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General discussionBombshell: Developer Q&A(88 posts)(88 posts)
(88 posts)
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Posted February 01, 2016
Join the team behind Bombshell for a special forum Q&A session!

We have invited two guys from the team behind Bombshell to come to the forums and answer all your pressing questions! The creators of the top-down explosive RPG will be hanging out with us here from 6pm GMT to 8pm GMT, but - as always - we’re giving you a head-start on asking questions.



Visiting the GOG.com forums, we've got:

Scott Miller (ScottMiller3DR)
-- The founder of 3D Realms and currently an adviser for the company.
-- In the past, he has worked on Wolfenstein 3D, Duke Nukem, Max Payne, Shadow Warrior, and more.

Fred Schreiber (freschism)
-- CEO at Indie developer Interceptor, and the Vice President at 3D Realms.
-- He has been working on games all of his life, from Rise of the Triad to - currently - Bombshell.



Now that we’ve gotten introduced to our guests, here are some ground rules for this Q&A to work as smoothly as possible:

1. Not all questions might get answered during the Q&A, but feel free to read along!
2. Be nice. No abuse, harassment, name-calling and the like.
3. Don’t spam. This will help keep the thread legible and keep our guests involved.

Let’s get this show on the road!
Posted February 01, 2016
Hi!

Bombshell seems amazing! It looked somehow very interesting when I first saw the preview trailer.
Now I'm pretty much divided by scores, both from IGN (nice review, I really liked it) and from the abismal Gamespot one (I guess the reviewer was somehow harsh on you guys). The game looks and sounds fantastic, btw!

So, how's it affecting sales and etc? Personally I don't care that much, but I was expecting this game with great enthusiasm and now I'm somehow mixed about it.

Thanks a lot!
Posted February 01, 2016
Hi, guys. My question is concerning your earlier days. Is it true that Apogee was in talks to publish Doom? Can you tell us more about this? What went wrong? Thank you.
Posted February 01, 2016
The game has huge potential to be an amazing and fun experience but is currently being ruined by a lot of bugs and for me personally a horrible inventory system.

What are your plans for bugfixing and do you think the game should have been delayed even further to fix these bugs beforehand? :)
Posted February 01, 2016
Another Q&A! Man, I'm lucky. So I gotta ask, what inspired you to create the main character the way she is?
Posted February 01, 2016
high rated
avatar
vicklemos: Hi!

Bombshell seems amazing! It looked somehow very interesting when I first saw the preview trailer.
Now I'm pretty much divided by scores, both from IGN (nice review, I really liked it) and from the abismal Gamespot one (I guess the reviewer was somehow harsh on you guys). The game looks and sounds fantastic, btw!

So, how's it affecting sales and etc? Personally I don't care that much, but I was expecting this game with great enthusiasm and now I'm somehow mixed about it.

Thanks a lot!
Thanks for the question Vicklemos!
We're still analyzing exactly what went wrong. We can definitely agree that the game doesn't deserve a 2/10.
During development of Bombshell, we did extensive playtesting, quality assurance, and feedback sessions to make sure we were on a right path. We've gotten some great reviews alongside the abysmal. We don't know exactly why the 2/10 reviews happened, but it's something we're taking very seriously. (Our goal was to create a great game scoring around an 8).

It's affecting sales. That's no secret. Unfortunately a lot of people tend to listen to the big sites, without giving the smaller sites a chance. That results in a very (unfairly) low metacritic, which translates directly to low sales. We're doing our best to hang in there, and are working as hard as we can on tweaks and fixes to make sure that every point the reviewers brought up has been fixed. It's something we take very seriously, as Bombshell is a big risk for us. It's a game we spent more than 2 years on. As a small indie studio, that means a lot to us.

I hope you'll give it a shot! The ones currently playing the game, really seems to like it. Thank you for the question Vicklemos!
Posted February 01, 2016
high rated
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zealcore: Hi, guys. My question is concerning your earlier days. Is it true that Apogee was in talks to publish Doom? Can you tell us more about this? What went wrong? Thank you.
There was never much of a discussion about Apogee publishing Doom. I think I talked to Jay Wilbur about it, with the idea that Apogee would only take a very small part of the revenue, to cover the expenses of fulfilling the shareware orders. I remember Jay seemed to like the idea, but in the end Id decided to go their own way and become fully independent.

My feeling was that they had been associated with Apogee for 3-4 years by that time, and they didn't like that players were confused about who Apogee was versus who Id was.

In the end this was a very good thing for Apogee, because it meant we had to dive into making our own 3D games, like ROTT, Duke 3D, Shadow Warrior, Prey, and teaming up with Remedy to create Max Payne. Even the idea for Bombshell was born in the later 90's. If we'd kept relying on Id to make 3D games, very likely some of these other games would have never been made.
Posted February 01, 2016
high rated
avatar
DanishPrince: The game has huge potential to be an amazing and fun experience but is currently being ruined by a lot of bugs and for me personally a horrible inventory system.

What are your plans for bugfixing and do you think the game should have been delayed even further to fix these bugs beforehand? :)
Hi DanishPrince!
We're working hard on bugfixing, and already have the first patch in testing. It will be released later this evening/tomorrow morning. This month we'll also release patch 1.1. We're analyzing every review and every comment we can find about to game. Based on this, we're splitting each issue into priorities, and are starting to work on solutions. Our goal is to make sure that every legitimate issue is dealt with.

Delaying a game is not always easy. We're a small company, and at some point you just run out of money and resources. We delayed the game to January (From November), to make sure we could release what we consider a good game. We're really proud of what we managed to pull off, and we're going to support the game with fixes and content for as long as we can.

Thanks DanishPrince!
Posted February 01, 2016
Have any other works have been influential on the game? Whether you take that to mean other games to compare to, or something that inspired the setting or aesthetic.
Posted February 01, 2016
avatar
vicklemos: Hi!

Bombshell seems amazing! It looked somehow very interesting when I first saw the preview trailer.
Now I'm pretty much divided by scores, both from IGN (nice review, I really liked it) and from the abismal Gamespot one (I guess the reviewer was somehow harsh on you guys). The game looks and sounds fantastic, btw!

So, how's it affecting sales and etc? Personally I don't care that much, but I was expecting this game with great enthusiasm and now I'm somehow mixed about it.

Thanks a lot!
avatar
freschism: Thanks for the question Vicklemos!
We're still analyzing exactly what went wrong. We can definitely agree that the game doesn't deserve a 2/10.
During development of Bombshell, we did extensive playtesting, quality assurance, and feedback sessions to make sure we were on a right path. We've gotten some great reviews alongside the abysmal. We don't know exactly why the 2/10 reviews happened, but it's something we're taking very seriously. (Our goal was to create a great game scoring around an 8).

It's affecting sales. That's no secret. Unfortunately a lot of people tend to listen to the big sites, without giving the smaller sites a chance. That results in a very (unfairly) low metacritic, which translates directly to low sales. We're doing our best to hang in there, and are working as hard as we can on tweaks and fixes to make sure that every point the reviewers brought up has been fixed. It's something we take very seriously, as Bombshell is a big risk for us. It's a game we spent more than 2 years on. As a small indie studio, that means a lot to us.

I hope you'll give it a shot! The ones currently playing the game, really seems to like it. Thank you for the question Vicklemos!
As a person who only saw the scores and not the reasons behind them - what seem to be the main issues, and what exactly are you planning to do to fix them? Also, thanks for the honesty in your reply, it shows you are trying to care & take care of the problem.
Posted February 01, 2016
avatar
freschism: Thanks for the question Vicklemos!
We're still analyzing exactly what went wrong. We can definitely agree that the game doesn't deserve a 2/10.
During development of Bombshell, we did extensive playtesting, quality assurance, and feedback sessions to make sure we were on a right path. We've gotten some great reviews alongside the abysmal. We don't know exactly why the 2/10 reviews happened, but it's something we're taking very seriously. (Our goal was to create a great game scoring around an 8).

It's affecting sales. That's no secret. Unfortunately a lot of people tend to listen to the big sites, without giving the smaller sites a chance. That results in a very (unfairly) low metacritic, which translates directly to low sales. We're doing our best to hang in there, and are working as hard as we can on tweaks and fixes to make sure that every point the reviewers brought up has been fixed. It's something we take very seriously, as Bombshell is a big risk for us. It's a game we spent more than 2 years on. As a small indie studio, that means a lot to us.

I hope you'll give it a shot! The ones currently playing the game, really seems to like it. Thank you for the question Vicklemos!
avatar
justMaku: As a person who only saw the scores and not the reasons behind them - what seem to be the main issues, and what exactly are you planning to do to fix them? Also, thanks for the honesty in your reply, it shows you are trying to care & take care of the problem.
We feel the main issues have been the messaging. We tried leaning up against pre-views comparing the game to a Sci-Fi version of Diablo. That make's reviewers and fans have different expecations. The goal was never to create an action RPG or anything close to Diablo. Bombshell is an Action Shooter, with small RPG elements sprinkled over it.

I also have to mention that the reviewers recieved a build a few weeks before release. In the meantime we fixed more than 200 bugs, most related to the feedback we got from reivewers. This means that most issues presented in these reviews are not in the released version of the game. In hindsight we should probably have waited with the review copies until the game was completely ready.

Last but not least, there are a lot of legitimate problems with the game as well. The boss battles are way too hard, weapon balacing is off in some places, and there are levels we could probably have cut from the release (It is a very long game). These are all things we're looking into for patch 1.1 as well.

Thank you for the question!
Posted February 01, 2016
high rated
avatar
rodzaj: Another Q&A! Man, I'm lucky. So I gotta ask, what inspired you to create the main character the way she is?

The character was first conceived about 1997, after I had watched the film, Barbwire, starring Pamela Anderson in the lead role. I wanted to come up with a really cool female action star who could handle any situation as well as a male hero, and also have a cool nickname, like Barbwire. Not long after I thought of the name, Bombshell, and I checked to make sure no one else in the game industry was using it.

The original idea was to give her a game all to herself. But that didn't work out, and so I convinced George Broussard to include her in Duke Nukem Forever, and in the first E3 Quake-engine trailer for DNF, you see her! But, at that time she was not nearly as well defined. In the early 2000's I tried to convince George that we should give Bombshell a cyber arm, with the story that she had lost her real arm in an explosion. But he wasn't a fan of the idea, and eventually dropped her from being in DNF.

Eventually, Fred and Interceptor learned about her and fell in love with the idea of a really strong and unique, non-sexified female lead, and two years later we have her in a game, FINALLY! lol. Interceptor did an amazing job giving her the perfect look, and adding a lot of special abilities like her super satisfying Mighty Punch.


Posted February 01, 2016
So my question is pretty straight forward -

Will there be Mod tools for Bombshell?
Posted February 01, 2016
Hi developers, please ignore my post and don't take it the wrong way, cheers.

How come gog is able to do a Developer Q&A with developers and yet can't (won't) do a Q&A between themselves and their customers? Can a staff member answer me this? I mean, surely someone of the team must be watching this thread, right?
Posted February 01, 2016
I was going to ask about the main character in more specifics too. What was the process of creating her like? What concepts for the main character (female or not) went through the drawing board and into the bin before you came up with the character the way she is now, both looks- and character-wise?
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Community
General discussionBombshell: Developer Q&A(88 posts)(88 posts)
(88 posts)