Friday, July 11, 2008

WiiNside Exclusive Interview with High Voltage Software


First off I would like to personally thank you guys for your dedication to the Wii platform. Wii owners have been literally begging for this kind of effort on a Wii title from a 3rd party since launch. Glad to see it finally become a reality.

On to the questions...

Will there be the ability to run or crouch in The Conduits single or multiplayer modes?



Rob Nicholls – Not only can you run and crouch, but you can jump as well.



Will story sequences be via FMV or in game ala Metriod Prime 3?



Rob Nicholls – It will be a combination of mission briefing videos and in-game cut scenes and voice-overs.




Will the Conduit support true 16x9 widescreen by the time it is released?



Rob Nicholls – We will indeed support 16x9 widescreen



Will any multiplayer modes support the "all seeing eye"? Oh and how did you come up with the concept?




Rob Nicholls – We are still looking into how much we can use the ASE if there are 16 people running around at the same time. As for the concept, it’s really evolved over time. It started with our ability to project textures onto the environment and once we saw how cool that was, it was like “okay, what else can we do with this?”




Was the idea of the Conduit proposed to any publishers before starting the project? If so.. what were their reactions?



Rob Nicholls – To my knowledge, the concept wasn’t shopped around first. We were fortunate to get full funding independently and just dug in from there.




High Voltage software has experience with the ps2, gamecube, xbox, and now Wii. How would you say the Wii compares to say the Xbox in terms of overall performance? Are developers still restricted from giving actual Wii benchmarks? Polygons per second, glfop numbers, fillrate, etc?


Rob Nicholls – The Wii is very similar in terms of performance, which is why we’ve been able to do everything you’ve seen in our trailers and screenshots. As for benchmarks, we could say but then we’d have to kill you.



LOL ok..As far as online... will you be using your own dedicated servers?... Or NIntendo's? Or Gamespys? Are we going to have to enter friend codes?


Rob Nicholls – [Laughs] No one wants details like that about our multiplayer more than us! Basically, all I can say is that we’re still exploring the possibilities regarding matchmaking, but whatever we use will be as solid as we can make it.



The newest build of the Conduit recently shown looks damn good... but one thing kind of sticks out... some of the environmental textures such as floors and walls look a bit flat. Are these place holder textures like the ones for the alien character models previously?


Rob Nicholls – We are still constantly polishing up our textures, so expect improvements across the board before we ship.


Are you surprised at what you have been able to pull of visually so far?



Rob Nicholls – I posed this one to our Art Lead, Joe Hamell . His answer would be our shaders and the normal mapping. These things have really helped to bring our environments, weapons, and enemies come to life. And we’re still looking for more ways to surprise ourselves [laughs]

Much thanks to Mr. Rob Nicholls for taking the time to answer these questions.

4 comments:

Waltermh said...

what just happened?
good questions, but how did this site take a 1 year vacation then just come back?

is this the first of many posts or a fluke?

Durffen said...

Holy crap Tre, I thought you killed this blog. Then you come back with a High Voltage review?

Hey, if you want, you should come write for thegamerscafe.net

Durffen said...

Sorry, meant to say Interview.

Anonymous said...

Very cool. but is this a real interview? Where did this come from?