Hi everyone, we'd like to take a moment and answer one of the most frequently asked questions about Interstellar Marines:
There really is nothing we'd rather make than COOP missions and especially unique and exciting ones; but without more advanced AI, options for scripting and more advanced gameplay setup towards tactical sandbox gameplay with a story, we can’t do that.
We want the next COOP mission to feel more immersive and unique than the previous missions. The Cooperative mode was built for Interstellar Marines from the ground-up to be a multiplayer gamemode where you could play unique and exciting missions with three of your friends.
However, if we decide to commit and go through the development process it would require to make another COOP mission like the Neurogen Incident, it would take months to do. With these COOP missions you play through them a few times and then wait for new content to release. It simply takes too much time and resources to create each new mission, make sure most of the substantial bugs are taken care of, then release it within a decent amount of time at the moment. The cost versus pay off just simply wouldn’t be worth it, unfortunately.
If we decided to release new missions it'd simply be more of the same kinds of missions we've done in the past, and we don’t want that. We want missions with a heavy emphasis on replayability, with each playthrough feeling like a new and unique mission.
For this to happen, the focus on adding/improving core gameplay mechanics, tweaking current content, patching bugs and glitches, and adding other content in the meantime will need to continue. For that very reason it makes much more sense to continue to focus on Wargames, using it as a testing ground for new features/content, improving AI, and eventually even possibly having the maps be used for new COOP missions.
We’d also like to make sure that we align all of your expectations with our current situation and progress with Interstellar Marines/Update 28:
Our game director Kim (ZPSHicks, and lone survivor of the original Zero Point Software team) currently works two jobs and has a limited amount of time being able to work on Interstellar Marines.
Currently we have two of our volunteer developers working on upgrading Interstellar Marines’ game engine (Unity) to the latest available version. This will take time, but will hopefully remove a lot of substantial bugs/glitches (for example, the infamous “falling through the ground” bug) and increase optimization.
For now, we are focusing on making small improvements to Interstellar Marines in general and the Wargames multiplayer gamemode.
We’re not giving up hope on this, but development will continue at a slow pace until we can attract a publisher or somehow raise money for development. We have possible leads for publishers, but nothing is confirmed at the moment, so please don’t get your hopes up.
Lastly, I’d like to announce that I will be your latest community manager for Zero Point Software. Expect posts to occur much more frequently, and for communication to improve significantly. I will be keeping you all updated ;)
/CinemaBane
FOR THE LOVE OF THE GAME,
Your team at Zero Point Software
Join our official social media and community groups to stay connected and chat:
- Discord server: discord.gg/interstellarmarines
