Gods & Heroes: Rome Rising Interview

The reasons behind the cool combat animation and your expectations from it are self explanatory. Can you tell us a bit more about the animation process from a technical standpoint?

(Answered by Lead Character Artist, Ross Armstrong)

Going down on a reptile?

She REALLY needs a better conditioner.

Our combat system is all hand keyed animation based on a "Node Locking" system that ensures that the attacker and defender animations will interact together as seamlessly as possible. To that end, we've divided our combat system into two main categories, Targeted and Paired.

In the Targeted system, each of the 5 melee weapon types has its own unique animation set containing about 70 animations. We've designed it so that each of the weapon types will have corresponding attacks or defenses for a particular move that will synchronize with each other in time and space. We've added more variation by authoring multiple attack/defend directions and each weapon type has some combination of attack speeds, light medium and heavy.

Our Paired system gives the animators more flexibility and frees us from the technical rigidity of the targeted system. These animations are reserved for the more spectacular feat animations and the animators are able to choreograph their own moves.

Similarly, the animals, creatures and Gods have their own suite of targeted and paired animations that synchronize with the human set.

Can you give us an example of one of the cooler bosses you have in the game at the moment?

We have several awesome "boss" level characters in Gods & Heroes: Rome Rising and I use the term awesome in its true sense. There are several creatures which we haven't revealed as of yet but they dwarf your character. Your character is no taller than a couple of their ankles. It is a pretty intimidating site to battle a creature that is 20 times bigger than you are.

The Hydra is also a very cool creature. It is also very large and has several paired moves that involve all three heads doing all sorts of terrifying things with your character. You really need to see the characters in action to truly understand how cool these creatures are.

How are plans coming along for an open/closed beta?

We have just entered the very first stage of Closed Beta. We have selected a group of 50 players from all across the netiverse and invited them to play the game to help us get a better idea of whether or not we are on the right track as far as fun goes. So far we have received some amazing feedback, a lot of which validated our thoughts and ideas as well as some that was surprising to us.

We are at an early enough stage where this feedback is actually making a difference and we have already made several pretty big changes accordingly.

The program has been so successful that we are inviting 350 more people into the Core Tester program before we open it up to larger groups of closed testers.

What would be the most current estimated release date for the game?

Currently we are targeting early 2007.