Swinging around 180 degrees, I headed back toward the high-security facility, making a quick entrance into the docking area. I immediately powered down, checked my comms and then exited my vehicle.

"Ambro!" shouted a voice from the darkened docking area.

"I’m Istvan! When I saw the car with California plates I knew it was a rental, so I figured it was you. Glad you were able to make it."

OK, so this wasn’t a TRI R&D facility . . . it was NetDevil’s new HQs. And . . . well . . . I was not making a stealthy break-in, I was expected. But the whole RP approach to the visit just seemed "appropriate."

As suggested earlier, I was late. The plan was for a lunch-time visit, but in-air delays and a missed connection in Atlanta forced a change of plans. At one point, I thought I may have to (gulp) miss my chance to visit. But the night-owl crew at NetDevil was more than accommodating.

First off I got a tour of the new digs – which are absolutely cavernous complete with all of the techno-chic and Gen-Y accoutrements you’d expect at a first class software development firm. In other words, there were employee-executed themed murals, a basketball court, fully stocked fridge and snack area, and a break area with every console game system, title and controller imaginable -- including Rock Band, one of my favs.

The Jumpgate dev area is in one quadrant of the massive space, with an open-cube setup, including some that are about to be filled. For years, players have complained about NetDevil’s lack of resource commitment to Jumpgate. It may have been true then, but is just isn’t the case now.

What I saw in progress was modeling work on Hyperial station, work on UI coding and work on important administrative coding that will allow much more flexibility in keeping the Jumpgate universe interesting and dynamic. The one negative in this visit is that I set JGE development efforts back by a good four hours as Istvan, Scorch, Striker, and Draker eagerly and proudly demonstrated their work on Jumpgate Evolution, guided me through a few test flights, discussed JGC community concerns, and passionately talked about NetDevil’s vision for JGE. My observation: we all know how much passion the JGC community has for the game. Well the NetDevil devs’ passion about what they are doing is absolutely palpable. There is some serious labor-of-love going on in Louisville, CO.

Others have already described the visual beauty of Jumpgate Evolution, so I won’t spend a lot of time on that. Suffice it to say that the graphics will be awesome. What I do want to share is the major effect of the scale. Stations are HUGE, roids are HUGE – so when you are flying in an area with lots of large "assets" it makes you feel like you’re flying slow. It also has some really unnerving effects when you are, for example, fighting near stations, buildings and station-sector roids. You feel like you are close to them and in danger of colliding, when in reality you’re nowhere near close.

One part of the demo that really brought this home to me was when Striker roided in a "valley" on one of the asteroids, and then pulled the camera back. The ship was a veritable speck on the roid.

Another thing that looked interesting was a Battle Station – a new kind of asset currently under development – completed with automated turrets. There were a number of ideas bounced around on how to use these beauties – none finalized from what I heard.

The UI is still in its infancy, and I know it’s one of the things getting some serious attention right now. The most interesting UI factoid I heard was that whatever is "shipped" with the game will simply be the default, and that anyone with facility for doing Flash will be able to do major customization. The other interesting new feature was an on-screen readout showing enemy targets in descending order by distance.

Because so much of the programming work has been done on foundation items, space is far from complete – i.e. most of the work and testing has been done in just a few sectors. It is also my understanding that right now art is well ahead of programming. Once more of the foundation work is complete, I suspect attention will be turned to the layout of the map, and to "designing" each sector (creating a skybox and positioning roids, jumpgates and other assets).

In all honesty, at the current state of development, and with the amount of time I spent actually flying, there is no was to assess how the new game will "play." That appears to be a ways off yet. But the graphics are luscious, the AI is very interesting and the ideas continue to fly fast and furious, as Scorch leads the "wouldn’t it be cool if we could . . ." gang while his programmers silently weep.