ERA Interview

by Sia 'Garrett' Manzari, 2003-02-12

ERA is the new name of Peroxide's Ultima 1 remake, which ran into license trouble with EA and therefore was renamed to ERA. While the game still keeps the spirit of the Ultimas, a new game has been born...

Kasper Fauerby: First, the change in our project from an Ultima remake to a truly original game is the most important decision we've made in Peroxide for many years - a decision that might force us to look at the organization from a new angle. One might say it marked the end of one era and the beginning of a new one for us. Also, we have the basic layout for a pretty long storyline in our new world - far too long for a single game. Thus, if all goes well, we hope to produce more than one game in the Era series, possibly a trilogy. Our story, therefore, defines an era in that world too.

RPGDot: Did you change the name of the game only or redesign gameplay as well? For example, is the game still taking place in Sosaria and are characters from Ultima 1 in the game?

Kasper Fauerby: Era should still look and feel pretty much the same as what we had originally planned for the Ultima 1 remake but since EA holds the copyrights not only on the brand name "Ultima" but also on the names of characters and places, we've decided to whip up our own universe. So, no, the game will no longer take place in Sosaria. The look and feel of a game is one thing though - the rule-system by which the game world works is another. As we've 'moved out' of the Ultima universe and into our own there is a lot of gameplay features we have to rethink and redesign. This is where a significant portion of our development time is spent these days and at this time there are still a lot of loose ends that we're trying to tie up, so you'll have to excuse me if the answers to some of the questions on particular gameplay features are a little vague at this point.

RPGDot: How many different areas will there be in the game.

Kasper Fauerby: At this time we have plans for a world consisting of several kingdoms, each of which will play its own part in the story. The world will consist of one major continent which is quite big and a handful of smaller islands. The main continent will probably have to be split into several smaller 'areas' because of its size but this is for technical reasons - I still like to think of it as one big area. Besides these outdoor locations the game will, of course, also feature plenty of underground dungeon maps. The first area we'll create is a fairly small island called 'Emers Isle' which is part of a kingdom called 'Saragosa'. This island will serve as a sort of introductory area to the game and will host a small tutorial dungeon where the player starts, as well as the island itself on which the player can solve a few smaller side-quests and get used to the interface. This introduction part of the game is what we'll use as our next tech-demo which we hope to release in a few months. Work on the Emers Isle map is progressing quite well and we hope to be able to showcase a near complete game engine in that demo.

RPGDot: How many classes, occupations, races etc are there in Era?

Kasper Fauerby: We're planning for a world where the civilized population consists mostly of humans, so most of the NPC interaction will be with human beings. The player will definitely be human too. Other races will be used for the monsters though and will include your usual mix of orcs, giant spiders, goblins etc. as well as something new we've cooked up for this story. As for classes and occupations, this is one of the areas where we're still trying out ideas. There will definitely be different classes in the game - the question is more how the player chooses to follow one (or more?). Basically, as I see it, we've got two options here. We could go for the good old solution where the player simply chooses a class at the start of the game. This can be a good solution but requires a certain understanding from the player about what the different classes mean at the time of character creation. This might be fine for an experienced player but someone new to the RPG genre might not know the differences before actually having played the game for awhile. The second solution which I think might work better is to give the player a more generic character at the start of the game and then let the player's actions and choices in the game decide which class he belongs to - either by letting him distribute skill points at each level to those skills he has found out he uses a lot in the game or by letting him join guilds that teach a certain profession.

RPGDot: Will the game play differently depending on the class you are playing (or in other words will you get choices that are depending on your class only)

Kasper Fauerby: The main storyline will be the same for all classes but how you solve the different puzzles and obstacles on the path will be up to the player and depending on which class you're playing, your options for solutions will probably be somewhat different. For example, it seems like a magic user might have to come up with something other than a full frontal attack if he has to get past five orcs guarding a passage through some mountains. On the other hand, the fighter type might have a harder time getting past a huge block of ice than a mage with a fireball spell. Also it's very likely that some of the side-quests in the game will only be available or solvable if you belong to a certain profession or have a certain set of skills.

RPGDot: Will there be an automap, a journal, a quest log, a party, a character creation?

Kasper Fauerby: There will be maps for at least the outdoor areas - as for the dungeons; well I guess that depends on whether or not such a map even exists and whether or not the player has found it. I don't think we'll have the game engine create one automatically as the player progresses through the dungeon. There will definitely be a journal though that records vital clues given, read or simply seen by the player. The journal has an index that sorts the clues by quest so the player quickly can get to the clues he wants to read up on. The journal is also used to keep track of which quests are still running and which has been closed. We're toying with some ideas about keeping a bestiary in the journal as well which will record any good advice the player comes across about fighting against a certain monster or using a particular weapon class. The game is currently planned to be a single-player game but it's likely that the player will be assisted by NPCs at various points in the game. About character creation - well as I said above we're still uncertain about the details on how to let the player form his character in the direction he wants so the character creation process is currently not decided on. I'm pretty sure we'll have at least some sort of character creation though to allow the player to choose basic things like name, appearance and perhaps things like religion etc.

RPGDot: Tell us a bit about magic: What spells will there be, different schools of magic? Priest spells?

Kasper Fauerby: The magic system is one of the things that went from being pretty well-defined within the Ultima universe to something we have to make up from scratch so this is still work-in-progress for us. We'll go for an approach with a mana bar and a spell book from which the player can cast spells as long as he has the required mana and level for that spell. This is in contrast to the AD&D approach used for Wizards in the Black Isle games where a player has to memorize a certain selection of spells before being able to cast them.

RPGDot: And what about combat? Will there be several different attacks? How many weapons are there in Era and will you also offer ranged weapons?

Kasper Fauerby: There will be many different kinds of weapons in Era, each with its own characteristics, but they will all fall into 3 damage categories: blunt damage, slashing damage, or piercing damage. We will also include a selection of ranged weapons such as bows, crossbows and slings. As the player plays through the world he might come across teachers or other individuals that have something useful to say about a certain weapon category or a certain monster. The more the player knows about a weapon the more effectively he can fight with it and the more he knows about a monster the more efficiently can he hit its weak spots. These teachings might be in the form of new attacks being available for the player.

RPGDot: Is the focus of Era more on story/adventuring or more on action/combat?

Kasper Fauerby: I like to play RPGs where the story is more than an excuse to go out and beat up some monsters, so the goal is that Era will feature a really interesting storyline. We're certainly working in that direction and have a professional fantasy writer on the plot. However, one must not forget that one of the important things in RPGs is the building of the player's character. Story alone does not make a great RPG these days - the player must also be able to go out and test the character he has created against a bunch of monsters and have the satisfaction of wiping them out with his cool new sword or spell. So there will also be a lot of fighting and looting in the game.

RPGDot: Is there a reasonable AI, like NPCs joining you, helping you or not talking with you due to former actions you've taken?

Kasper Fauerby: We have a really great dialog system that allows the dialog scripter to add a sense of memory to the NPCs directly in the dialogs without having to whip up a special AI script. This should make it very easy to have the NPCs remember what you've previously said to them and they can then be angry with the player the next time he talks to them or simply refuse to talk altogether. During the game NPCs will almost certainly join up with the player for short periods of time and they are able to both guide the player from one place to another and follow the player around.

RPGDot: Will there be multiple endings?

Kasper Fauerby: No, while the path towards the ending might have forks and different paths, there will only be one ending to the game (if you count of the zillion of ways the game can kill off the player of course). While I think multiple endings are a cool feature to a game it's also something that requires a huge work force - something we simply don't have on a small team such as Peroxide. Remember the average player will only play a game once and thus only see one ending. If we have, say, 100 hours available to create endings then we can burn all 100 of them on a really cool one which the players will be happy with - or create 3 endings of 33 hours each which will look bad compared to our competition. The only solution would be to spend 300 hours on 3 endings - anything less and the players won't be happy with them.

RPGDot: I'll wager, there's still no multiplayer support after the name change, is there?

Kasper Fauerby: No, Era is still a singleplayer game. We all like multiplayer games here on the Peroxide team and would eventually like to create one. However, creating a multiplayer game is quite different than creating a singleplayer game, both with respect to the story, but also with respect to customer support and also how much money needs to be invested in the project before it can start to earn something back (you would need to put up servers for example). No game designer has yet solved the problem of allowing the player to be the hero in a massive multiplayer game (as far as I know at least). He will only be one of many powerful characters and he cannot do anything that will radically change the game world - that would be unfair to the new player that joins the game at a later time if all the quests were solved, the evil dragon killed etc. Our vision for Era is a much more epic story where the player can be allowed to really save the day. If we come up with a really interesting combat system it's possible we can add some sort of multiplayer arena fighting to Era, though, where a player will host a server on his own machine and have his friends connect to it.

RPGDot: How much time do the changes cost you?

Kasper Fauerby: Well, on the technical side the change hasn't set us back one day. When we decided to do the change we were still working on the core game engine and hadn't begun to script any of the storyline for Ultima 1. As I've discussed above things are a little worse on the design / story side where we have to redo a fair portion of what we've planned for Ultima 1. Still, as much of our work for Ultima 1 was already original material we've been able to reuse much of it in Era. Originally we considered using the plot for Ultima 1 pretty much as it was just with some changes of names etc. but we tried it out and took a good look at the result and it was simply too obvious where we had gotten our inspiration from. We're trying to create a game in the spirit of an Ultima - not to blatantly rip it off. I'm very happy with the new things though and all in all I believe the change of name might actually lead to a more interesting game.

RPGDot: Did EA offer you to publish the original Ultima 1 you developed or did they just ask you to not use the Ultima brand?

Kasper Fauerby: When we contacted EA to make sure the agreement we made with Richard Garriott when he was still with Origin was still valid, they simply replied that they could not allow the use of any of their copyrighted material from the Ultima series. Since then they've refused to speak with us. Thus, we decided we had to change the setting to one on which no one held any copyrights, to avoid the specter of a confrontation.

RPGDot: So is the game still being developed as freeware like originally intended to?

Kasper Fauerby: At this time Era is still being developed as a freeware project but now that we are no longer using any copyrighted material we're also looking for funding and a publisher. Remember that so far the game engine, graphics and story material has been created in our spare time which has slowed down the process a lot. It would be very beneficial for the project if we were able to work full time on it.

RPGDot: What do you think will happen to all the other Ultima remakes out there?

Kasper Fauerby: Well, I hope they all get finished so I can have a shot at playing them! Whether or not they'll be bothered by EA, no one but EA can say, but I sure hope not. I think it'll be up to each team to consider whether or not they are willing to take the risk of being shut down. They should all be aware though that EA does indeed hold the copyrights to the Ultima name and has the right to shut down all or none of them. From our experiences with EA, all I can say is that it seems like EA is not interested in allowing any kinds of use of their brand names. Whatever happens, all at Peroxide wish the best of luck to all the projects out there and I'll certainly continue to keep an eye on all of them.