Our latest report from
Istvan gives us a brief glimpse at the people who are
hard at work developing JGE . . .
Jumpgate was originally developed by a team that was, at peak,
only six people. That’s a tiny development group as far as the game industry goes,
especially on an MMO title. Post-release, NetDevil was forced to move its resources to its
new project, Auto Assault, leaving Jumpgate to be supported by an even smaller team for
most of its history.
As has been reported elsewhere, NetDevil founder and president
Scott "Scorch" Brown made the decision in mid-2006 to start a major Jumpgate
update. Those plans have taken on a life of their own, and have shifted from the original
idea of a graphical facelift to the current work on a new, highly enhanced game project
based on the original title. By late in Q2 2007, the assigned team for Jumpgate Evolution
had reached its present size of eight dedicated developers. Knowing how much the Jumpgate
community cares about the game, we at NetDevil wished to introduce you to the people now
working on Jumpgate Evolution:
Darren
"Striker" Bryant -- Programmer
Favorite game genres: flight sims and FPS
Although new to the game
industry, ‘Striker’ is a veteran programmer who came to NetDevil looking for
"something more interesting". He has taken on the brunt of all AI systems
programming for JGE, a massive project. Striker flies a Raven for Octavius in his spare
time.
Cole
"KonStruCt3D" Eggen -- Artist
Favorite game genres: FPS
‘KonStruCt3D’ was on the art teams for NetDevil titles
Auto Assault and Warmonger. For the JGE project, he’s working both as a modeler and
special FX artist. The explosions, training drone model, Amananth station, and spectacular
new jumpgate effect are examples of his work.
Steve "Istvan"
Hartmeyer -- Programmer
Favorite game genres: MMORPGs and strategy
A former Jumpgate beta tester, and merchant pilot for Solrain, ‘Istvan’
maintained JGC alone for several years and now tries to use that experience to benefit the
rest of the team constructing JGE. Istvan is a generalist programmer and designer, acts as
development liaison to our JGC support and events team, and also wears the community
relations hat from time to time.
Darrin "RoGLaRiCoN"
Klein -- Lead
Artist
Favorite game genres: FPS
Joining the team from Auto Assault, ‘RoGLaRiCoN’ is doing
3D modeling and some special FX work for JGE. He is an avid FPS gamer and tends to draw a
crowd in the NetDevil rec room when playing Gears of War online. Some of his JGE modeling
work so far includes Solrain Core station, Quantar Core station, and the light fighters
for each player faction.
"Erm" -- Lead Programmer
Favorite game genres: FPS
Former Lead Programmer for Auto Assault, Erm’s specialties are
the new JGE graphics engine and the technical pipeline for art assets. Besides being one
of NetDevil’s finest graphics programmers, he’s a highly experienced generalist
system architect who simply works wonders. If we think something is going to be hard to
do, Erm usually gets the job.
Kirk "Cropduster"
Lunsford -- Concept
Artist
Favorite game genres: MMORPGs and RTS
With a background in industrial design, ‘Cropduster’
joined the JGE team early, to construct an entirely new look for the game. After being fed
a ton of JGC material about the personalities of each faction and other aspects of the
game, he blew away NetDevil management and the rest of the growing team with his
development of JGE’s look and feel. Every graphical asset in the game, including the
UI, was either his design or has been touched by his vision.
Steve "McBracket"
McCray -- Programmer
Favorite game genres: RTS and management sims
A recent arrival at NetDevil, ‘McBracket’ quickly made
himself at home on the JGE team and has taken on several complex programming tasks,
including massive reworks of the camera and sound systems. The new option to use a
fully-functional external view of the player’s ship is an example of his work.
Hermann "Draker"
Peterscheck -- Producer
Favorite game genres: MMORPGs
In Draker’s case, "Producer" really means much more.
He’s front man for the team for all issues relating to management, publicity, and
external contacts, organizes our internal testing, manages all team priorities, and
directs large-scale planning and design. Besides all that, he’s also a programmer and
has personally taken on the huge task of getting JGE’s entirely new user interface
operational. Good thing he’s a workaholic.
NetDevil’s small size and dynamic working environment
fosters mutual support among development teams, cross-fertilization of ideas, and some use
of centralized tools. We on the JGE team are in debt to programmers from other NetDevil
teams who have, for instance, made contributions to the game’s render system, and
created both the rapid-iteration build system we use and a new patching and installation
system that will be part of the JGE release. NetDevil’s webmaster and audio
artists/engineers have centralized roles within the company, working on tasks for all
projects, and thus are routinely contributing to JGE tasks as well. Furthermore, original
Jumpgate team members Scorch, Peter "Piza" Grundy, and Ryan
"SamPenguin" Seabury represent NetDevil’s upper management, and provide
frequent direction to the JGE team. This backing from across the company helps make
possible a project this ambitious, despite the seemingly small number of us dedicated
solely to work on JGE.
IMPORTANT:
Colocation Change
Coming
By the end of October, NetDevil will be relocating the Live Jumpgate Classic servers to a
new colocation provider. This action is being taken as part of our
preparations for eventually launching external (beta) servers for Jumpgate Evolution, but
as a result, Jumpgate Classic will benefit greatly.
The new colocation arrangement will result in all of our old server hardware (which dates
from original launch in 2001) being replaced with modern high-quality multicore IBM blade
servers. The bandwidth available through the new provider will be a factor of
five improvement over what we presently have. Furthermore, we also expect the change
to provide us an opportunity to improve our support procedures and mechanisms in response
to outages. We expect performance to show a significant improvement (and there
should be a
huge one for our greatly overtaxed JOSSH webserver) once things have been cut over to the
new equipment and location.
The next few weeks will be extremely busy as the replacement systems are brought online
and tested prior to
cutting over our Live services. We intend the minimum disruption, but because of the
nature of the Jumpgate
Classic product, there is no doubt there will be some. Dates of outages and actual
cutover will be announced here, just as soon as we are able to gauge the real progress of
getting things moved.
Ideally, we will replicate the game servers, test them, and then activate them during an
outage that allows us to move the current state data over. Access to the new location will
be provided to the clients with a patch that
will point you to the new servers. The same patch will also contain a change to the
networking code so that MS Vista users will be able to play Jumpgate Classic.
If you do not obtain the patch before the patching server is itself moved, you will need
to obtain either a new installer, or a specific file that will direct your client to the
correct patching server. Vista users will not be
able to use the original patcher, but will be required to use a new installer to be able
to play the game.
New versions of the file, and the new installer, will be made available at the time of
cutover. Once they are available, we ask members of the community to share these
install files freely with other members, to
expedite the conversion.
The support team and I request your patience as we get through
this probably bumpy patch in Jumpgate Classic's continuing voyage. We've been
assured that the improvements of the new location will be well worth the inconveniences of
the conversion.
Again, further bulletins will be posted here as soon as information and files can be made
available. Please pass the word that big happenings are afoot.
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