One of the developers of Project Offset, Nick Mohilchock, talks briefly about the process of developing games, and what the team is working on now for their new IP.

This is taken from the official Project Offset forums:

"I've been shy on updates as of late because I've been beyond busy working on gameplay and prototyping and other infinitely tedious work. The end result of which should catapult your in-game experience to new echelons of gameplay extacy. There are lots of things that I just can't say about it, so I thought instead, I'd give you guys a little bit about the actual process.

For starters, we're working on AI - how it behaves, what can it do, what's it's favorite color, etc. Designers and programmers work on these various characteristics to fine-tune an enemy or NPC so that it will behave realisticly (or not if the case is necessary) in any given situation. The goal is to make the AI appear smart, even if for the moment the decisions being made by the character are things like your distance to it, line of sight to it, the health it has left, how many friends it has left, or what kind of weapon or item you are using.

All of that is fine and dandy for a room or flat plane with nothing in it, but what if you eventually want to make a level with STUFF in it? That's where design goes into overdrive. It's not just making the level look cool or be short/long enough... every battle, every engagement and every objective is carefully constructed, tested, and reconstructed and tested many times. We have to be sure...or we're perfectionists... whichever excuse works best for you.

How does this all happen? One space at a time. Litteraly.

We'll start by making a section of the level we "expect" to be in the final product. In that space we'll place a couple of entrences, exits, walls, bends, elevation changes, deliberate lines of sight, and most important... cover. Then we play from one end of the space to the other. We tune the AI to use the space smarter when engaging the player, we tune the cover and the layout to be easier to navigate and more tactically advantageous. Rinse and repeat.

A few days later, we have the gameplay worked out. We know what we want to accomplish, we know what kind of features the programmers need to add to the AI, we know what size art assets we need for props and geometry to create the gameplay space, and we know what some of the limitations of the characters are when we plan the next encounter. It's a long, itterative and tedious process - but as I said, it will be worth it when the final product ships.

I know... not REALLY insightful, but it's the best I can do for now. Keep frosty and we'll have some announcements in a couple months or so. M'kay?"

http://forums.projectoffset.com/viewtopic.php?t=31...

Lol I read his last name wrong.

Hopefully they found those 360 programmers they were looking for :)

I can't wait to see this baby in action. I hope soon!

i shouldn't have told you about that site. now you won't shut up about borat!!

is this coming to 360

me too could turn out to be a BIG game..

from there job postings:

Xbox 360 Programmer

Primary responsibility will be to handle porting, maintaining, and optimizing the codebase for the Xbox 360. Experience developing for the Xbox 360 is a huge plus. Experience programming for console platforms is required.

I'm really excited to see how this game turns out... they get extra brownie points for saying M'kay :)

Thing is with this game is by the time it comes out it will look dated, much like Oblivion did.

Hopefully it comes out before 2008.

Would be nice to see the engine become middleware also, as i think it one ups UE3 in several area's.

Uh, the dragon demo doesn't look like it'll become dated for a LONG time.It already is middle ware. It costs about half a million dollars to licence though, which i think is cheaper than UE3.

My eye has been on this game for a long time.

half a million cheaper i think?