Bernd: Some reviews and a video

I have been saying some things about the reviewing process of our game in the past.

Even though it would be great if a reviewer would have to play through all campaigns of a game (and that would mean not just the Terran story in our case) before casting a judgment, this IS too much to ask. With our game this would definitely be a job that exceeds the time an average reviewer can spend on a game. Wouldn`t it be nice then if magazines could openly point out which percentage of the plot and possibly even which percentage of other sandbox features of the game, they really saw?

Anyway, here are two of the more recent reviews. They had the game for a longer time and HEY: They are coming to a nice conclusion, so I obviously have to like em too ;-)

This one is from IGN and THAT one from Gamesradar is even better.

Oh and I just found this little video on the internet where I was interviewed at GC in August (remember the pictures of the X Girl).



And yes it`s Lehahn with an "n" at the end ;-)

Cheers and have fun playing X3:Terran Conflict.

-Bernd

Markus: Solar System

Hi

My name is Markus Pohl, and I've been working on X3:TC as art director.
I've been working on the X series since X2: The Threat and my main work area is 3d graphics. this ranges from modelling/texturing, coordinating external teams to writing exporters & plugins for 3d studio max.

For X3:TC there were a lot of new art assets needed. the most obvious ones came with the integration of the solar system and its inhabitants to the universe. I've created the solar system planets & backgrounds for those. As some of you will surely notice, I've not always sticked to all the scientific facts, but (like in the case of Venus) let my imagination play in, too. some of the solar systems planets are a bit boring in reality - so I decided to interpret them more freely to get atmospheric sectors.



Though the best looking planets we have in the sol system were created by nature and I tried to stick as close to the originals as possible: jupiter and saturn.



One of the main restrictions for planet design was texture resolution. for normal X3 planets we use a technique to circumvent this limitation, but for large scale surfaces that feature lots of unique details (jupiter's stripes & red spot, mars' craters, plains & volcanos) only texture resolution helps.






The other big chunk of assets came in with the terrans themselves. Though we had already seen some of their ships in X3:Reunion, we obviously needed a lot more of them - as well as factories, stations and the famous ringstation around earth.






The ships are divided up into military ships and civil ships, so for some classes you will find mutliple ship designs.

Here are some M3 impressions:


and some stations




we decided to make the terrans bright, clean & huge. they were staying in their system for quite some time, afraid of the terraformers to return. so they have built up an impressive defence force with huge military stations, outposts and defence fleets, always ready to attack. just try flying to earth after beginning the game, you will surely meet them ;)





there is a lot to see & explore, I hope all of you enjoy playing it!

-Markus

Klaus: UI development

Hi, I'm Klaus Meyer, one of the programmers at Egosoft, mainly involved in interface programming for X3: Terran Conflict. I've been a great fan of the X games since X: Beyond the Frontier, and started working for Egosoft in 2002, during the development of X2: The Threat. Almost at the same time I also started studying computer science, so my working times have been pretty irregular since then. Ironically, a few months ago I had to suspend my work on the user interface to take an exam on user interface design. But don't worry, that doesn't mean that the UI in Terran Conflict is only half-finished. ;)

The new UI concept that you can see in X3: Terran Conflict was designed by one of our artists, Christian Vogel, and implemented by Michael (aka BurnIt!) and myself. At first we were unsure if we should implement it since it's a radical change compared to X3: Reunion... but after all, X3: Terran Conflict is more than just an add-on, and the improvements over X3: Reunion are so enormous that we just had to try it.

In X3: Reunion there are three separate menu systems that have evolved over time: The big standard menus, the so-called quick menus at the bottom, and the icon menus in HUD and in the sector map. For X3: Terran Conflict the standard menu system has been overhauled and the rest has been replaced by the sidebar and context menus. You will also find that there is no such thing as a big "ship menu" or a "station menu" any more, which have been rather central menus in past X games. Now ships, stations, and other objects "only" have unified context menus, which allows for much quicker interaction.


Another important change is the new mouse control. You can steer your ship by pressing the left mouse button in space and keeping it pressed while the ship turns towards the mouse cursor. This steering method is known from the game Freelancer and works very well - that way it's possible to play the game almost completely with the mouse: The scroll wheels adjust the ship's speed, and you fire your lasers with the right mouse button. The lasers will even fire towards the mouse cursor! But on the other hand, in this case you'll have to live without the Auto Aim feature. If you don't want to keep the left button pressed all the time, you can turn the cursor flight mode on and off permanently with the space bar. (Some playtesters prefer the scroll wheel button - of course you can customize the controls.)



It's still possible to disable the mouse cursor and steer the ship directly with the mouse as in earlier X games, this is what we call the classic mode. In this mode the left mouse button is also available for control mapping, in case you want to fire with the LMB.

I guess that many of you are just reading these lines in the hope of an answer to THE question: "Can I remove the sidebar?" This question pops up in many comments on in-game screenshots, so here's the answer: Yes if you play in classic mode, and optionally in cursor steering mode. Or if you disable all HUD elements for nice screenshots. You can still open the sidebar with the keyboard then - but if you play with a mouse cursor, it's always there so you can click on it. Just give it a try, it may be better than you thought.

THINK video now released.

TRADE, FIGHT, BUILD, THINK
These are the four keywords which stand for the freedom to do what you want inside the X Universe. So there will also be four trailer videos talking about the game features, one for each topic.

BUILD was already released a few weeks ago, and today we added THINK.

Here are the (low quality) Youtube versions, but to seriously watch them, please download the high quality XVID versions from egosoft.com under DOWNLOADS (also available are German localised versions!).


Think Trailer: English version


Build Trailer: English version