Interviewed by Ben and Aurora
MotorSiege Developer

Tell us what Motorsiege is about.

[Marketing mode on]
Motorsiege is a high-energy vehicular combat game offering a wide range of gameplay modes, fast paced action, and strong rival characters.
[Marketing mode off]

Motorsiege is really about having a good time blowing up your friends.

When you upgrade your vehicles, what are you upgrading, and how drastically does it affect the performance of the vehicle.

Currently you can upgrade thrusters, armor, handling, firepower, and a weapon bay. And we're always looking for more aspects that are entertaining to upgrade. The weapon bay applies to the career mode and dictates how many weapons can be carried at any one time. In arcade mode you can pick up an infinite number of weapons.

The performance of the vehicles nearly doubles as you advance through the single player game. On top of that, not only do upgrades affect the overall performance of a vehicle, they can drastically alter the look of a vehicle. Spend cash on your armor stat and you'll notice big metal plates welded to the outside of your car. Upgrade thrusters and extra engines get slammed on the sides.

What game do you think Motorsiege most resembles?

The obvious game is Twisted Metal: Black. However we didn't just want to make "another" vehicle combat game, so we've done a lot of things that help distinguish Motorsiege from the other games out there. Most of these changes have been conceived while play testing the game over and over. We got the basic gameplay up and running very early on in the project and have been hosting play sessions of the game ever since. These sessions have had a substantial impact on the gameplay and tuning.

As an example we've chosen futuristic hovering vehicles because they allow us to strafe in combat. This is something that has added a lot of depth to first person shooter combat, but hasn't really been done in a vehicle game.

Another result of the testing has been the addition of many gameplay modes from Deathmatch and Survival Mode to Fox and Hound, and Siege. Siege mode is a variant of Capture the Flag that involves a number of score zones around the track. One guy attempts to carry a ball to the zones while everyone else tries to either ram him to steal the ball or blow him up. It can get pretty hectic with 4 players and another 4 AI bots entering the fray.

The graphics look amazing, how do they take advantage of the Xbox hardware?

Several of us have had experience working on the last generation of consoles and have been very excited about the possibilities that the new hardware out there has to offer. The biggest benefit that we have seen, besides high poly counts, is in multi-texturing. Nearly every triangle that you see in Motorsiege has between two to four textures on it. The engine we have developed is set up to handle multi-texturing, bump mapping, realtime lighting, projected shadows and cubic reflections. Many of these features have still only been incorporated in a limited fashion into the tracks, and we therefore expect them to look even better as the project nears completion.

What is the main objective in Motorsiege?

The career mode of Motorsiege consists of over 30 events, including multiple boss fights. You start by choosing a basic car and competing in the lower level tracks to earn cash and respect, used to challenge the current reigning champions and unlock new environments. Once you have proven yourself the regional champions will challenge you to a one-on-one battle for their title.

Will online play be implemented? If not, will system link (for gamespy and Xbox connect users)?

Unfortunately, as a small independent developer we were not able to dedicate the resources necessary to implement online play. But it's definitely high on our list for Motorsiege 2.

How do you like developing for the Xbox, and how does it compare to other consoles?

The Xbox has been a great machine to work on. The best part about working on the Xbox from a game design point of view is that we can get stuff up and running on it so quickly. A lot of times you have to learn things by trial and error. We've made a lot of changes to Motorsiege over the course of development because some ideas just didn't turn out to be as fun as they could have been. Due to these rapid revisions Motorsiege has undergone an evolution for the better, which just wouldn't be possible without the Xbox's ease of development.

When is the expected release date of Motorsiege?

Motorsiege will be in stores for Christmas.

How big are the tracks?

They vary in size from small arenas used for one-on-one fights to larger, sprawling outdoor environments.

The opponents look rather….odd. What can you tell us about them?

We wanted to offer character opponents that the player could go up against and gauge their progression by. So we came up with a bunch of characters that you are going to love beating. The setting of the game is futuristic and highly satirical, something similar to Running Man, or Max Headroom. So we started looking at characters from those shows and movies, and added into the mix typical gimmicks used in professional wrestling. Then we pushed them even further. The end result is a game where you can fight a flashy egomaniac, a trained ape, an eccentric medical robot, or a little old grandma with a cute dog and a mean streak the size of King-Kong. The characters are designed to be funny and get a couple of laughs from the player in-between matches - as opposed to dead serious or edgy. They add a lot of humor to the game and make the overall gameplay experience much more entertaining.