Fighting games are pretty rare on PC. Well, let's face it - they're almost unheard of these days, fighting games have been almost reserved to video arcades and consoles. Diversions Entertainment hopes to remedy that with One Must Fall: Battlegrounds by doing what no PC game team has really done before : create the first online multiplayer 3D fighting game for the PC. Instead of 2 players facing off in a small space, Battlegrounds features up to sixteen simultaneous players in huge arenas, fighting in team battles or all-out brawls!

After seeing some rather impressive screenshots, we decided to contact the developer in order to learn more about the game. The result is this interview in which Wayne Frazee, IT Manager and developer for Diversions Entertainment tells us about his team's exciting, new project.

First of all, could you please introduce yourself to our readers? Tell us things like what is your current job in the company, how long have you been working there, etc.

My name is Wayne Frazee, IT Manager and developer for Diversions Entertainment. Although I am the newest addition to the team, I have been involved with One Must Fall : Battlegrounds and the development process since November of 2001. I work with the team providing the technical information and work to keep things going, working with the website, and the beta test community. On the development side, I am involved with the server administration interface and work with beta testers' feedback, getting and passing needed testing information to the rest of the team.

Please give us a brief history of your company.

Diversions Entertainment is the total effort of our Lead Developer, Rob Elam. Following Diversions' release of One Must Fall 2097 (published by Epic Megagames), Rob decided to pursue developing the next One must Fall game independently with a few local people and the assistance of his parents. A lot of local fast food, and lost sleep later, we are nearing Battlegrounds' release.

Can you tell us more about 'One must fall' and its features? What kind of game would you categorize it as and how does it compare with competing games?

One Must Fall is the first ever PC multiplayer 3D fighter, offering true 3D fighting arenas for you and up to 15 of your friends to beat on each other to your heart's content in any one of our variety of game modes. You, as one of the 50 available robot pilots, can control one of the 8 available robots and either enter the single player tournaments, or jump on a server and enter the fray against your fellow pilots in any of 10 arenas.

- Current game modes are demolition, in which you acquire damage, re-spawn at death, obtain round bonuses based on combos and damage inflicted, and the first one to a specified point value wins. Team demolition is available, in which you engage in free for all fighting, attempting to bring your team total to the victory point threshold.

- Last Man Standing, a survival mode; if your bot bites the arena floor for the last time, you will be sitting out the rest of the match while your opponents settle out the winner. Last man standing among the heaps of debris wins. A last Team standing mode is also available in which you pick off team members, the last team with at least one fighter standing is declared the victor.

- There is the laser ball which is much like football or rugby, points scored by your bot throwing a ball through a goal area, having gotten past the opposition of the other team. Additionally, there is a match server mode to allow clans and teams to fight against each other, setting a few basic server options then allowing the server to pick random maps to fight in the selected game mode until the competition is ended by the teams.

For those that are looking for sheer eye candy, One Must Fall: Battlegrounds delivers. This game makes full use of the latestrendering technologies in order to provide a crisp, clean, beautiful graphical experience unparalleled by console fighters. Reflections, high detail shadows, completely custom particle effects, high resolution textures, "unlimited" resolution (whatever your video card can support), are all available to battlegrounds players.

As for what the game is, it is a PC fighter with no competition. There aren't any true PC fighters out there in recent years. It's a unique game reviving a genre long silent. Many of those who are first finding out about the game and viewing our game video ask about the combo system that Battlegrounds uses. The combo system is dynamic, allowing players to link moves as they become available in combat, exploiting opportunities.

Unlike many of the console games which have specific linked move lists in which you do odd button and d-pad combinations to achieve preset animated combos, battlegrounds relies on the player learning that particular moves can sometimes leave an opponent vulnerable to continued assault. Because combos are assembled on the fly, team combos are possible in team play, with multiple players assembling a string of hits against a couple of the opposing team's players. This dynamic combo system allows beginners to jump right in the game knowing only the basic attacks and movement while still allowing advanced players to separate themselves from the rest via strategic use of strike patterns and move sequences.

This game will boast a modifiability unrivaled by any fighting game ever before. We will be relying on the gaming community to aid in developing fresh tournaments, models, game interfaces, features, animations, and sounds to keep this game fresh and new. The customization this game makes availible to players goes well beyond new characters, bot skins, color schemes, robots, arenas, and the like available in other games but rather invites players to create entire new game modes and game features on the Phoenix engine. The editing tools will be available via free download from the official website (http://www.omf.com) within a few months of game release.

Can you tell us what gadgets, weapons, etc. are available?

Each bot has a projectile weapon which that bot can make use of. Homing spiders, locust balls, fireballs, energy scythes, small energy balls, concussion shots, wind tornados, time freezes, grenades, and missiles are just a few such weapons. Some arenas have additional power-ups which fighters can make use of, launching nuclear blasts, aircraft strikes, gun blasts, and cruise missiles on unsuspecting opponents.

These are all in addition to the individualities of the particular bots that give them each a unique gameplay experience.

Will it be possible to play offline in the retail version or is it exclusively online?

Absolutely. In the retail version of the game there will be a single player mode which allows the player to complete in tournaments. Each tournament will have its own dialogue, plot lines, opponent progression, etc. Instead of the usual console game progression where its 1 on 1 throughout the entire tournament, the Battlegrounds framework allows us to build tournaments where it can end up 1 on 1, 1 on 2, 1 on 3, and so forth, requiring that the player be able to use multiplayer-like fighting strategy even in the single player tournaments.

Additionally, if a player chooses, they will be able to set up a multiplayer LAN-only server and load in AI bots to fight against if they wish to enjoy the customization options that the multiplayer experience provides without actually facing other human opponents.

Please tell us a bit about the multiplayer mode(s) and what you think will be the most popular amongst the public?

In all probability the Demolition and Last Man Standing modes will be far and away the most popular game modes on public hosted servers. Team based fighting really has not been a possibility ever before and I would not be surprised if it took a little while for players and clans to experiment with it before a large number of servers running the team play game modes were to show up.

I understand you are working on your own 3D engine for the game. What are some of its important features?

Diversions Entertainment's Phoenix engine is highly flexible. I really can't go into the details about it at the present time except that its flexibility, modularization, and ease of programming make it extremely attractive for use by other developers. This engine will be able to power other games as well, not just games in the fighter genre. Battlegrounds is Diversions' first game to make use of it, but certainly not the last.

Can you tell us the system requirements ?

This game will not be resource demanding for players using some of the lower resolution and graphical settings. In order to play One Must Fall: Battlegrounds, players will need at least a 500Mhz processor, a minimum of 128MB RAM, and a recent 3d video card.

The Xabre should be supported. The lack of a vertex shader, particularly in the earlier Xabre models, might cause a minor performance slowdown for those playing One Must Fall since vertex shading functions will have to be performed by the main system processor. Unfortunately we have not yet been able to test this game on the Xabre platform, although the game is DirectX 8.1 compatible, supporting the latest in multimedia chipsets. We would, however be willing to do some Xabre testing if we could get ahold of a Xabre capable board from SiS.

Edit : OMF has been tested to work fine with Xabre cards.

The world of video cards seems to change on a daily basis. What do you think of the current crop of cards on the market, and where do you see things heading?

The current crop of video cards has offered breakthrough after breakthrough to the world of 3D gaming and 3D development in a short span of time. In less than a couple years, the entire focus of 3D development has shifted to pixel and vertex shading, providing more flexibility in graphical development than ever before.

Tomorrow's video hardware should bring further enhancement of the vertex and pixel shading technology that we use to create, light, and transform objects. While the holy grail of photo realistic graphics is still not yet a feasible reality for the real time gaming experience, we are certainly getting close. With the recent acceleration in game graphics technology, who knows how far down the road this goal will be attainable? A couple years ago, we were drooling over cards which could push a few megabytes of texture data through video pipelines, today anything less than a gigabyte of texture data is slow, a concept completely alien to the days of the Voodoo 2.

Are there any new cards that interest you? Where would you like to see things go as a game developer?

One of the biggest technical changes down the line from a development perspective will be the transition from byte based RGB values to floating point systems. Recognition of the need for more than just the 0 to 255 will be a strong influence in further graphical effects development.

For the next while, the advent of more powerful mainstream graphics availability will be key to the development and deployment of future games. If the average gamer is able to go out and get a hold of a powerful graphics chipset from Nvidia, ATI, SiS, or Intel in a midrange or budget computer, he or she would be better able to make use of recent games, a stumbling block for many in the budget computing sector. This wider availability would play a big part in widening further the market for PC games and aide in increasing the graphical quality of the games that are made available.

What hardware 3D features does 'One must fall' support and how will take advantage of those features?

One Must Fall uses hardware transform and lighting rendering as well as vertex and pixel shading as implemented in DirectX 8.1. Complex shadows, reflections, advanced particle effects, and animation rendering makes significant use of the speed, power, and feature availability in recent hardware.

When will 'One must fall' hit retail worldwide?

Second Quarter, 2003.

Are you guys working on any other game projects that you can talk about?

At the present time, our development team is focusing almost exclusively on getting Battlegrounds into our community's hands. We are starting to outline some plans to bring Battlegrounds to other platforms and doing some concept work for the next game in the One Must Fall universe.

Thank you for your time and patience. Is there anything else you would like to tell our readers?

For so many years, the fighter genre on the PC has all but vanished, even leading several online sites and stores to completely remove altogether the PC "fighter" genre, pushing it to be a console-only domain. Battlegrounds will be the first offering in a long time, boasting amazing gameplay, sweet graphics, and the first-ever chance to play wide open brawling bot to bot combat fights like never before. Our 600 beta tester pool has received the game well, and those who remember gamespy-hall-of-fame One Must Fall 2097 will know the game's pedigree.

Stop on over to our six thousand member active messageboard community at http://www.omf.com/ubbthreads/ubbthreads.php