MMORPG's have been around for over a decade now and whilst World of Warcraft is still the biggest seller but there are a lot of new people in the market. One of the most exciting people to come out of the digital wood work are the creators of The Repopulation. Reinvograting the Sci-fi MMORPG genre which seems to be overtaken with Eve...which frankly isn't doing so well, which is why The Repopulation could easily be on top.

QJ: But before I start waffling on how good these guys are, let's actually talk to one of the creators, J.C. Smith. Where did the inspiration for Repopulation come from?

J.C: We drew inspiration from so many things. From old pen and paper games such as Dungeons & Dragons, to MUDs, MMOGs, and from both fantasy and science fiction lore ranging from Tolkien to Lucas. The most important thing for us though was that we wanted to create a setting where players could have a common goal to unite under, but at the same time which would allow us to continue to expand for years to come. What we really love about a Science Fiction setting is that long-term the gloves are off. There is really no limit to the situations we can place a player into and we plan taking full advantage of it.

QJ: It's good to see it's not strictly science fiction but also to has different genres to help with everything else about the game. So how long have you guys been working on Repopulation?

J.C: We started serious development in the summer of 2008 using the Torque Game Engine Advanced and later porting that to Torque 3D when it became available. We got pretty far into development with Torque, and had test servers running for about 8 months, but we did have some concerns about scalability. Feature wise though we were pretty close to complete, and targeting an early 2011 release date. 

Something odd happened though in 2010, with both Bigworld and Hero Engine suddenly becoming available to indies. At that point the asking price for an indie license of Hero Engine was $5000 + 15% royalties, and we felt that we had to jump on it. Even though we realized it was surely going to set us back 18 months or more, we just couldn't pass up on the opportunity. We have been using Hero Engine since July of 2010, which forced us to rewrite previous code. 

We are happy that made the move though, many of our game systems improved the second time around. For example, the Torque version of our player controlled cities used a pre-built layout. You could take control of them and upgrade some RTS style controls of that point to spawn guards, grant bonuses, etc, but you could not visually see any of the changes.

Housing was all instanced through apartment buildings inside of them. The Hero Engine version allows you to place houses in any pre-designated area that is unclaimed or that is owned by your Nation. You'll see immediate feedback as you place a building. We've also added many new structure types and housing is seamless. 

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