At 7:00 PM EST tonight, Groove Games had a conference call regarding their upcoming, budget-priced title, WarPath. In attendance were people from several different game sites, including our very own Sir_Brizz (ME!).
The conference call started in typical fashion, with the reps from Groove Games pimping the new game. However, they also gave us some good nuggets of information that they have not provided in the past.
The PC version of the game will cost $19.99 and allow support for up to 32-players on the Internet and LAN. Groove (and, I'm supposing by proxy, Digital Extremes), after the release of Pariah, took alot of feedback from the community to figure out what to do with their next title. In WarPath, they wanted to make the game blazingly fast. To help with this, they introduced some crazy acrobatic moves. It certainly makes the game feel MUCH faster. They also wanted to bring back the old Quake/Unreal feeling by making the weapons do alot of damage and LOOK like they do.
Here's what we asked:
Q: Why has the game been delayed from it's original release?
A: Groove did not want WarPath to get buried in the media frenzy resulting from E3 2006. They wanted to make sure that their media and press would get noticed. They also switched Distribution companies earlier this year, and had to deal with all the contract and legal terms associated with that.
Q: There were a number of changes between the MP Demo and the Preview Build of WarPath. What kinds of differences can we expect between the Preview Build and the Retail release?
A: Between the MP Demo and the Preview Build, Groove focused on adding features to WarPath, so ther was a great difference between what was seen in the MP Demo and the Preview. In the Retail release, Groove focused mainly on Performance issues and they have been shooting for getting WarPath to run as well as possible in all system configurations.
Q: Will a Dedicated Server package be released for WarPath? Will it work in Linux?
A: A Dedicated Server will come with the retail version of WarPath, however, it will not work in Linux. There was no indication of a standalone package for WarPath Dedicated Servers.
Q: Can you tell us a little bit about Mod/Mutator support in WarPath?
A: WarPath is built on the Unreal Engine so it will support Mods/Mutators. However, apparently, the game by default does not support them, you have to tweak it a bit to get support for them. They specifically mentioned that they would be posting details on how to accomplish this soon after the game was released, however, so we should see mutator "support" in the game itself.
Others also asked questions. I didn't bother copying them down, but I'll try to summarize the answers for you.
The XBox version of WarPath will not support split-screen. The main issue for this seems to have been a performance problem with split-screen running. They also mentioned that official additional content via Xbox Live and for PC is definitely a possibility. However, they were sure to note that if you wanted user made content, you would have to stick to the PC version.
They also admitted to us that WarPath did, in fact, start out as Pariah 2 as many of us had already guessed. However, they ran some focus groups and found that ultimately people didn't care about the Single Player part of Pariah as much as they cared for the Mutliplayer mode, so they decided to make WarPath's focus all about the Multiplayer.
They also mentioned that they were planning on making flying vehicles for WarPath, and a few of the levels were even designed for them, however they introduced too much of a performance hit, and were thus dropped.
I also ensured with them that UnrealEd and UCC would both be packaged with the game.
Thanks Groove for the Conference Call and information, and we will be looking forward to the release of WarPath!