First, can you please give us a brief idea of the plot and storyline for FireStarter. You set off in the near future, when virtual reality machines are as common as trash bins on the street. When a virus infects one of the machines you, as the player, were incautiously playing with, the machine, which is a cryocapsule providing for your life-support, goes insane and you have to play according to its own rules. The crazy gimmick offers you a survival game, giving you time, weapons, ammunition, occasional power-ups and hordes of blood-thirsty monsters to oppose your noble intentions. The total time you are granted is 48 hours to get out of this make-it-or-die situation. Tell us about the general environment throughout the game. Is it as mystical as Unreal was when it came to music and sound, and at the same time as action based as the most crowded levels of the good old Doom ? You will find 16 levels in FireStarter, all of them are indoor or pseudo-outdoor ones and can be split into four major themes levels are stylised in: Space, Industrial, Empire and Excavations. All of the locations differ as in architecture, so as in atmosphere. Empire levels, for instance, will provoke the feeling of awe-inspiring history welcoming the player with gigantic statues of ancient gods, mysterious orbs of teleports, hidden underground passageways and so on, while space levels, for instance, will present somewhat electric atmosphere with a scatter of electronic sliding doors, metal elevators, spaceship-like several-tiered levels. It should be mentioned, that the game will in every sense encourage the player for action and virtually give no time for speculating the scenery: run and shoot is the right way here. No keys to find and doors to unlock – players just need to find their optimal way of movement on the level and stick to it. We strive to create a very dynamic game, so be prepared to get rid of numerous nasty monsters who will be pestering you very insistently. Different levels expose different monsters, including those of lower and higher classes. It has been said that there are 5 different characters to play, each with different abilities useful in combat situations. They also have the option to acquire special abilities as the game progresses. How does this come to pas, and can you give us some examples of such abilities ? Indeed, you will find a selection of five characters in the game initially – marine, gangster and agent are three of them. All the characters have some start parameters, with their own advantages and disadvantages – varying in life, armour and speed - along with their special skill (that of marine for instance, is taking additional armour on board). Depending on your character choice, further play-through tactics and way of your hero development will differ. The RPG component of the game lies in experience gained by your character for killing monsters. When experience reaches a certain amount, you can improve the skill of your character. With marine, for example, the parameter increase will look as follows: life - 30%, armour – 50%, speed – 20%. Apart from improvement of basic characteristic, you can develop special skills for your characters with experience. There will be several dozens of such skills in the game. To name a few, long jump, two-hand fire, stealth etc. To cup it all, FireStarter will also provide artifacts, to enable unique abilities of your characters. Time jumper could be named as one of such artifacts. The monsters present are divided into 3 classes: Demonic, Techno and Symbiotic. Tell us about them and their abilities. Each of the three classes will sport about 12 different monsters. Demonic monsters will be zombies, mutants, ghouls, demons etc, techno- ones are robots mainly, while symbiotic opponents include cyborgs, soldiers and so on. Monster abilities vary depending on their speed, strength, armour, intelligence, attack type and ability to act in groups. Special monster abilities enable them to teleport, communicate with each other, control the actions of lower monsters and more. Some monsters with lack of AI hunt in herds, while others are quite educated. What about the AI of these monsters. How do they operate, and what grade of opposition will they give an experienced gamer ? Generally, monsters in the game prefer to excel in strength and make use of numerical superiority. Still, for the benefit of intense and interesting gameplay, we will do monsters with special intellect. Group intellect, ability to communicate, control of lower monsters and some more AI features are deemed an interesting touch to standard set of AI possibilities here. You have chosen to supply 10 pieces of weaponry in FireStarter. Please give us some descriptions of them, and of the modifications that will be available. FireStarter will offer a total of 20 weapons, which is 10 guns in two modifications – light and heavy. First five weapons are built from real prototypes (for instance, saw, shotgun, assault rifle, rocket launcher), while the rest are fictional (plasma gun, for example). The difference between light and heavy gun modifications is not only visual, but also affects the rate of fire, destructive power, availability of alternative shooting etc. Light modifications can be used by all the characters with any level of skills and experience, while the use of heavy weapons will inflict penalty in character’s speed and jumps. Heavy weapon wielding skill developed will help to reduce and eventually get rid of such a penalty. From earlier interviews, you have explained an ordinary day in the life of FireStarter as follows: Getting up in the morning for a 60 second day, finding your gear and ammo, killing a huge amount of entities that doesn’t deserve to live, and finally, after 60 seconds, the stage is over and you’re hopefully still alive. This sounds very much like a plain multiplayer fight. What makes the singleplayer missions differ from such an experience ? I guess it’s chiefly the RPG elements which make this game stand out in single player. Possibility to beef up your character with new skills and abilities will encourage players for more action on levels and the desire to make a super hero out of your character. Additionally, there’s no passing from level to level in multiplayer, and the play-through aspect of single-player is quite a lot of fun. Can you give us a deeper insight into the different multiplayer modes that will be available. You have mentioned human against monster with respawn abilities in earlier interviews. Care to give us some more info ? FireStarter will provide a set of multiplayer modes: both standard and original ones, including deathmatch, cooperative, monster match, monster group control and probably some more. The mode you mention will offer a possibility for a duel between two players, when one of them plays as monster and the other one is human. Human’s task is similar to that in single-player, i.e. survive within a given time, while the one playing for monster is to get rid of the human. When dying, the monster-player will re-spawn. Monster player will play in team with real computer monsters also playing against the human. There are rumors going around regarding bot-implementation in multiplayer mode. What kind of behavior can we expect from these guys? Are they mainly to become a sort of opposition, or will they also become team based companions with the possibility of giving them orders ? We will provide more like a mob-against-mob game with monsters in multiplayer, rather than a team game in Counter-Strike sense of the word. Bot intellect will be limited by assessing leader’s (player’s) behaviour now and then to possibly adjust its own behaviour accordingly (attack more fiercely, retreat, flee etc). Can you give us some of the engine specs and what this will mean regarding computer power needed for playing. Is there any relations with the engine you’re using to produce others hits like the upcoming S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Oblivion Lost ? The engine of FireStarter offers quite a package of up-to-date features supported: realistic and dynamic lighting, shaders, high polygonal models, dynamic shadows, procedure textures, realistic physics, particle systems, vertex and pixel shaders, interactive level objects, distortable objects, group intellect of monsters and more. To play the game smoothly enough, you will require a computer of 850MHz, 120MB RAM, and GeForce2MX. No, FireStarter uses its own engine, a different one from that of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. What’s the current state of production. Will you be wanting any beta-testers in the near future ? We expect to complete the game for release early next year. Open beta testing is possible, though can’t say for sure now. Finally, has there been any changes towards the project these last few months that you would like to share with or readers. Anything we can brag to our friends about knowing :) Surely, we’ve done quite a lot of improvements lately. To name a few of the upgrades:

• rendering has been sped up twice
• T&L support improved – up to 300.000 polygons per frame at 60 fps
• realistic lighting implemented – up to 16 dynamic light sources on a level
• alpha version of multiplayer ready