Exclusive Interview: Rayland Interactive

Betanews recently recieved information on RedStorm's upcoming space simulator game, 'Bang! Gunship Elite.' Wendy Beasley, Senior Marketing Manager at RedStorm, answered a few questions about the game's developer, Rayland Interactive. Bang! is expected to have a demo on their site sometime next week, and should be available this summer.

Interview Questions:

BN: How long has Bang! Gunship Elite been in development?

  Redstorm: We started building a new engine in January 99. Once all missions were running we spent months tuning the game play and improving sounds, graphics, menu system and Multiplayer code.

We are now finalizing in game speech, language versions and sound effects. We also worked out the Multiplayer side of the game and everything is running great.

BN: Is the game based on an engine, or was it created from scratch?

  Redstorm: We build all our engines and this one is completly dedicated to the game. We do not make general code but always build dedicated engines so to speed up display and other time critical pieces of code such as IA and collision systems. Each game is very different one from another and we prefer to create specific algorithms for each of them. For BGE we spent a long time to get the collision system right and if you compare with other games you will see that we did not use a big sphere around objects to detect collisions. In Bang you can fly very close from each object, even inside structures. This was an important issue for us and it makes the flight very precise and efficient, you can hide behind asteroids, stations and other spaceships...and so do enemies ! The graphic aspect was also our concern and we found new technics to make this game look really different from any other game on the market and mainly from any other space/action ones. The game runs great on a PC 233 and with a good video card you can play in a1600*1200 resolution.

BN: What other companies are working on the game besides Rayland Interactive and RedStorm?

  Redstorm: Red Storm Entertainment is the publisher and RayLand Interactive the developer, no other company is involved in the Bang Gunship Elite game development. We found a real and efficient support working with Red Storm and so have been able to concentrate on making the game at best. This is our first game with Red Storm and we look forward working with them on longer term relationship.

BN: What does Rayland have to do with the development of Bang!?

  Redstorm: RayLand designed and developed Bang Gunship Elite from start to end.

BN: What other games has Rayland developed?

  Redstorm: Our first game was MAD TRAX a race car type of game. We developed this first game in less than 6 months from may to november 98 because of poor financing structures. At that time we were 5 people working in my 25 square meters flat and this first game development was really challenging. People working at RayLand had of course many years of experience in the video game industry and used to work in other video games companies before that.

Visit Rayland Interactive's site for screen shots, and a movie. You may also visit RedStorm's site for additional multimedia. The expected release for this title is late June or early July.