CBJ: Paintball

Hi everyone, CBJ here. If you've spent any time on the Egosoft forums then you probably already know as much as you want know to about me, but for those who don't I'm (in no particular order) a software developer, veteran space gamer from the original Elite on the BBC Micro generation, and big fan of pizzas.

I originally started work on this project way back before it had a name, designing and developing the new Mission Director system for creating missions. At the start of this year I was asked to lead the X³: Terran Conflict project through the final stages of the development process. Hm, now that I think about it, Bernd said something about needing to concentrate on other things - if visiting games conventions was what he was referring to then maybe I got a raw deal... Anyway, like any project there were some good times when things went smoothly and a few bad times when things looked like they might go horribly wrong, but we got there in the end and delivered the Gold Master to the publishers pretty much on schedule.

With the Gold Master finally out of the door we decided to take a day off work to relax and celebrate. Team members flew in to Egosoft HQ from all over the world lured by the opportunity to shoot at each other... with paint. A couple of chaps from Koch Media were even brave enough to join us, though one turned out to be a bit of a paintball pro and the other was clearly taking no risks as he wore full body painting overalls. Despite grey skies and intermittent rain, and the best attempts of SatNav technology to send us to the wrong place, there were skirmishes in the woods, running battles in the fields and heroic dashes to capture the flag. Some people got a bit carried away and tried to shoot their own teammates (yes, I'm looking at you BurnIt!) but fun was had by all:




After a light lunch there were more exciting activities, including trying not to injure anyone with a bow and arrow:



watching some of the less sane team members falling into a pond:



working out how many developers you can squeeze into a small space without causing a rift in the space-time continuum:



and passing the boss's wife through a hole in a net:



So, I expect you're wondering: with the game about to hit the stores and the release party over, what's next? Well, even though the Gold Master has been delivered, we're not quite through with X³: Terran Conflict yet. We've woken Owen up and he's been assigned the task of continuing to improve the game after release. In fact by the time you read this the first patch should be pretty much ready, bringing you things like an extra non-plot mission, some nice little UI enhancements, and a couple of new script commands for the more technically-minded to play with. As for me, I'm now working on *censored* and *censored* *censored*... Oh dear, the NDA censor just kicked in. I guess you'll just have to wait and see what Egosoft are cooking up for the future, but playing X³: Terran Conflict should keep you occupied in the meantime!