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Jumpgates received some special graphic touches – as they are the name of the game – and it clearly showed. The jumpgate we saw looked like an immense watery dome in the middle of space, with blue lights scattering off of its surfaces. Once inside the Jumpgate, your entire field of view distorts, and it will certainly be a special experience for first time players. The ease of entry has certainly been enhanced with the updates NetDevil has made to the graphics in the game.

Even with the upgraded graphics, NetDevil wanted to insure that players with computers of all ages, makes, and models would have a decent chance of playing this game. Although no concrete numbers were put on the table, Petersheck assured us that they wanted to keep the specifications low. “We learned from Auto Assault that when you make the specifications to high, you’re cutting out a large percentage of people who might enjoy your game,” he said. “We did everything we could to keep the system requirements low, and the art team has done a fantastic job of keeping polygon counts low but still making things look good with various shaders, textures, and saturated colors.”

Accessibility is one of the major factors in the development of Jumpgate Evolution.

Accessibility has turned into one of the major projects for NetDevil and their Jumpgate team. Jumpgate, at least when it was originally deployed, was a very difficult game, and new players were often culled from the herd because the level of entry was so high. “Jumpgate was a very hard game for beginners, and we really worked on bringing that learning curve down,” Petersheck continued.  “It’s okay for players to not play a game because they don’t like it. It’s not okay if they don’t play it because they can’t. Those are two very different things.”

For the Jumpgate team, making sure players can understand the game and know what they need to do to achieve an objective is paramount in their desire to refurbish Jumpgate. “Everyday at 4:00 P.M., we bring over someone from a different project to test the game,” Petersheck said. “We videotape their faces, hands, and the screen, so we know exactly what’s confusing the player at a specific time. We just sit back and watch them play. It’s painful to watch people play, because there are all these signifiers on the screen telling people where to go, and for some reason they don’t see them. It’s our job to figure out why the players don’t automatically see these symbols.”

“We really try for 80-90 percent accessibility,” Petersheck continued. “If eight out of nine people can get through a particular area, we’re there. After that point, people will spend a lot of time learning, for example, how fifty man raids work. But they’re not going to take a lot of time learning how to swing their sword.”

Missions in Jumpgate Evolution may include a difficulty adjuster.

One of the key elements that has been improved in the revitalization of Jumpgate is the mission system. Procedural missions, which are a fairly common trademark of space combat sims, have already been integrated into the early version of the game. Petersheck, in his talk with Ten Ton Hammer, talked about two particular missions – an ore-hauling mission and a kill-X-mobs mission – but suggested other missions that were available including combat, patrols, mining, and delivery.

There are a few elements of the missions that NetDevil is still playing around with, including a difficulty adjuster for players that might want a more challenging experience. “Let’s say I’m a beginner player,” Peterscheck stated. “I may want to choose easy for my initial mission level. But if I’m a veteran, I may want to ramp up the difficulty for a more trying experience. This way, if a player gets blown out of the sky, he thinks it’s his fault and not the fault of the developer for making the game too hard.”