The Hellfire Games Interview, Hosted by AlphaZone4
by BONZO and Gideon, HSM team writers
The AlphaZone4 Q&A event with Hellfire games was a resounding success as far as developing a better picture of what Home Tycoon will be and how incredibly expansive and impressive the game is turning out.
Novus-Cooldown was very generous to give his time to answer questions (in some instances, repeatedly) for the Home community. So what have we learned of the game so far? The concept alone and the teaser slides generated a lot of excitement, and the further details learned from this Q&A are sure to elevate that excitement further still, as it is turning out even bigger than anticipated. Home Tycoon has been in development for a while, planning having begun in early 2011.
Home Tycoon will be a city simulator which will give you tremendous control over its development. The structure is much closer to Sim City than FarmVille, in that you’re building and expanding the city from scratch. The city and everything you do within it will be unique; there is no personal apartment but you will have the Mayor’s desk at the town hall to work from. You will be the mayor of the city, but you will also wear many hats, literally and figuratively. There will be a progression / leveling system but no details laid out for how that system will work. Your city will grow as quickly as you want it to; no restrictions of space based on progression will be in place as it is currently planned.
No initial purchase necessary to start in; you will be able to start your city for FREE! Your city will generate income based on your businesses, workforce and population as you would expect from Sim City. Your city’s population will build over time, and while you won’t see actual inhabitants in the city you will see more cars driving in the streets as your population increases. Hellfire will announce the Head Start Hat bonus as the launch date approaches.
You’ll earn reward items by playing through mission series; as you complete more missions you will unlock buildings, clothes, full outfits and items. No specific number of how many rewards will be available, but there are so many and more still in development that a figure couldn’t even be ballparked. However, if you are looking for a competitive approach you will not be able to go to war, pillage, destroy or set other users’ cities on fire, or even enslave your own citizens. Your citizens won’t necessarily love or hate you, but there will be a Happiness level to monitor that will affect the city’s economy. The game is played at your own pace, and Hellfire is really hoping to structure the game so you never feel like you spent more than you should have on coins.
Home Tycoon adopts a grid system
Farming or mining wasn’t specified as a means to generate currency. It seems acquiring resources will be based on business model simulations and the progression of missions. For an example of a mission: suppose you need to build a police station. You’ll talk to key people in your city to get it done. Then get resources to build it, then you’ll open up a new activity. Through completing missions and activities you’ll unlock even more content. Other similar mini games are planned. Will the story be customizable? In a way, there will be branching conversation paths similar to Mass Effect, or Dragon Age. You will have different conversation options during missions in Home Tycoon, with humor involved. While the stories are suitable for all ages, it was suggested there would be plenty of funny references in the missions that a younger audience may not get, comically and aptly comparing it to a Pixar movie.
While you cannot alter the landscape, there will be plenty of topographical features already in place to work with; having hills, flat land, and a beach available at launch. No swimming, unfortunately. The layout is set up on a grid system, so streets and buildings will take up a number of blocks on a grid; this structure prevents diagonal roads however, and different sized buildings will take up different amounts of space.
How big will the buildings get? The only answer we got was…HUGE! Skyscrapers were hinted at in the slides and in the Home Tycoon Facebook page. How many buildings will be available remains to be seen; no number has been specified and more buildings are being worked on. A wide variety should be available at launch with more coming out in subsequent updates.
Topographical features will be limited, so no desert town available. Period towns are also unlikely – most of the buildings are modern and near futuristic, but there are no space-themed, alien-themed or ancient-themed edifices available. Underwater cities will not be an option either.
No announcement of sports-themed content at the moment, it has been discussed but remains in the wish list. Early planning stages brought up the possibility of theme park rides to build and ride; however the scope of the game is already at the point where that would have added an extensive amount of work to the Hellfire team. It isn’t completely discounted as a possibility yet.
No natural disasters in Home Tycoon
These buildings are not intended to recreate any real world cities, so no recreating New York or London. It is encouraged to be more creative and unique than representational. Monuments may not be recognizable from real life. This still remains a bit of a fantasy game. The design of the buildings will not be so bland and cookie cutter; it was hinted without giving too much away that some building designs would see a lot of creativity. Building color choice is in the plans, but Hellfire still needs to work on how to implement that feature. Memory restrictions will not make it possible to enter buildings, or scale to the top and leap off them like Superman, but you have an entire city to explore.
You can think of your city as a HUGE personal space you get to build, but it is not specifically a personal space; it is a public space game with each individual account having control of its own city. No assistance required from friends or other users when building up a city — you can play through the game completely alone. Missions will not be restrictive to cooperative play with friends or other users. Hellfire really doesn’t want to tie your hands in that way. Trading resources or items with other players is not currently planned. If you destroy a building you won’t be refunded for it but you can put it in inventory so you can use it later on, so you never lose a building you pay for. What you can do with buildings will depend on how you paid for it, whether it is premium currency or in game currency. The city will have appropriately themed clothes to buy as well as rewards to unlock, some which are depicted in the teaser slides. Though many details were still omitted plenty of hints were dropped and a lot of information revealed.
There will be a police station, and you might be able to do some police missions yourself, but if you are looking to satisfy some bloodlust or a need for violence you’ll have to look elsewhere. You will not be able to shoot criminals in Home Tycoon; this is geared more for creating and expansion than destruction. Police missions couldn’t be discussed as they aren’t fully implemented yet. Arresting criminals may be a possibility, but how those missions will be structured remains to be seen. There will be cops involved.
The premium currency is sort of like Cutthroats coins, but there will be discount bundles. Unlike that freemium format you will get to keep just about everything you buy. So you won’t be spending all of your coins for temporary things that don’t stay with you. There won’t be a bundle to buy everything all at once, as Hellfire jokingly stated in response to a question; there will not be a gold building or $50 outfit.
Without disclosing an exact number in size – what would you use as a unit of measurement in Home? Avatar miles, square footage? – The cities will be big and you will be able to expand if you run out of space. You start out with one city and hopefully from there expand to more suburbs.
With details and behind the scenes issues still remaining to work out, there is a chance you will be able to earn premium currency without having to buy into it. That remains a possibility and not a solid feature of the game as of yet. Hellfire however is working to make it work best for everyone so anyone can enjoy the game.
When asked about the quality of the graphics as depicted in the slides, it was stated that the slides were very preliminary development screens and not necessarily final. However the expansiveness of this game has to work with in the memory constraints of Home to cram so many buildings into a city. So not everything will be ultra detailed, or it would crash but Hellfire is working on making it as pretty as possible.
Driving may be similar 3rd person camera to GTA
One of the biggest and most repeated questions on the community’s mind was if you would get to walk around your city or not. The answer is YES! You build your city in what was referred to as Planner Mode, which is a bird’s eye view, but then you can zoom in and walk and drive around in it with friends. How amazing is that? It will be your very own Home avatar and not a simplified Home tycoon avatar with forced clothes on you, and you should be able to change your clothes in any other user’s city.
Though you can drive vehicles, the perspective will likely not be from behind the wheel, and you should be able to exit your car anywhere. Car stealing will not be a part of this game, but you can collide with other cars. It is simplistic in scope but he assured us it would be really fun; especially with what he referred to as the Stunt Pack. Racetracks aren’t part of the plan, but road systems will be up to your creativity. Driving remains in development but currently it feels tighter than Grant Theft Auto, from what he has experienced — but he enthusiastically stated you can drift.
Hellfire is hoping to have the avatar in the car, but with a 3rd person camera perspective. Off-road driving may not make it into the game; cars can go off road at the moment, but this results in various issues that still need to be resolved. Street racing is planned, as depicted by the teaser slides. It is unclear how many people will be able to race at once; developers are hoping for a lot, but memory restrictions are an issue. Car variations will be unlockable and purchasable in packs.
How it differs from other tycoon games was too long an answer to disclose at the Q&A, so for that answer you will have to stay tuned — but he did state that the biggest difference between Home Tycoon and Sim City is that you get to build the city and then live in it with your avatar on street level. You can drive and walk around with friends and see everything up close. How many friends remains to be determined by how much memory is left to work with when it goes live. Think of Home Tycoon as a sandbox game where you control the fate of your city.
The dynamics of the game will be limited to the decisions you make. No natural disasters planned, as they don’t want to destroy your city. Weather changes are on the wish list, but unclear how dynamic they will have time to make it. Weather will probably be limited to rain for a while with memory constraints being a deterrent. Snow is a little tricky to pull off so no plans for that weather element. The planet the city exists on will not be in your control, but you can change time of day at will. Lights will adjust accordingly with building lights turning on — even headlights on cars when night sets in. No attacks from King Kong or Godzilla, or random alien invasions, so you won’t need to worry about that. Animals in the environment could be a possibility. Sound design will consist of ambient city sounds as well as music. Hellfire contracted the same talented composer from Novus Prime to work on the soundtrack.
The Train Station will be a free public space where the very same train you see riding past above you in the Hub will stop. While you don’t get to go into the train and actually sit in it as it rides, this is the transportation method by which you ride to your own and other users’ cities. So your friends will be able to visit your city from the Train Station, in essence being the Home Tycoon hub, but there won’t be any actual interaction with the train itself. Future interaction with the train may be a possibility but not currently in the works.
No Monster attacks
One of the most amazing and interesting features of the game is the ability to visit a friend’s city creation even while that friend is offline; so friends don’t have to be on or in their city for you to check out their creation. There are no plans currently to build railroad tracks in your city, but the development team has discussed it, and it may be a possible introduction in the future but no promises. There will always be ways to find and visit new cities from the train station further details on that will be revealed as more information is released to the public. NovusCooldown was not ready to explain how visiting other cities will affect things just yet, but that only hints that visits from other users will somehow affect your city in some way. He did clarify that aspect was still being worked out.
The game will be finite in free content, though that free content is quite expansive; but there will be separate land expansions, and also expansion content packs available for purchase. You’ll get missions to play from the start for free, and smaller expansion packs as well, but you will be able to complete the free missions at launch without spending a dime. More details to be disclosed on those in the near future. Currently the only plan is for automobile vehicles with no current plans for trains, planes or motorcycles at launch; however vehicle varieties are still being discussed and developed.
The preliminary slides indicated there would be a leader board. While no solid details were disclosed about the structure of the leader board rankings, it was stated that Hellfire would keep an eye on awesome cities players build, and will feature them in many ways; encouraging the community to let creativity run wild, because they will definitely notice. They are hoping to have different leaderboards based on different criteria, but the more creative your city is the more recognition you’ll get. City names may just be restricted to your user name’s city for technical reasons.
This is currently slated for an SCEA regional release; it is unfortunately not region free, but the EU version is being worked on and should launch soon after the NA version, and negotiations are underway to get it to Japan.
Novus Prime fans may rest assured that Hellfire has no intention of abandoning that long running game. Novus Prime will continue to see support even after Home Tycoon launches. Further development is lined up for Novus Prime, but Hellfire’s limited staff has to balance workload. There was however a hint that there may indeed be a link between Home Tycoon and Novus Prime, but without revealing any spoilers they merely suggested you will have to play to find out. Other Home content from Hellfire besides Home tycoon is in development but that still remains a company secret.
Thank You NovusCooldown
Beta testing isn’t planned yet, and no PlayStation Plus bonuses negotiated, but it is still at a very early stage. As expansive as this game seems so far, the PlayStation 3 and more importantly Home itself should be able to handle the scope Hellfire is shooting for. Promotional weekend events similar to the current Novus Prime events are a possibility from time to time, and Hellfire is planning to do some cool community contests with Home Tycoon. When a building design contest was suggested, it wasn’t completely out of the question so get creative juices running just in case. As NovusCooldown suggested, imagine the machinima possibilities with your own constructed city!
The most asked question and one that lingers on everyone’s mind is, when will this game be released? Unfortunately no launch date has been specified, only that it will be sometime later this year. Halfway into this year though, that is still promising news. Hellfire is really hoping everyone will enjoy Home Tycoon; it has received a great deal of positive response and plenty of SCEA folks really loved it at E3. Hellfire will be able to show off some game play once the game is in a more final stage. For more information as it becomes available keep track of Hellfire Games at facebook.com/NovusPrime and twitter.com/NovusPrime, and also with your friends at AlphaZone4 and HomeStation Magazine. As a community we are grateful to AlphaZone4 and Hellfire Games, and particularly to NovusCooldown, for this amazing Q&A and all the information on this highly anticipated game.
June 26th, 2012 by BONZO | 5 comments
BONZO is an editor and artist for HomeStation Magazine.
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Whoa! I must say this is a very huge undertaking on Hellfires part. I like the concept and will be very interested to see what this turns out to be like. It is certainly thinking outside the box, and that is something Home needs more of for sure. I have never played a Sims game, but I will probably enjoy this a lot from the sound of it.
Glad you guys got to do this so we could learn more about it.
SimCity was the best Burbie! I’m looking forward to this an awful lot too. The “ties” he mentioned with Novus Prime is a curious thing also, it’s all very ambiguous right now but hey, that’s what devs do best right!
wow this is really cool Bonzo! I wasn’t even really interested in the game until your article. The fact that we can walk around in our own city with our friends and visit the cities of our friends is a really appealing idea. I wonder how interactive each city will be- e.g. will we be able to create a restaurant and take our friends to dine in it? It does seem like an enormous undertaking as Burbie says. I too never played sims nor did I play Novus. Looking forward to seeing what Tycoon actually comes to. Hope one of you will invite me over to see your city soon
Excellent write up Bonzo! well done sir!
Thanks Gideon, and thanks for the transcripts. Couldn’t have done it without those. Wow talk about proxemics, NovusCooldown was just mobbed, I was feeling claustrophobia for him.
lol