PREVIEW THE 10TH PLANET - PC GAMER 1997

 Bethesda Softworks has been working on The 10th Planet, a space combat strategy game, for some time now. Originally being developed in partnership with Centropolis, the creators of the motion picture Independence Day, the game has been featured several times in past issues of PC Gamer (November '95 and September '96). But Centropolis is no longer working on the game, as their film commitments having become too great, so Bethesda is now going it alone. The team has finally reached the home stretch, and they will definitely get the game out before Christmas. We spoke with Bruce Nesmith, producer and designer of The 10th Planet, about the project and some of the features that Bethesda hopes will make this a standout game.

1🚀 PC Gamer: We have heard quite a lot about The 10th Planet, and it has become a perennial favorite at E3. But for those who may not have heard of it, just what kind of game is it?

Bruce Nesmith: The 10th Planet is a 3D action/strategy game of spaceship combat set in our own solar system. You must defend the solar system from the alien invaders.

2 🚀PC Gamer: Set up the scenario of The 10th Planet. What is the storyline?

Nesmith: The story of The 10th Planet is an alien invasion of our solar system. Without warning and without provocation, a research base on Pluto is annihilated by an alien war fleet. You are the only survivor, escaping in a tiny one-man fighter. As the game progresses, the aliens spread throughout the solar system, attacking human bases and stations, and setting up their own. The player must fight to save Earth, while also trying to discover the alien's mysterious motive. I won't give away the ending, but as you can tell from the game's title, the player discovers that the aliens come from an undiscovered 10th planet in our solar system.

3 🚀PC Gamer: What makes this game standout from the rest of the pack?

Nesmith: The 10th Planet has three major elements, each of which make it stand out from the competition. The bread and butter portion is the actual 3D spaceship combat. Our major advantage here is that we can build far more detailed environments than the other guys. We will have huge space stations to fly through that include moving parts, and 3D asteroids circling around. We can have dozens of ships in combat simultaneously. The game will include the ground terrains of all the moons and planets in the solar system. What all this comes down to is a far richer playing area for dogfighting.

The second element is ship construction. Most games allow the player to change weapons or a couple of other items on their ship. The 10th Planet has over 100 pieces of equipment that can be loaded onto a ship, including engines, thrusters, shield generators, weapons, computers and more. We believe that gamers really like tinkering with their ships. There is a certain amount of bragging rights associated with building the best ship.

The third and most important element of the game is the strategy portion. Typically space combat games have been mission based. The player runs the missions in the order the designer made them, which is the traditional adventure game setup. The better games allow for some branching. Basically, the player is playing out the story written by the designer. Replay value is nil, since once the player has played the story, he is unlikely to do it again. In contrast, strategy games have very high replay value. Where the player goes and what he does are completely up to him, based on what he thinks is the best strategy.

4 🚀PC Gamer: What are some of the technical achievements that you are pushing for?

Nesmith: We will have particle explosions, adaptive level of detail, 3D accelerator card support, phong lighting, and high resolution graphics, to name a few. Most of these features are more technical than most gamers need to understand. The particle explosions will show individual pieces of the ship flying off into space when it explodes. We currently have the game running smoothly in 800x600 resolution and hope to be able to include 1024x768 resolution. There are other enhancements which we will announce in the future.

5 🚀PC Gamer: How does the starfighting combat compare to X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter?

Nesmith: They chose to use a different model of ship combat. In The 10th Planet, we wanted a more drawn out dogfighting model. Our ships don't blow up with just a few laser hits. In order to take maximum advantage of our ship building system, a wounded ship needs to still have a chance to win the engagement. You'll actually get to see enemy ships flying around with one wing blown off. Our combat model is more detailed, and I think will be more satisfying to the gamer.

6 🚀PC Gamer: Why is Centropolis no longer working on the game with you?

Nesmith: Making movies is really hard work. My hat is off to the guys that can do it well. Dean Devlin and Roland Emerich have shown that with Independence Day and their other films. Unfortunately it also made them one of the most in-demand pairs in Hollywood. They just signed on to do a Godzilla movie. Dean reluctantly came to the conclusion that he just didn't have the time to do justice to a computer game. Dean and Bethesda parted on the best of terms and may still work together in the future.

7 🚀 PC Gamer: When will the game be out?

Nesmith: You can expect the game to be out plenty of time before the holiday season. Of this year!

🧭 Fuente.