Strategy Informer: Firstly, could you introduce yourself to our readers?
Fireglow Team: Yes, we are the Fireglow Sudden Strike 3: Arms for Victory Team that has a pretty nice experience in the WWII RTS games development.
Strategy Informer: What are you doing to make sure Sudden Strike 3: Arms for Victory is a game the community wants?
Fireglow Team: The first step is rather easy. We dig the web to find what do the community wish to see in the new generation Sudden Strike games, we analise reports and requests that the gamers send in emails to us and write in our forum, and decide which proposals are really interesting for all players, and which ones are just a passing short-living idea. And second one is quite hard. We thinking and discussing, what gamers would like, what they really would love. Hopefully, we have some success in this.
Strategy Informer: We've heard about some of the features of Sudden Strike 3: Arms for Victory, is there any we don't currently know about that you'd like to inform us about?
Fireglow Team: We are trying to keep the community in touch our best. Of course, it's possible that we omitted something, but if our memory serves us, all features were already announced and described. We would like to stress anyway, that the most important feature we suppose to be the game quality.
Strategy Informer: What can you tell us about the graphical and physics features?
Fireglow Team: Our main principles in graphics that the product should be realistic and spectacular. To achieve this, we implemented the real world inertial effects, which results in very natural movement of vehicles and planes, we use particles systems with realistic gravity model when rendering all the explosions. Of course, reflection and semitransparence effects make marine scapes spectacular either. Free 3D camera allows to look at game objects in details, retaining the opportunity to observe beautiful features of landscapes. On the other hand, we paid much efforts for general look and feel to resemble Sudden Strike 2, which seems to be very important for us.
Strategy Informer: What kind of support to you plan to give once the game is released?
Fireglow Team: There are many kind of supports planned. At first, it's general customer support, customers would be able to ask questions and get answers. Then, of course, it's community support at forum, including fan clubs. Next, there would be patches and additional materials, including fan works. And this list is not complete.
Strategy Informer: Can you tell us about the single-player aspect of the game?
Fireglow Team: We wrote many details earlier, so it's hard to add anything important. We can only repeat the main idea: we do our best to make the game interesting, good-looking, and of a good quality; and considering our experience in the industry, we have some hopes that players would be quite happy with the result. The Sudden Strike 3: Arms for Victory gameplay will be flesh of Sudden Strike 2's flesh, with numerous innovations expected from a modern game.
Strategy Informer: Could you also tell us about the mutli-player aspect of the game?
Fireglow Team: Multiplayer games will be focused around strategic objects. Capture of
port may prevent opponets from getting reinforcements, and many other
gameplay variations like this. From technical point of view, we are
going to use GameSpy's game lobby technologies for matchmaking. There
should be support of clans and ratings.
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Strategy Informer: Is there going to be any changes to the current system requirements for Sudden Strike 3: Arms for Victory?
Fireglow Team: We don't see, why these might be. A good modern gamer's PC would be quite enough.
Strategy Informer: Can you give us an assessment of the health and long-term viability?
Fireglow Team: The game contains enough detailed damage system. That is, there is great differences in effects for a tank if its track or tower is damaged. There are several tricks to keep your units longer - infantry is able to cover in bunkers, or in forests.
Strategy Informer: You've said that we'll see smart AI in Sudden Strike 3: Arms for Victory, can you tell us about the AI?
Fireglow Team: Generally AI is generally conditions-based, with some pattern recognition. There are three distinct levels of AI - unit level, group level, and game level. The script part of AI is based on the LUA language.
Strategy Informer: Could you tell us about the units and campaigns that will be featured in Sudden Strike 3: Arms for Victory?
Fireglow Team: There are 5 campaigns: in Crimea (for Russians), in Normandy (for Americans and for Germans), and in Solomon Islands (for Americans and Japanese). In all the campaigns, naval units and sea ports will play a very important role. They are original and have much functions. Battleships are very serious battle units, and air carriers, if used smartly, are able to solve the air strike problems. Transport ships are very helpful in tranferring resources, but they are useless if port is lost. So it's necessary to be able to control these units to win.
Strategy Informer: What has been the hardest part of development so far?
Fireglow Team: The workflow planning is the most difficult for us. All other parts are somewhat creative, and planning is just a boring routine work that kills creativity. As for the Sudden Strike Next7 engine parts, one of the most resource-eating part was the 3D landscape, with which other objects had to interact. Another touch task was to create an effective renderer. We spent much time to complete experiments and development of path finding, but finally we found and interesting and efficient decision.
Strategy Informer: How well is development going? What have you guys got left to do?
Fireglow Team: The development is in its final stage now. We are finalizing multiplayer and user interface, we are testing and balancing the game, and then we are going to localise it.
Strategy Informer: As a gamer, what's your favourite part of Sudden Strike 3: Arms for Victory, what makes you proud to have helped create it and why is it any better then the current Strategy War games out there?
Fireglow Team: Since the original Sudden Strike, we were not focused on creation of bases, but we elaborated tactics instead. And this time we made even more efforts to make the tactics really interesting. There are many games that copy Sudden Strike's look and feel, and we think, the same situation will be with Sudden Strike 3: Arms for Victory. The most interestion feature for is large territories, and that events are non-predictable. The situation is being constatly changed as a result of any player's action, and due to the territory size, if a player lost some battle in one certain place, he has hope to compensate it somewhere else; so, the player has much space for maneuvers.
Strategy Informer: Do you think it's likely we'll see some changes to the current release date?
Fireglow Team: As always in the game industry - we hope not, but there might be some
shifts due to the marketing, production and distribution issues. The current set release date is Q4, 2006
Strategy Informer: Is there anything you'd like to say to the the Sudden Strike 3: Arms for Victory community before we wrap this up?
Fireglow Team: We are grateful for your interest in the game, and hopefully we will be able to provide more materials to you and to the community enough soon.
