Interview Games Developer Raptor Entertainment

The Indian game development scene has been abuzz for a long time with Raptor Entertainments Xtreeme Forces, a game which has been compared to Stalker: Shadow of Cheronbyl. We catch up with Vidyuth Srinivisan to talk about the game that’s making waves both in the international and national circuit.

GI: Lets start with the developer, what’s Raptor Entertainment about?

Vidyuth Srinivasan says: Surely. The company was founded in 2001. It all started out when two gamers, Sandeep and Jayanth, both about 18 at that time, decided to build a game. Thus, Raptor Entertainment was founded. We are currently a team of 12 with developers working in different departments, namely, programming, art and design.

GI: What about funding? Who is backing the development of the game

Vidyuth Srinivasan says: Ah! Investment. We are yet a self funded organization, with all our revenues being generated through our services vertical. Six months ago, we started our services division, in order to self-sustain our products division. Since then, we have executed 3 projects and are currently running 4 in parallel. I would not be able to reveal names, but most of our clients are based in the USA and Europe. We have also executed a project for a Bangalore based org. Most of these projects could be classified under game core development

GI: You’ll are currently developing an FPS shooter named Xtreeme Forces, tell us about it.

Vidyuth Srinivasan says: The game is being developed upon the XForce engine, which is an advanced commercial 3D Engine. The XForce engine has been developed inhouse.

GI: Have you’ll leased the engine out to any other developer, or is it being used purely for extreme forces?

Vidyuth Srinivasan says: We are in the process of licensing it out to a few companies, but they are yet at a nascent stage. We are certainly open to licensing our engine out to clients. We already have customized our engine for 2 of our ongoing projects

GI says: How many years has the game been in development and when is it expected to release.

Vidyuth Srinivasan says: We expect the game to hit the shelves around the globe sometime mid-200. We have reached pre-alpha stage now and are in the process of porting the game onto our latest directX 9.0c engine. The game’s been under development since late 2003. To give you an idea of Xtreeme forces, We have managed to create a balance between RTS and FPS genre. The gameplay would be RTS style, but the view and action would be FPS.

GI says: 2003? so that time you’ll were using dx 8 for development right?

Vidyuth Srinivasan says: Yes we were. The old build of the engine was on dX8. The new version of the game is going to look many times better than the previous version

GI says: What’s the basic premise of extreme forces?

Vidyuth Srinivasan says: The premise is pretty simple. The game environment is roughly based on the country of Moldova, an ex-CIS state. But the story has a deep political root to it
The game is about Mikhail - you, and your journey up the ladder of the political scenario of Moldova. In simpler terms, you start out as a mercenary and rise up to be a potential ruler of the nation. Revealing the rest wouldn’t do justice to the game. Its a squad based shooter. Where you as the leader of a squadron issue commands to your teammates. The demo is playable for about 15 mins, but we have the build open for publishers only.

GI says: Thanks a lot for you time and wish you all the best with the game.

Vidyuth Srinivasan: It was a pleasure to chat up with you.