I thought it might be fun to hear from the devs on a slightly different angle about the game. I'm sure they are tired of answering the same old questions day in and day out, so I figured I'd ask some that might grab interest.

 

Having been in the game industry, for me at least, there's things I'd like to know about the creative process they used when working with the game and the actual job, rather than the game itself so I really hope to hear back from the Dev's and see if we can get to know them from a different angle. So I'll ask 3 questions for each of 3 categories

 

First up from the technical side:

 

1. What was the deciding factor in using HEROengine? Was it technical capability, or more because of it's cloud like nature? (Not counting financial reasoning)

 

2. Some of the animation is much smoother than others. Was the whole thing done with Key frame animation or was motion capture involved? What was the deciding factor in choosing an animation method?

 

3. When working with the objects in the game, are you to stay at a certain polycount? If so is it more because of the engine or just a standard that was decided by the team? (Modelers never get any love)

 

Next up is Art.

 

1. What does the art team draw inspiration from? Strictly star wars or are there other mediums that get used for the inspiration? (INspired by the makeb artwork) for example, square enix is known to take inspiration from the Jpop star Gackt sometimes. (Genesis from FFVII: Crisis core)

 

2. The Makeb artwork looks really good, and I noticed it had kind of this paint style to it. Was this artwork does within photoshop/gimp etc.. or was this really a painted work? (Some of the transparency makes me think photoshop) which is faster and more effective for the art team?

 

3. Sometimes a concept artists is given this huge text describing an environment, and expected to work off just that alone. When concept artists are working on a projects do they work closely with the designer for this, or are they given a huge pool of information and throw their own unique touch to things?

 

Now for the last trio of questions, concerning the people themselves.

 

1. Game Design is a very competitive industry, and very hard sometimes to work in, what is your motivation for having come to the industry? Was it a choice because of a love for games, or was it more of that's where your skill set led you?

 

2. Sometimes you have those day's where things just aren't going right, and you have to work those ridiculous hours. In general game design before the launch of a title we sometimes have what I came to know as a death march, (Huge shifts, Lots of coffee, monster, redbull and the like) Is that ever an issue in an ongoing project like swtor? How does your team handle those kinds of scenario's if present?

 

3. This ones for the lead designers out there. In my experience, the lead design bounces around quite a bit between deparments, going from Design document work, story, QA etc... If you've worked on single player games in the past, what's the biggest difference in your role in that compared to an ongoing game like swtor?

 

And that's that! I for once would like to know more about the people behind the project and how their skills and the process works a bit better. I understand that some information you just can't talk about, and it's different for each group, but I'd really like to better know the team behind the game that a lot of people have sunk over a year of their life into. maybe if this goes well I'll throw another batch out there, but sometimes I think it's nice to know a bit about the people, their inspiration and their driving force, you know, reinforce the idea that there's human's on the other side and not droids working around the clock.

I like these constructive questions! Rather than bashing SWTOR and BioWare, you actually ask for answers from some questions I myself have had. I applaud you good sir. Kudos.