"Galactic Imperia is the next evolutionary step..." auf MMOFacts.com

"Galactic Imperia is the next evolutionary step..."

(15.12.2007, 16:41:46) Imperia Online is a well known strategy PBBG, played by hundreds of thousands of players. Imperia Games recently launched their second game: Galactic Imperia. Even though it is based on the same core, it promises to be a completely different gaming experience. We have spoken to Dobroslav Dimitrov, founder of Imperia Games.

Galaxy-News: Hi Dobroslav! Please introduce yourself to our readers.

Dobroslav Dimitrov: My name is Dobroslav Dimitrov and I live in Sofia, Bulgaria. I am 29 years old long time strategy gamer who has been fortunate to make his favorite hobby a full time job! I graduated with Finance and started a business with Internet Cafes and Computer game clubs and before starting Imperia Online I already had three of them – I guess I have always tried to find an excuse to play games  (I mean being an owner of computer clubs means I had to do a lot of “product testing”…). The clubs where called Xaoc (which means Chaos) and this is the nick I use when logged in our forums, playing games and etc. I am a hardcore strategy gamer, I don’t play anything else but strategies - starting with Civilization 1 I have played every new installment of it plus all Warcrafts, Age of Empires, Heroes of Might and Magic and of course the earth shacking Total War series. All of these games have influenced the design of Imperia Online (especially Age of Empires and Total War) plus my second hobby – Military history. Currently me and Moni Dochev (my partner in Imperia Online, who is the lead programmer) are operating Imperia Online, Galactic Imperia and working on our third project, which has a code name GW.

Galaxy-News: What does your daily work at Imperia Games look like? What are you responsible for?

Dobroslav Dimitrov: Well my work day is very hard to define, because it really never ends. The first half is rather boring – all these very boring but very necessary business tasks that keep the company going… and in the second half or as most of the times happens in the evening and night is the fun part – game designing… My main responsibility besides as mentioned before the business stuff, is the design of the games – everything from the core idea to the fine details. I guess this is the most fun of making a game, but it really is not as easy as it seems – making an all around balanced economy model, battles, who/what does what – it is a lot of brainstorming and writing.

Galaxy-News: You recently launched your second game: Galactic Imperia. It's another strategy game, but based within a different setting: space. What is the difference to Imperia Online, and how did the gameplay evolve?

Dobroslav Dimitrov: Galactic Imperia started almost as a simple mod to Imperia Online suggested by some of the players of IO. We were already working on GW, which was going to be our second game when we took the decision to make GI. Of course, soon after we started working on it we realized that an entirely new battle system is necessary, then came the logical decision to rewrite the entire engine of IO from scratch to fit the new ideas and when we were done with everything, turned out that GI is an entirely new game based on the core design of IO… For the inexperienced gamer the differences may not be this obvious (I guess Warcraft and Command and Conquer would look very similar to someone who hasn’t played them, but we know they are completely different besides being RTS) but the gameplay and experience of playing is quite different. The battle system is using an entirely different logic and the ships have completely different abilities, which makes old strategies useless and even the most experienced IO players would find attacking challenging (at least until they learn the new stuff..). The alliance part of the game is completely changed with an entirely different set of rules for alliance managing and wars. The time necessary to play has been substantially decreased from IO, which is very important for all players, while the interface itself is much more ergonomically organized to decrease even further the necessary clicks and time to get things done. Overall Galactic Imperia is a game on its own, based on the core of IO, but improving from it in every direction, basically many of the changes in GI would most probably be implanted in a future major upgrade of Imperia Online – GI is the next evolutionary step in the IO design.

Galaxy-News: What's the communities' influence on future development plans?

Dobroslav Dimitrov: Players’ suggestions have always been read and paid attention to with great interest. However, sometimes it is hard to find a viable idea because most people give them to fit their play style and point of view. Usually after a hot discussion in the forum, when all points of view have been written out a balanced suggestion is created. By reading what player have to say and suggest we see what players like to talk about what players are excided about, so yes, gamers do influence our decisions a lot.

Galaxy-News: What is your personal highlight within the game? What are you proud of?

Dobroslav Dimitrov: Well there are many stuff I am very proud of – starting from the economy of the game, the game resource market, alliances, battle engine, the good looks…. However, if I have to pick one single thing it would be with no doubt the Battle engine. It may sound like bragging, but I don’t think there is another game out there that can even get close to the complexity of our battle simulator. It has been greatly influenced by my knowledge of how real medieval battles were fought and our desire to make things as real as possible (we do not like the fantasy strategies – things have to be as real as gameplay allows it). The battle simulator basically simulates very realistically what happens during a real battle. Troops have morale, which decreases or rises during the battle depending on how it is going (if you are losing more troops than the enemy, your troops will be losing morale faster, while the enemy’s troops will lose less…), the fatigue is considered in the morale as well and when an army drops bellow particular morale it is endangered to flee the field even if it is superior in number. Equal armies never fight to the death – they fight until one of them breaks its lines and runs away… (anyone who has played Total War, would know what I am talking about) Cavalry can fight on the flanks with bonus, but the possible number depends on the size of the center of the army (you cannot have all of your cavalry on the flanks if no other troops are presented), have a bonus at first impact with the enemy, the archers fire couple of rounds before everyone else killing and decreasing the enemy’s morale before the melee troops engage. Every unit has its counter unit and every combination of units can be defeated with a different combination of cheaper army, so there isn’t any dominating units or combinations of units…. No single battle would end the same way when calculated because everything depends on how the troops will match each other during the battle and every time is different… The battle simulator is something I can really talk about all day, so I guess that is the part I am truly proud of – for me designing it and Moni for going to hell and back programming it…

Galaxy-News: What technology are you using and why?

Dobroslav Dimitrov: We try to take advantage of all technologies available, so we can deliver the best looking product in combination with the best possible usability (too much flash is bad, too much simplicity is also no good..), so the list is rather long: php, mysql, ajax, javascript, css…

Galaxy-News: When did you start working on Galactic Imperia?

Dobroslav Dimitrov: We started work on it in March of 2007 and by mid October we were ready to launch it. Our third project GW has been in development since December of last year and should be ready sometime in January 2008, but it is an entirely different game, using an entirely different technology and so on, so it is taking longer to make.

Galaxy-News: How much time does a player have to spend within your game on an average day to stay on top?

Dobroslav Dimitrov: There is always a problem with the necessary time for playing real-time games such as IO and we constantly try to decrease it. With IO a player would need to log in the game couple of times a day for 30 minutes or so (that is if playing peacefully, if you want to be aggressive much more time is necessary to find, spy, attack targets), for GI the necessary time has been decreased quite a bit and I am confident that the game can be played with just two log ins a day to stay ahead. However if a player devotes a lot of time it will be stronger than someone who does not have as much time.

Galaxy-News: How many people are currently playing and what are your future plans for new features and yourself?

Dobroslav Dimitrov: There are currently about 100 000 players in our games, but their numbers are growing daily, as we register more and more people everyday from many countries. The future plans are rather bright  - as already discussed, we have launched our second game and we are very close to complete the third one, which will really be something to see – it is our most ambitious strategy game as of yet. Our approach and vision on creating games is that they must be as close to reality as possible, so all of our future plans are in this direction – improving gameplay to be as entertaining as possible all while being so realistic that the label “simulation” be more appropriate than “game”. For example the battle system of the new game is aimed to be more like something the military might use than a game platform (while being very user friendly). The economy model is also designed to mimic closely reality. However, if faced with a choice of reality or gameplay balance, the gameplay balance always comes on top. So, I guess me and Moni are having a real hard time staying still and have prepared a lot of surprises for the browser gaming world – stay tuned.