PCGH: Since when are you working on X Rebirth and how many members does your current team at Egosoft have?
Bernd Lehahn: We are working since unbelievable six and a half years on X Rebirth. The project started in 2007. While we have been working on the old series in the meantime – and recently released X3: Albion Prelude, which is kind of a bridge between the old and the new game universe – the biggest part of our usual about 20-developer-strong team has been working on X Rebirth the whole time.
PCGH: Have you scrapped certain fundamental ideas in this time or are you still working to plan?
Bernd Lehahn: With a linear game, which consists of levels, it might be possible, to work to plan in such a big project. But in a free universe every part depends on all others. Our aim is to correct many design weaknesses of the X-series, but also to make space games for a wider audience more interesting. Many of the things we planned have to prove themselves in the praxis and our work consists of continuous corrections and improvements of the initial concepts. Still, the most important aims and the methods to realise them, which were planned at the beginning, are the same.
PCGH: There is still no release date. Are questions after the release date still okay for you?
Bernd Lehahn: It is already a running gag in our forums and on our Facebook site. Whatever we post there, whether it is an announcement of a new Linux and MAC version for our X3 series, which people get for free in addition to their Windows version or cool new missions for X3: Albion Prelude, there are always people, which immediately say: That’s great, but we don’t care. WHERE IS X REBIRTH? Well...very soon I will be able to say more about it...
PCGH: To speak up: When do you want to announce the release date? Or asked in another way: Have you scheduled, how much time there will be between the announcement of the release date and the release itself?
Bernd Lehahn: OK... The release date of the release date will be… beginning of August. Wink
PCGH: What makes the development so complex, that you can’t even say, whether it comes this or the next year?
Bernd Lehahn: It comes this year.
PCGH: In short, what are the three biggest differences to Albion Prelude?
Bernd Lehahn: It’s impossible to name only three things. Actually, almost everything is different. It may be easier to tell you, what remains the same and this is, what I call the "Spirit of the X-Universe". The freedom to do everything you want to do. A real simulated economy, which the whole universe is built on. A game, in which every action can have an influence on the whole universe.
PCGH: X Rebirth should become more beginner friendly. Will hardcore fans notice this at all? What can we expect, how this beginner friendliness will look like?
Bernd Lehahn: Outsourcing of many functions that were possible with one ship to many specialised ships or drones. Controlling things by talking to NPCs, instead of fiddling in complicated menus. Controls that let you play the game with a gamepad. Many more things…
PCGH: Are you integrating the community into the current development phase? If so, how are you doing that and what kind of ideas were you able to realise already?
Bernd Lehahn: At the moment this is unfortunately not possible in the same way we did it with previous X-games. Currently only a small group of ca. 200 people have access to an early version of the game. However, it is important to us, that the development of X Rebirth will first really kick off with the release of X Rebirth 1.0.
PCGH: Have you spent any thoughts on a possible Collector's Edition? How could it look like?
Bernd Lehahn: This is up to our publisher. We talked about it, but no decision has been made yet.
PCGH: What about your graphics engine: Is it ready yet or are you still working on effects? Which component of high end PCs is tortured by X Rebirth the most?
Bernd Lehahn: The engine is ready since a while already, but is still being polished and tweaked. Especially the performance is being improved further. We also have a lot of plans for the engine. However, they will have to wait until after the release. We’re currently focussing on finishing X Rebirth to finally be able to show it to the public.
I would say, X Rebirth tortures graphics card and CPU almost the same. Thanks to the consequent designing for multithreading we will even utilize PCs with lots of cores, but in the end it depends on the cooperation with the graphics card.
PCGH: In 2011 you said the renderer would be DirectX 9 and that the Tesselation feature of DX11 would not be suitable for X Rebirth. Has anything changed since then?
Bernd Lehahn: As I said already, the engine is ready since a while. Our current focus is the gameplay and the improvement of the engine performance-wise. But although we use DirectX 9, there are still a lot of new graphics features and a lot of new splendour. We don’t feel limited by DX9 in any way, although an update after the release comes into question.
PCGH: In which development stage will you start to work on the scaling for different PC systems? Can you estimate, what kind of PC you will need at least to play X Rebirth?
Bernd Lehahn: The engine is designed to be able to scale the level of detail and a lot of graphics features relating to the respective hardware. However we haven’t decided, what the minimum requirements will be, as the game will be optimised until the end.
PCGH: Will there be an X game with a multiplayer in this life, even if it is just LAN-based?
Bernd Lehahn: You are talking about YOUR life? Do you smoke? Do you have any health issues? Best you send me a medical report from your doctor, then I can better answer this question Wink
PCGH: The Xbox One and the PS4 arrived in the x86 world. Have you followed this topic? Do you welcome this development? If so, why?
Bernd Lehahn: To be honest, I don’t care about the CPU architecture. We had a look at the CPUs of the predecessors and were good with them. Much more problematic is the memory consumption. There the new consoles are of course a good thing for us. However, I cannot say, whether this will be interesting for us in the future.
PCGH: With the help of crowdfunding platforms more and more retro game concepts (adventures, classic RPGs, round based strategy etc.) re-enter the market. You’re still pretty comfortable with your publisher or would Kickstarter be an option for you?
Bernd Lehahn: I think Kickstarter is a great thing and I supported many projects myself already. Whether this will be something for us someday, I cannot say at the moment.
PCGH: Thank you for the interview!
