Jagged Alliance: Flashback Kickstarter Update #7, $121,718 and Counting

The latest update for the Jagged Alliance: Flashback Kickstarter campaign from Full Control is a relatively uneventful one, but points to an interesting Reddit IAmA Q&A, from which I’m going to quote a few choice snippets:

Item combinations were at the core of JA series gameplay. Finding a scrapheap in JA2 meant finding treasure. The community later expanded this into “serious” weapon attachment systems. Which if any type of item combos will your engine support?

We definitely want to include trash items and finding these randomly around the map.

This could unlock an entire crafting system, but this is not part of the core game for us in the minimum budget. For us we want to get a JA2 style engine up running with a new story – and make the story as big as possible inside the budget + enable modding for expansion.

…

One of the biggest grievances modders had with JA2 and subsequently BIA was hardcoding of important elements and a lot of creative effort went into reverse engineering instead of actual modding. Do you plan to design your game to modding friendly or you feel obliged to “protect your baby” (one of rather infamous Ian Currie’s quotes)? Which parts will be open to outside changes (we’re talking expert coders, not regular gamers)?

There are 2 parts to this.

We are already in talks with some well known modders (cannot say who until they sign on) to help us identify which parts of the game should be moddable, and what the given file formats and data formats should be.

The other side of the coin is, that we are not making a game engine that others can mod into all corners and details. There will be parts that are closed off, simply because of the fact we are making a moddable game. Not a moddable game engine.

Examples definitely include adding and modifying weapons, new units and so on. All the obvious things.

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1) I have understood that you’re going to keep the JA2 core gameplay mechanics (which is great). What improvements (the “additions of our own”) are you going to implement regarding the gameplay mechanics?

2) You wrote: “when entering an undiscovered sector most of it will be black, and is only revealed as you explore it.”. This sounds Warcraft to me. Is your plan that all new sectors’ maps are black? Should’t mercs usually know the outside layout of the area?

3) Can you hint about the mercs you’re going to do first?

4) On the second most unfortunate scenario (the first one is that the game doesn’t meet its expectations; which doesn’t sound likely due to the turn-based JA2 direction). If the kickstarter fails, which of these choices describe you the most accurately?

a. Let the Jagged Alliance franchise to be as it seems to be too risky and there are not enough potential buyers. b. Negotiate funding with bitComposer. We now have enough feedback from the fans thanks to the kickstarter and know which root to take.

c. Come back with a new kickstarter of Jagged Alliance 3 or fund the game by ourselves after releasing Space Hulk and creating a demo to convince even the most pessimistic fans.

d. No comment. Press [R] for rocket launcher due to the tricky question.

I’ll try to split this one up in multiple answers.

1) Core mechanics should stay as intact as possible. There might be some contradictions with 1.13 mechanics like suppression and better cover display.

We want to definitely add onto the strategic layer more, while trying to keep the tactics part pretty similar to JA2. This means base building and factions for example. We got some updates out on the kickstarter page that go a little more into detail on what we want to do

2) Fog of War – it totally depends on where you enter and what intel you have. Did you maybe talk to the locals to gain info on sector X? Did you find a map? Did you upgrade your base with some tech that allows for air recon?

But its not something we are 100% fanatic about, but its something we want to try to experiment with to give the game an exploration aspect. Knowing that there is a chest on a small island in a swamp automatically makes you go there. Why not discover each sector first?

But for some sectors it makes no sense to have FoW – definitely!

3) The i-team definitely is back. They are some of our favorites and one of the reasons we wanted to bring in the Red Army as part of the story in such a prominent way.

4) Presses frantically RRRRRRRRRRRRRRR

😀

I think c) would possibly be out of the question. If we cant get backers for even a small budget (350 IS small and can only be done because we got a lot of existing code and assets) – then there is no sound way of making a business case that warrants us to do it ourselves on our own money. We have to make a living and pay for food for 12 people. So we will most likely turn our backs towards JA and look at other IPs

THIS is the chance for the JA community to try to back a fan studio game. So there might definitely be a mix of a+b. But thats way too early to say. We believe in this project and will fight it to the end.

We REALLY want to do this. So please back us and prove everyone wrong that the JA brand is not dead yet

Don’t forget to check out the full Q&A on Reddit if you’re interested in the project.