Bobby: from fan to developer

For the next issue of the X Universe News, our regular email to the community, Bernd has asked some of the developers of X3: Terran Conflict to write a bit about their experiences over the past two years. The team that worked on this grand finale to the X series has been the biggest team to work on an X game ever, and the reason for this is that our core team was joined by some guys you may already know. So without further ado, let this series start:

Hi, I’m Bobby Wilkinson, one of the developers of X3: Terran Conflict, although some in the community probably know me better as Syklon, one of the developers behind the XTended mod. Some of the more observant may have already noticed a few XTended ships show up in some of the X3:TC screenshots shown so far. X3:TC includes what we felt were some of the best ships from XTended, which, even after being reworked to look and feel even better, should be familiar to XTended’s wonderful fans, while providing new, fun content for the rest of the players to enjoy. To mention some specifically, I’m sure all of our fans will be happy to hear about the inclusion of XTended’s Frigates (M7) and Heavy Corvettes, but with the massive amount of stuff X3:TC is adding, these are just a drop in the bucket of new stuff for X3:TC.

Before I started working on the X-series, and before I started modding the X-series, I was a player of the X-series, which goes for a lot of the other developers on the X3:TC team as well. If we weren’t making or modifying the games, we were playing them, and that gave us a great mix of ideas for improvement from multiple perspectives. A lot of the new features you’ll see talked about more as we move towards release were things that we, as both players and developers, felt were missing from previous games in the series.

Don’t let the numbering fool you, X3: Terran Conflict is more than just X3: Reunion with a bunch of new ships and missions, although there’s plenty of those as well! You’ve already seen and read hints about some of the new stuff, like boarding parties, bombers, flight wing groups, missile frigates, and a new User Interface, but there’s still plenty more you haven’t heard about yet, like non-player corporations, new and improved mission-handling, military outposts, and a bunch of new weapons. So get ready to find out about even more cool stuff as we get closer to release, not to mention get more details about stuff we’ve already mentioned, because, as both a player and a developer, I have to say X3: Terran Conflict is going to be the best game in the X-series yet.