, you move left and right your mouse to have an analog steering and left/right click to throttle and brake.. it sounds weird, but I assure you that you can drive a car really well with this method, our testers are loving it! We support steering wheels (G25, etc) natively, but we decided for now to not include the support for steering as I said we want all the players to play together with the three different controls type (keyboard, gamepad, mouse) and we're balancing the game for them.. it's plain impossible to balance the game if you include also the steerign wheel in the possible controls.. we'll maybe include it in the future, creating different legues for the players that absolutely wants to use a steering wheel.
Q: Is Gamers First still your publisher?
A: Yes it is! we're very proud to publish the game with Gamersfirst in North and South America, Europe, Turkey and India.
Q: We know Victory is an MMO but what we do not know is how we will socialize in the game. Is it set up as a persistent world where players congregate in a central virtual hub (like a large room or park or city) or will it be handled like a MMO/FPS where players meet in ready rooms to set up there matches?
A: Right now it will be handled like a MMO/FPS, we will have teams, friends, friend's activities, achievements, etc.. In the future we want to have social persistent hubs (like a racing bar, market, etc.), we will continue to expand the game in the next years and we have lots of new ideas for it.
Well there you have it folks. The game sounds like it is coming along very nicly. The different ways to control the cars also is a great sounding balance of variety. Hopefully soon you will be racing the time away in this great looking project.
