Ég fann þessa grein á netinu og fannst hún áhugaverð því að Star wars Battlefront 1 er tær snilld en hér eru fyrstu fréttir af númer 2:

We loved Star Wars Battlefront. The combination of SOCOM style action, ground, vehicle and air combat, wrapped up in the seminal Star Wars universe was a winner on so many levels. Now, Pandemic Studio has evolved the original game into something not just great, but truly stunning and a must for Star Wars fans the universe over.

Battlefront II once again delivers team-based combat on an epic scale with the Separatists taking on the Republic, and the Rebellion facing down the Empire. Choose your side and character class from a garrison of 60 character classes, including a whole new Commander class that will boast the ability to boost your comrades' hit points, move speed and other groovy buffs.

The other significant character addition is that the Jedi/Sith uber-characters are fully playable. This acts as a reward for you (as a standard character) to temporarily turn into your faction's Force user (Darth, Obi-Wan, etc.) and decimate the opposition. This can be set as a reward for the player with the highest kill score, or even to aid the character with the lowest. Play the Jedi well - high enemy body count, take minimal hits, capture strong points - and you can stay as your lightsaber-wielding powerhouse. Do badly, and you revert to your grunt status again.

Perhaps the most exciting new inclusion is full space combat, a far cry from the limited low-level dog fighting of the original game. In the level we were shown, a classic-era Stormtrooper spawned in the hanger bay of a Star Destroyer. Running around this huge hanger, he hopped into a TIE Fighter, headed towards the hanger's force field, and flew right into an epic space battle that had my mouth agape.

Star Destroyers broadsiding Rebel Frigates, X-wings dodging the turbolaser fire to attack your wingmen… and none of it was for show; you could strafe the Frigates, take down the X-wings and even blast through into the hanger of an enemy ship, jump out of your TIE, blast the assembled Rebel forces and take down the ship's shields from the inside. Awesome in the extreme.

While all this is great in the 24-player online battles, the offline story mode has been equally refined. Focusing on the Clone Wars era, you're cast as a Clone Trooper (in whatever class you fancy) in the 501st Platoon as you fight you way through the movies, aiding the Republic to (and here comes an Episode III spoiler) your ultimate betrayal of the Jedi and ascension to being the Emperor's personal battle unit.

Just when you thought it couldn't get any better, Pandemic tells us that Battlefront II will also be coming to PSP (PlayStation Portable) for WiFi Jedi action. The bad news is you'll have to be patient, as the Force will not be with us until autumn 2006.


Hérna er frásögn annars manns sem vann við að gera leikinn.

We're putting in space combat with ships that you can board and fight in. We've added a bunch of playable Jedi that you activate as a reward for objectives you complete. We've designed an engaging single-player campaign that's based on the 501st Legion (the Star Wars über-fans that dress up as Stormtroopers). We're also taking you to the battles of Episode III; so the major battle scenes that had only minutes of screen time can be played for hours and hours.

Star Wars Battlefront II is practically an encyclopaedia on Star Wars, covering the wide range of action you've seen from Episodes I-VI. In addition, Battlefront II is releasing on PS2 and PSP (PlayStation Portable); and will be localised in multiple languages: English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, and Japanese.

With all this new content, platforms, and localisations, you can see how you need a team of producers to manage the logistics, prioritise the key tasks, and coordinate the team effort to deliver a final polished game.

A grand army of the Republic

As producers, we're responsible for all of this to come together, yet we're not the ones physically creating art assets, writing code, or balancing gameplay, like an artist, programmer, or designer respectively. So how do we do our job? The answer is as cheesy as it is true: teamwork.




A good example of this is in the early stages of Star Wars Battlefront II, where each producer managed a cross-functional team of programmers, designers, and artists. Each team was grouped together to focus on specific aspects of the game. We called these teams “Task Forces” and our areas of focus ranged from new features like Jedi and Space Combat, to core game features like the HUD and vehicles.




The producer role was to guide the brainstorming discussion and translate emotional comments and suggestions like, “I want the Jedi to feel like a bad ass…” to tangible tasks like, “ANIMATION: Jedi Back Flip”, or, “PROGRAMMING: Jedi Force Power: Choke”. By the end of this process we rolled all these up into a mammoth task list. This task list served as a roadmap that steered the efforts of the entire development team.

Ewok and roll

Managing a cross-functional team is a basic project management role that you'll find in many professional organizations. We wouldn't be a game company however if we didn't put our own creative spin on this. So as producers, we're also “Captains” of cross-functional multiplayer teams in a highly competitive Star Wars Battlefront II league.




Each of us leads a cross-functional team of programmers, artists, designers, and QA, and battle it out once a week on new Battlefront II maps and game modes. My team, Moon Over Endor, is currently enjoying the Cinderella story, going from worst to first. We're on a 12-0 winning streak and nipping at the heels of Vader's Fist for first place. Yes, we are all big Star Wars geeks.

That's no moon, it's a bug report

Of course, there are legitimate merits to these matches beyond bragging rights. After each match, all participants report bugs, exploits, and balancing suggestions to the senior producer. That feedback is discussed amongst the department leads and director and in many cases incorporated into the game.

It's also a reminder for all of us that we've signed up to work at a fun factory. It's our goal that the fun we're having making and playing this game, will find its way into your hands through your PS2 or PSP.




So in closing, being a producer on Star Wars Battlefront II means bringing a diverse team of artists, programmers, designers and QA together to build a wide variety of new content: space combat, playable Jedi, a rich single-player campaign and Episode III maps. Some strategies we employ to accomplish this are fundamental project management skills, while others are a bit more eccentric. The end result is to deliver a polished and fun game that translates the Star Wars fantasy for gamers from screen to reality.