An interview with ondrej

[hellfish6 7]

Hi guys;

Ondrej agreed to answer a few questions for a mini-interview about BIS and the future of OFP. Here are the questions and replies:

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Here are your answers. Feel free to post in anywhere you like:

Q1. It has been a year and a half since Operation Flashpoint's release. Many thousands of copies have been sold

and many awards have been given. What does Bohemia Interactive plan to do to build on this success?

Where will Operation Flashpoint be in six months? A year?

Q2. Any new projects or new patches on the horizon? What are some things you'd like to improve in the future?

A1, A2: I am sorry, but I will not reveal anything about this yet.

Q3. What new technologies are you excited about incorporating into the current or future versions of Operation Flashpoint?

A3: We plan many innovative technologies in various areas, including large landscape management, tree and forest rendering and several significant gameplay enhacements. If I should name one particular technology we are very excited about, it is pixel and vertex shaders. This technology is very easy to use and extremelly flexible and powerfull at the same time.

Q4. Imagine you could go back in time, is there anything you would you have done differently with Operation Flashpoint?

A4: I do not think we made any single major mistake during OFP development. There are many minor things, like our initial selection of DirectPlay as network API.

If anyone wants to know more about good and bad things that happened during OFP development, I would recommend reading post-mortem article we wrote for Game Developer Magazines (it is also available online on www.gamasutra.com).

Q5. The release of Oxygen/Breathe has been widely regarded as a much needed shot of energy for the OFP community. Almost three months have passed since it's release and we've seen some pretty incredible work come from these independent producers. What are BIS's plans to support third-party developments in the future?

A5: We are really pleased by the work OFP community has done. There are many talented individual and teams working in the community, some of them delivering work that is really production quality. The area we feel needs improving is to help addon creators to make their work accessible to the end users. We plan to release a set of specifications and tools that will help in this.

We will definitelly improve addon management in out future products, especially in following areas:

- we want users to be able to install and uinstall addons on the fly

- we want mission makers to be able to include addons as a part of their mission, creating mission specific addons

- we are considering how to implement automated multiplayer addon management and downloading without stressing multiplayer servers too much

Q6. Third-party modders have done some amazing things with Operation Flashpoint. Is there anything in particular that has suprised you? Any mod project that has struck you as suprisingly well-made or inventive?

A6: I really liked many addons that introduces some never seen before features into OFP. Some of my favourite are rather toys (many addons made by Gimbal or Kegetys), some are big projects (like Chain of Command). There are much more I like and it is impossible to name them all here.

Q7. Are there any plans to incorporate third-party mods or ideas into future versions of OFP?

A7: I have to say when working and designing the game, we never looked much at anyone else's work. We sometimes play other games, we sometimes play with third-party mods, and we are certainly influenced by this, but we want our games to stay distinct.

During the development of Operation Flashpoint we made several decision that caused it to be less likely accepted by general public - and when the game was out, we were pleased by the reaction of some people who told that Flashpoint is "too hard", "too unpolished" or "too weird".

We are listening to what our users say, but we do not always implement what is the most wanted thing. We see game development as a kind of art, and we are convinced game creators need to stay independent of what people like or not. Many publishers and developers talk and think about "wide target audience" as the first and most important rule of the game development. We aim to create great games that we will like and we can be proud of - and we are very glad there are many people enjoying the game we designed and sharing the vision we have.

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Ondrej Spanel, BIS Lead Programmer

[SFG 1]

Nice interview

[PiNs_Da_Smoka 0]

This new technology he speaks of, the pixel and vertex shaders and whatever else they plan on using. Does he mean that these will be implemented into the original OFP, or a future version (OFP2?). And gameplay enhancements....its got me tickled already!

[ralphwiggum 6]

moving to news discussion.

nice interview