News

[Heell]

http://www.rtsguru.com/article/5570/Nex ... ntrol.html

Next Jagged Alliance to Be Made By Space Hulk Developer Full Control
A new multiplatform Jagged Alliance game is in the works from Space Hulk developer Full Control.

Jagged Alliance is getting a new multiplatform installment from Space Hulk developer Full Control. The Danish indie studio landed the license from bitComposer, which will continue to publish the series.

The bad news is that the new Jagged Alliance will be done after Space Hulk, which isn't expected until fall, but that Full Control's development team seems to keep the oiginal in high regard. CEO Thomas Hentschel Lund said in the announcement that "“Jagged Alliance fits perfectly into our company strategy and portfolio as the game to do after we ship Space Hulk. It is one of the 3 games besides X-Com and Fallout that really defined the entire genre and is part of our DNA".

[Heell]

They started a kickstarter campaign: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/207 ... -flashback

Jagged Alliance: Flashback is our vision of returning a once critically acclaimed franchise back to its roots, it's not a reboot, it's a reset!

Our main goal is to bring back the tactical turn-based action that the original Jagged Alliance games are known for - the game was a thinking man's game, a thinking man with lots of guns!

The games were unique in their blend of tactical turn-based action, controlling and maintaining squads of mercenaries, off and on the battlefield. As a player the decisions you made had a direct impact on how you played the game. Additionally, over-the-top personalities, memorable characters and role-playing elements made the games difficult to put away once you were hooked.

Below we have listed some of the major game features we are planning to implement:

The game text will be localized to English, French, German, Italian, Russian and Spanish.

We will give you a choice of distribution, always including a DRM-free option, for both the core game and future expansions.

Our target platform is PC and the game will be available for Windows, Mac OSX and Linux.

With flashback we want to take you back to the cold war era and let you play the events that lead up to the founding of the international mercenary organization called A.I.M.

The story is set in the mid-1980s, on the Caribbean island group of San Christobal.

Following a coup d'état a socialist regime has been established on the island, a change that undermines the U.S. presence in the area.
Seizing the opportunity, a hard-line fanatic general leads an elite U.S.S.R. military unit to establish a military base right under the nose of the U.S. Under the guise of shipping humanitarian aid, large amounts of cargo and military hardware are headed for San Christobal. A Russian presence larger and closer to the U.S. than Cuba could potentially tip the balance of power and turn a cold war into a steaming hot one.

Under secret orders from the CIA it is now up to you to assemble a team of capable mercenaries, restore the democratic government on San Christobal and drive out the U.S.S.R. presence, by any means necessary.

We are aiming to build Jagged Alliance: Flashback around the core pillars that made the originals great; the deep strategy, the thrilling action and character RPG elements. The core game is essentially split up into 2 layers, a strategy layer and a tactical layer.

The content of the two layers are shown below:

Base Management is the strategy layer behind all the gun-toting and action, it is your base of operations, where you manage resources and control which missions to engage in.
It functions as a hub between missions and provides you with a map over the game world, it is also where you recruit, customize and take care of your mercenaries.
The base is also used to manage the training of your mercenaries, construction and weapon research/manufacturing.

The Tactical Screen is the turn-based action layer of the game, it features an isometric 3D camera view of the battlefield and it’s where you control your squad of selected mercenaries to achieve objectives and engage enemies face-to-face.
Gear, character attributes and weapons all affect how a mercenary performs on the battlefield.
There will be fog of war, which prevents a full view of the battlefield and hides enemy movements.
The mercenaries can take cover behind objects in the world to gain different levels of protection.
Mercenaries also gain new abilities as they survive more battles, but when they die - it's permanent!

We are Full Control - a small independent game studio based in Copenhagen, Denmark. Over the years we have specialized in the genre of turn-based strategy games and have several productions in our portfolio. In fact, Jagged Alliance: Flashback will be our 9th title, and our 5th turn-base game in a row.

Our productions have grown in size and complexity over the years, and we are finally ready to take on these iconic games like our current production Space Hulk as well as Jagged Alliance.

Our current project is a turn-based version of the widely popular Warhammer 40k title “Space Hulk”. With a successful Kickstarter project we can run pre-production of Jagged Alliance: Flashback while Space Hulk completes, and then go into full production on Flashback straight away once it ships - saving precious time to bring you the game as fast as possible.

While we have managed to secure the Jagged Alliance license, we have chosen not to pursue any funding through the license holder bitComposer, as we wanted to maintain and stay true to our vision of the game.

Knowing that we couldn't finance the game out of our own pockets, we started kicking around the idea of doing a Kickstarter campaign to reach out to the community for help - So, this is why we are turning to you, fans of Jagged Alliance and turn-based action strategy games, and are hoping you will be part of bringing back one of the most iconic franchises of the turn-based game genre.

Our approach for this Kickstarter funded project is transparency. We will give you the naked truth in frequent updates, as you are our backers and are entitled to know where your contribution endes up.

By pledging, you are not only supporting our vision of the game, you are also supporting the independent development of this game. We strongly feel that this should be a game by fans for the fans.

Unsurprisingly, it will be on PC.

[ksevcov]

http://www.vg247.com/2013/05/24/jagged- ... nal-hours/

The turn-based action “reset” from Denmark’s Full Control has passed it’s Kickstarter goal. For a while it wasn’t looking like the campaign would succeed but in the last two days funding picked up and finished $18,614 over the goal at $368,614 with 7,167 backers.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/207 ... sts/465433

Mercenary Personalities

One of the main complaints we had about recent attempts to make Jagged Alliance games was the removal of some of the humor and personality for each mercenary.

“Dont fix it if it ain’t broken” - remember?

So we are super happy to be able to bring back a lot of what defines the game - mercenary personality.

We are going to get back to the great 2d icons for each NPC and mercenary. They simply allow for much more personality than a generic 3d head that will never have as much detail as a well drawn 2d image. Together with some cool facial animations a lot of personality and feelings can be displayed.

Another very important aspect are the inter-team personalities. E.g. don’t put Fox and Buns together unless you want to listen to a cat fight making your ears bleed. While having the i-team working together will boost a teams performance.

A big amount of personality also comes from the voice over for the mercenaries. While we haven’t decided yet if we are going for English with a national accent - or having Ivan speak Russian only - we definitely want to get a strong personality shining through voice overs.

If you think you got what it takes to voice your favorite mercenary, or have an opinion on the English or non-English voice overs, head over to the comments section and tell us what you think!

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/207 ... sts/478137

World Economy

At the core of the economy we will go with a single currency similar to JA2 - money!

Discussion in the team about different options with multiple currencies all turned out to make the game way too complicated and not that much fun at all. Why? Easy one: That’d add a lot of unneeded micromanagement and players would spend way too much time with doing math on how to change this amount of that currency to another one to gain maximum profit. And to be honest: We’re making a game, not a geo-financial simulator.

So we will stay close to what Jagged Alliance 2 did, where you gain perpetual income from controlling sectors, solving missions, selling items and so on. And you will need that cash because your mercenaries need to be paid, militia needs to be trained and your base needs to be fortified. And with that system we are also going to balance the cashflow: Costs of fighting a war versus income gained from your sectors. But we’re also thinking about having some sectors which will cost the player money.

On this tropical island of San Christobal income sources are

> Taxes from controlled villages and towns

> Controlling sectors with production facilities like factories, banana plantations, opium poppy fields, brothels, ice cream trucks etc. These replace the “mines” from JA2

> One-time revenue from missions, intercepting drug traffickers, selling weapons, used condoms and so on

We have the idea of letting faction loyalty have an influence on incomes. If you are in bad standing with the drug lords, then running a drug producing facility will give you lower income as workers will be nervous all the time for retribution. Being good friends with local population will give you a little higher tax from towns as people will like you and work a little harder, therefore generating more money.

Control over a sector is exerted by you starting to train militia and/or fortifying it. The heavier controlled, the more control and the higher upkeep. Although training militia and fortifying the sector won’t be cheap.

Money is also spent on your mercenaries. Similar to JA2 you will hire mercenaries for a given period of time and you have to renew their contracts. Bringing in mercenaries loyal to other factions is possible, but might cost you a little extra. And some mercenaries simply will refuse to join you as long as you a rooting for the opposing faction.

An idea up for discussion:

> We are thinking about making some sectors a money-sink. For example a military base or a hospital. Because these things can become quite expensive in terms of maintenance.

> You can lose control of some sectors if your faction loyalty shifts.

> Roads and otherwise “empty” sectors cannot be controlled by anyone and thus cost no upkeep.

So nothing revolutionary here besides the faction loyalty being an influence. Your decisions about who to support will also be a decision about the money in your wallet.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/207 ... sts/484570

Mercenaries

Alllllll righty!!!

We have been through the list of mercenaries now and taken a look at who would qualify for a prequel, and who would be too young or not fit.

So without further delay, here is our current 3 lists. If we forgot someone you really want back (most likely we did), maybe misinterpreted backstories and ages or similar - give us a shout and we will take a second look. The lists are NOT complete through all games - we know that. And we cannot use Wildfire characters due to licensing issues.

Also remember that these are NOT lists of who will appear. These are qualifier lists ONLY. Additionally we have other mercenaries we want to add fresh to the mix.

Mercenaries that qualify for Flashback

Barry Unger

Gus Tarballs

Dr. Clifford "Cliff" Highball

Fidel Dahan

Helmut "Grunty" Grunther

Frank "Hitman" Hennessy

Ivan Dolvich

Earl "Magic" Walker

Ernie "Red" Spragg

Robert James "Scully" Sullivan

Dr. Donna "Spider" Houston

Dr. Q Huaong

Corp. Len Anderson

Rudy "Lynx" Roberts

Norma "Meltdown" Jessop

Carl "Reaper" Sheppards

Kyle "Shadow" Simmons

Sidney Nettleson

Kirk "Static" Stevenson

Stephen Rothman

Thor Kaufman

Victoria "Vicki" Waters

Dr. Mark "Needle" Kranhium

Gary Roachburn

Samuel Garver

Glen "Boss" Hatchet

Lesley "Smoke" Peterson

Jimmy Upton

Dr. Ahmad "Doc" Koolhan

Wink E. Dickerson

Lt. Bud Hellar

Larry Roachburn

Edward "Ears" Stockwell

Murray "Moses" Ebstern

Patrick "Screw" Phillips

Russell Hunter

Dr. Bernie Gloveless

"Unusually Ruthless" Reuban

Murray "Pops" McGillicutty

Col. Leo Kelly

Maybe

John "Bull" Peters

Dr. Daniel "Danny" Quinten

Edgar "Nails" Smorth

Ron "Raider" Higgens

Charlene "Raven" Higgens

Sheila "Scope" Sterling

Peter "Wolf" Sanderson

Do not qualify

These are primarily too young or have a backstory that just doesn’t seem to fit with a tropical island or to their personal background.

Keith "Blood" Hanson

Monica "Buns" Sonderguard

Luisa "Buzz" Garnea

Dr. Daniel "Danny" Quinten

Cynrhia "Fox" Guzzman

Ice Williams

Igor Dolvich

Dr. Michael "MD" Dawson

J.P. "Malice" Viau

Bobby "Steroid" Gontarski

Trevor Colby

Mary-Beth Wilkens

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/207 ... sts/486103

IMP Details

What made Jagged Alliance stand out back in the days? Well of course all those mercenaries with their own personality. But also the fact that you, the player, could be a part of that cool crew of crazy ones. You, or let’s say “we”, could be part of the game. With our own character. And the way Jagged Alliance introduced the players own character was very special. We actually can’t think of any other game which had solved the creation of a character in a more unique way.

The test you had to pass - filled with weird stuff - can hardly be described with a different word than “awesome”. And guess what? We want to bring that test back. So yes, this is an official confirmation that Jagged Alliance: Flashback will have a personality test within the game to create your very own character.

Sounds like there’s a “but” missing? If you thought so, you were right. Yes. The system of the I.M.P. will be back but we’d like to use different questions this time. You’ve read the old ones quite often enough and we’d like to bring in some new fun here. However: For the rest of the system we don’t want to change much. Why re-invent the wheel when the wheel, in it’s current form, is the best wheel you can have? Although, story-wise we have to include that the starting-stats and the equipment will be a bit different due to the fact that the player was hired from the CIA.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/207 ... sts/487138

Radio in JAF

Kaboom! As you may know, there’ll be an in-game radio in Jagged Alliance: Flashback. This means that here and there you’ll find radios to listen to and probably also be able to carry one with you for the road. Crank up the volume and go for it. To make this part a bit more interesting we’d like to add different music from the 1980’s era and include channels, each with their very own music style which people can choose from (in terms of modding we think we’re going the Grand Theft Auto way to allow people adding their own music, however that’s not yet clear).

While we won’t have Elliot, the idiot, in the game (which is for obvious reasons) you may have noticed that one of our backers already pledged to become the voice of the local radio. The radio host will occasionally be able to comment on the current situations happening in San Christobal. These are triggered either by the player succeeding or failing specific missions and can even be used to hint at troop movements across the island. Elliot might be gone and the faces change, but rest assured we’ll try hard to re-produce the same tongue-in-cheek situations and dialogue from JA2 in Flashback.