Darkstar

[Noone]

Hi Jeff. I was keeping an eye on your game from long ago and I'm happy to know that the project is not dead at all. Well, FMV games is my hidden passion... maybe from Phatasmagoria times, maybe even earlier.

So, your game have been in production for 6 years. How do you manage to keep motivated?

[J. Allen Williams]

Hi Alex, and thanks for coming. I never intended for DS to take so long to produce, but it just kept getting bigger and bigger, and the staff did not. Fortunately I've had no "milestones" committed to a publisher to maintain, so I've been able to keep the quality and integrity of the project where I want it to be...it's done when it's done kind of thing. I've said it before, and I"ll say it again...we are getting SO close!

[Anka DS]

6 years? I thought it was more : We will serve no Darkstar before it's time, right? I think those guys have just become so attached to one another they don't want to let go anymore. They just keep adding to the game ;D Can only get better right?!

[J. Allen Williams]

I began in late 2000, so yeah, it's been about seven actually. But if you go back to when I wrote the original story and did preliminary storyboards prior to actual productiion, we're talking 1995ish. It's taken a whole millennium!

[Noone]

Can you tell, after all these years, what kind of video quality the game will have? The technics at that time was not as much improoved as it is now...

[J. Allen Williams]

Darkstar has not been created within the technical limitation of games, but instead in the same exact way movies like Matrix, Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, and Sin City were made. Same 3D software, same compositing procedures, and hi-def digital footage of live action actors. Darkstar uses no gaming engine, just some hi-tech, custom modified software created by Tribal Media out of SanFrancisco that ties together our movies, QTVR's and interactive elements. Technology has not been a problem for the most part, except for a few curves that Quicktime upgrades have thrown us. One of those cost us a year of production and many thousands of dollars.

[Noone]

So you can assure us that though it was filmed several years ago it wil be represented with a good quality in the game?

I'll also drop one more question as my internet connection is bad tis evening.

Have you decided how you would sell the game? 30 GBs is quite a good volume, it is several DVDs or evean a couple of Blu-Ray discs. BTW, have you already found a publisher for the game (and maybe some international ones)?

P.S. I've seen a question about the medium was answered already...

[J. Allen Williams]

Films shot in the seventies still look great! The Godfather, Star Wars, you name it. I'll let you be the judge. You can see some of the cinematics at www.darkstar.gs in the cinematics section. There are some very low res samples (compressed for internet), but you can still see how we are putting things together.

On your second question, we have been contacted by a Canadian publisher and have been talking to an American one as well. Both would publish internationally. After Askaron published a game they called "Darkstar One" after meeting with my people at the E-3 show in LA, basically trying to rip us off (but failing miserably because they got everything wrong), we've shut down talks with everyone until we are finished. Both of the companies we're talking to sent us NDA's, but we won't sign them or show them anything until we have our intellectual rights formidibally protected.

[Anka DS]

Good call. U don't want to lose seven years of work to strangers! As for the quality. The latest I've seen is a 2003 trailer and it looked awsome, like a movie, real modern, couldn't spot the difference! Amazing job and you guys keep amazing me every time something new shows up.

[Noone]

I just wanted to be sure that you still have high quality film sources (you may have recompressed it according to standarts of those time and simply lost originals) - really, no offence, just simple curiosity.

I've read you're constantly adding pieces here and there. Can you estimate how long the game will be? Will there be alternative endings?

[J. Allen Williams]

Thank you Annick, I appreciate the compliment on the trailer, but honestly, I cringe every time I see it. We've come up with special color correction systems for all the scenes, and improved our compositing techniques considerably since that trailer.

Yes, and on the proprietary issues, it really is too bad we can't just do business without worrying about stealing of your concepts. It forces me to not share so much up front and keep cards closer to my chest. Honestly, letting word out about the project as early as we did has caused a lot of frustration amongst those anxious to see this thing finished. Even some doubt as to whether it was "real" or not. Of course I've not worried too much about that, because the proof will be in the pudding.

What a silly expression. Darkstar will not be pudding.

[J. Allen Williams]

ASK ANYTHING, do not worry about offending us! These are intelligent questions.

We're not shooting on film, we are shooting HiDef DV, and by the time we compress to the standards needed to view on your PC utilizing Quicktime, the footage still looks great...again, I would like you to see it and tell me what you think. You can see some samples on our website and write to me there.

I answer ALL emails to the site personally.

No, I can't estimate hours of gameplay yet. And yes, there are at least 14 "alternate endings", and you die in all of them. You want the ONE win ending.

[MichaelS]

Even the total length of gameplay is not sure yet, what can you say about the amount of interactive/playable sections compared to video sequences ? Is it more like a movie, where sometimes you can "make some decisions" and interact or is exploring and playing the main thing in Darkstar ? Btw. what do the playable sections look like and what is the control interface ?

[Anka DS]

It's Anka DS :P don't give away my identity here ;D these intelligent people may hunt down dum people

Jeff really does answer all mails, even the stupid ones! He's great! okay, off the ego boost.

If the future pieces/trailers are even better than what I've seen I'm not complaining, can't be anything but superb!

I don't want to die though, rather be pudding. I hate it when they make me die. I once got stuck in an indiana Jones game where I couldn't get back or forth anymore. They always made me die the same horrible way. I'll play the survivor part in this one. Did u have to make Clive die like 14 times then? poor fellow... : so there's where all that extra production time is going to.

[J. Allen Williams]

This is a great question.

The interactive area is 90 percent of the experience, but it is peppered constantly with tiny clips (ten seconds to a minute) that keep the thing both interactive and movie. So it's not like you watch ten minutes of footage and then get a prompt to say this or that and simply go down another storyline fork. You are constantly walking about the ship, interacting with control panels, looking in doorways, trying to unlock things...it's a lot like Myst or Riven, but with footage, not stills. You don't click from one place in a room to another, you move in an animated sense.

The "interface" really doesn't exist most of the time, again, it's like Riven or Myst where the mouse is used to move about, look left or right, up or down, spin 180 degrees. There is a ui you can pull into view that shows you things you've acquired, and also allows you to see chapters of the hour-long backstory cinematics as you unlock them.

[Noone]

Sorry, Jeff, my current internet connection is too slow to check the video immediately, but I've looked through screenshots and some VRs earlier and they were great.

Turning to death endings, do they appear right after you have done something wrong or you'll play for some more times and only after 5-7 locations you'll end up dead?

BTW haven't such thoughts occured to you mind during the game development process : "Oh, enough with the game. I'd better not spend any more time on it and rather make a movie from the content I have"? :-)

[J. Allen Williams]

When you screw up, you get to die right away! MAN, are you in a hurry or something???

You know, I hope we do eventually do a feature on Darkstar, it would be grand indeed. But this was a really fun way to do this initially, and it is so different for me. If we do a film, I think it would be great to allow it to have alternate endings...not sure how that would work in the theater, but boy, on the DVD...

What do you think?

[Anka DS]

oh please do!

[J. Allen Williams]

Clive has been promised (in his contract) first dibs on the role of O'Neil.

[Noone]

Well, it is quite possible to make even an adventure game to be playable... on a simple DVD player. No more need of PC. Just player, remote control and a TVset. There already about 10 adventure titles (or maybe even more) converted to such a media.

Also a question. As you've shot actors on camera, had you any funny bloopers? Maybe they will present in the final game as bonuses? Are you going to shoot any "making of" video?