So the first iwar started as hobby'st project or it was a first title of a new studio?

Particle Systems was a company started by independent developer Michael Powell, he'd previously been known for the futuristic racer Powerdrome (The inspiration for the Wipeout series) and the futuristic submarine game Subwar 2050 - very much a predecessor for I-War.

Glyn Williams who had previously written the classic Amiga/ST space-sim Warhead (another spiritual prequel for I-War), had worked with Michael previously, and became his partner at Particle Systems when they came up with the design for I-War.

They hired a small team of very talented artists and programmers fresh out of university, and so Particle Systems as a fully functioning dev studio was born.

They produced some amazing CGI concept trailers, and eventually signed up with Philips Media, who were branching out of CDi development into PC anfd console games. I first saw the initial concept trailer for Dreadnaught (as I-War was called then) in my interview for a job at Philips Media, and it blew me away.

Apologise for all the questions but I'm going to keep going until you get bored ;)

So I think the development time on I-War was about three years or so from magazine articles when it was released. What kind of changes were made over that time - were features left out that would have been to time consuming to implement? Was the game always mission-structured or was it originally more free roaming like IW2?

I-War didn't change fundamentally in concept over its three years. It was always a mission based simulator, though there was an intention originally of letting you setting your own jump destinations so you could explore. This was removed, but you could re-enable it using a command line option.

Probably the biggest change was removing the LST missions.

I once heard that some Particle Systems member wanted to write a I-War novel. Did he ever finished it or publish the script?

I also want to thank you and the whole team for making such great, unique games and even more for supporting them after more then one decade. Sadly nobody makes any AAA spacesims such as I-War anymore.

No real question, I just started playing I-War 2 for the first time (huuuge wing commander/freespace/tiefighter/xwing fan/privateer fan) and so far am loving it. I-war I was a little too complex in the interface for me, #2 is hitting the sweet spot though. First time I've actually busted out a stopwatch in a game though (damn gunstars intermitten powersupply)...

Only minor niggle is sometimes its a little hard to figure out what you're supposed to do, like dock with a random container and take it next to another container instead of just stealing the first container, but nothing too serious.

I suppose a complementary series of questions:

Was I-War2 always more open or was it just as mission-structured at one time? What was the process like of determining of how gameplay was going to change from I-War1? - i.e. what was the decision process to determine what would change in how one controlled ships, commands, etc, and what would remain the same? So there were a lot more people working on it ... how long of a gap was there between the release of I-War1 and the start of development on I-War2? Did all the original team remain? How long was I-War2 in development for?

I'm curious as to the process of creating a sequel to a game wherein one has to offer gameplay improvements (not just graphical ones) but maintain a certain sense of identity.

This is all from my perspective and how I remember it. I may have misremembered some bits...

I-War 2 was first proposed just around the time that I-War shipped to the states, via a cinematic trailer created by the original team's artists.

Development started once Particle Systems had signed a 3 project deal with Infogrames. Also considered for development was a PS2 I-War game called T-Zero, but that never went past the design proposal stage unfortunately. The Storm Petrel was designed originally for T-Zero, and there's a subtle reference to the cancelled proposal in the Storm Petrel's Encyclopaedia entry. The ship design was so good, and the high res assets had already been created so it was incorporated into I-War 2.

I was working on Defiance for the Deluxe edition while the I-War 2 team was formed. I wasn't a part of that core team at the beginning, in fact apart from the artists few of the original I-War team were involved in I-War 2 at first.

I-War 2 was always going to be a more open game than I-War 1, but it evolved much more over time than I-War 1 did. The most concrete part of the game that was worked out was the overall plot, and missions were designed and worked into that.

Originally it was also going to be a Dreamcast game which led to some design decisions with the various screens and interfaces that went on to cause some issues for the PC version, long after the Dreamcast version was cancelled. However some of the design constraints of developing for a console led to the much easier to understand HUD and command interface, so there were benefits to that too.

The piracy mechanic was partly based on a mission for Defiance where you swapped cargo pods on a freighter. It was realised that technology made it possible to add individual cargo pods to freighter structures, and these could be detached and stolen. Ironically the piracy mechanic didn't fully come together until really late in development, and it wasn't known how successful it would be. In the end it turned out to be the most fun and addictive feature of the game.

The original idea for the space stations was to have them randomly generated, with dockable segments, but the overhead from that was too huge, and in the end we decided on a few fixed designs.

We also planned to generate random side missions, but this proved infeasible, so we created a more limited set of template side missions instead.

The sequences in the station where you see the interior locations came about quite late in development due to feedback from Infogrames.

The game was in development for over two years, during which time the bottom dropped out of the space-sim market unfortunately, so by the time it was released it was critically acclaimed but sales were disappointing.

The game was developed on mainly Pentium 2 400mhz PCs, with Geforce graphic cards. The framerates and resolutions you can play the game at today were undreamed at that time. Max resolution we played at was probably 1024x768, and the framerates probably around 15-20fps. I remember seeing the game running on a Pentium III 1ghz Geforce4 machine after release and marvelling at how smooth it was.

It always really interesting to hear about development, thanks for such a detailed response!

I've been kinda-sorta thinking about making a fan product based on a very small part of one of the cinematics. Is there someone I can get in touch with for reproduction rights to that tiny portion of the IP? It may go no further than a single item for my own use, but I don't want to step on anyone's IP toes.

I can be reached at danandmarcy 4t gmail dawt com to discuss further.

just wondering if a solution has been found to the ghosting problems with bridge and cutscenes using the default wrapper and not the dgvoodoo which, like many others, i've found to be unstable

awsome game by the way

The ghosting problem is caused by an incompatibility in the glide wrapper included in the GOG version.. Using a different glide wrapper fixes it, but I've found they can be more crash prone.

I suppose the movies could be re-binked (the encoder used was Bink), as it's only a selection of cutscenes that are broken, but you would lose quality by doing that.

Are there any easter eggs or inside jokes in the games?

The only proper easter egg I know of is there's a secret 'body count' HUD display you can get in Defiance by enabling a cheat key. It tallies the number of people you've killed when you destroy their ships. The bigger the ship, the larger the number of people you've killed. I can't remember exactly how to enable this, as it's been a long time.

Other than that, the core dev team's names are on the bottom of the Spartacus, just as the original I-War team's names are on the UNO.

That's a pretty grisly easter egg. It kinda reminds of this XKCD :).