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Another particular type of mission that Petersheck alluded to was a story-driven type mission, which the developers at Jumpgate are trying to implement. “We’re working on ideas on how to get more storyline into the game,” commented Petersheck. “That was something the original version of the game was missing.”

Eventually, Petersheck accepted his first mission and set off into space, which was a standard kill-and-loot scenario. As he was flying around, trying to catch the enemies that were evading him, Petersheck also made note of another impressive improvement made upon the initial Jumpgate. “There really wasn’t much AI [in the original Jumpgate], it was very PvP-centric,” he said. “We really wanted to add much more AI to the game.”

The Jumpgate team decided to make sure to fill space with monolithic structures, like this station.

With Hermann flying through the depths of space, it became evident that the game could be easily controlled with a mouse and keyboard combo, a huge step up from the joystick-only version of the original Jumpgate. Although players can still use a joystick, the mouse / keyboard combo makes the game accessible for thousands of potential users who don’t have their old joystick hanging around anymore. Including a mouse/keyboard combination also puts Jumpgate Evolution into the same type of gameplay that is available in Privateer, Wing Commander, and X-Wing vs. Tie Fighter.

As we were watching Hermann maneuver around other ships, asteroids, and the larger space stations, he pointed out a ship that had left one of the stations. “One of the cool things about Jumpgate,” he said, “is that it had a sort of real economy. In other words, everything was supply and demand driven.

“Let’s say a station needed to build a weapon and they needed a specific material in order to complete it. If the station didn’t have that particular element, it would generate a mission on another station that a player could take and fulfill,” Petersheck continued. “That’s great when you have lots of players playing, but you run into imbalance issues when there aren’t enough players to fulfill those mission. So we created an AI system that generates NPCs that takes these particular elements to and from other stations. Of course, once these convoys are out in space, you can attack them and destroy that shipment altogether; essentially creating a blockade that other players would have to break.”

In order to fulfill these particular missions, players will have the opportunity to find enormous asteroids that are floating around in the depths of space. Asteroids that players are allowed to mine will be denoted with bright colors of some kind – in our demonstration we saw asteroids with crystalline green, blue, and metallic gold markings. When you see an asteroid that can be mined, you’ll know. “It’s sort of like an Easter egg hunt,” Petersheck stated. “You’ll go out to an asteroid belt and attempt to find rocks that you can mine from. There will be lots of common asteroids, but you’ll know when you find a rich one.”

PvP will remain in Jumpgate Evolution.

Despite the intricate economy and resource gathering systems in Jumpgate Evolution, NetDevil’s goal for Jumpgate Evolution is to make the gameplay easy to get into. While many MMOGs require hours upon hours of play time to reach the “fun” content, NetDevil hopes to make Jumpgate Evolution accessible for players who may only have a few minutes a day to pilot their spacecraft. “Even if somebody doesn’t have 20 hours a day to play a game, they can still jump in, play for 30 minutes, have fun, and then get back to work,” Petersheck said.

For the existing Jumpgate fanbase, there’s no need to worry about the future of your game. Petersheck mentioned that PvP remains in Jumpgate and will remain a part of the game. NetDevil is still trying to determine exactly how the new player experience will run, whether the new players will be exposed to PvP environment from the beginning or if it will be a gradual build up, but they are certainly aware of the older fans being accustomed to a strong PvP element in the game.  

Petersheck is also aware of the fact that the current fans are very interested in seeing the number of people in their game increase, and that’s what the current team is trying to accomplish. “Sometimes I’ll enter the game as a complete newbie just to see what the initial player response is like,” Petersheck said. “More often than not, someone will greet me when I enter and try to help me. The other players want more people interested in Jumpgate.”

In the end, Petersheck wanted to make sure that potential players understood that NetDevil was trying to make a game that allowed for easy entry into the world, but also remained fun after the player had shot down their thousandth ship. “We don’t want players to say, ‘Ugh, now I’ve gotta go out and shoot some more ships’,” Petersheck said. “We want player to continue to have fun as they progress through the game and never lose interest in what they need to accomplish.”

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