In battles between Terran military personnel and insurgents, players vie for control of space and planetary regions in large skirmishes featuring 64 player multiplayer deathmatch and base capture game modes. The single player game features a single campaign between the Terran military player and insurgent counterparts with 3000AD's advanced AI engines providing cutting edge tactical engagements. Players will be able to travel by land, sea and air during planetary engagements and also be able to travel to other conflict planets using shuttles and fighters.
The game also features a significant graphics engine upgrade to take advantage of DirectX 9 hardware and provide visuals not possible in our previous games (due to their size and scope). The smaller focused game world allows more detailed environments with high end graphics advancements such as BRDF materials, advanced dynamic lighting, dot3 bump mapping, a brand new particle system and other high end graphics features such as shader based shadow maps, reflections, volumetric nebulae and clouds etc.
Derek Smart, President of 3000AD Inc and lead developer had this to say: "A lot of people criticized the graphics engine in our previous game, not realizing that with a game of such size and scope, several sacrifices have to be made or the game would be unplayable. In fact, I recently hired an industry consultant specifically to helm the graphics engine upgrade."
Other new additions to our graphics engine suite include a new skeletal based character animation engine as well as a portal based internal renderer which allows players to enter planetary buildings and space based stations. Other new engine additions include the licensing of middleware technologies to power our multiplayer kernel, a new sound engine and another to create highly detailed and realistic trees and vegetation for our planetary worlds.
In closing, Derek Smart, says "UCE2E is a whole new type of game for a different breed of gamer. The ultimate goal is to spin off this new Universal Combat brand into its own action based franchise and detach it completely from the niche hard core Battlecruiser brand. This is something we didn't get to do properly in the recently shipped UC game. Yes, there most definitely will be another Battlecruiser game in a few years. It is inevitable."
Universal Combat - Edge To Edge is a stand alone title (UC not required) developed for the PC and is scheduled for release in November 2004 at an SRP of $29.99
For more information and media files, please visit our website at www.3000ad.com