Who wouldn't recognize the appeal and success of first-person shooter titles like Quake, Quake II, Sin, Half-Life, and Duke. Even our own GameSpot adventure addicts still find that when they want a fix for something a little less cerebral, FPS titles are the fix of choice. Dynamix game designer Scott Youngblood understood that fix when he took his position as designer of Dynamix's premiere first-person shooter, Starsiege: Tribes.

　　So when Youngblood showed up on our doorsteps in chilly San Francisco with an armful of gold copies of Starsiege: Tribes, we invited him in to talk about his latest creation. Youngblood has been building games for eight years at the Eugene, Oregon-based Dynamix and first came to the Tribes team about a year ago - when the title was half-complete. His resume outlines success with some of the company's baseball, football, and skiing games. But during those projects, Youngblood says he was always fascinated by the first-person genre - with early favorites like Caste Wolfenstein, Quake, and Duke. Along with fellow workers, he helped set up a clan and won some tourneys. As a hard-core player, he began to have complaints about the state of the first-person shooter games he played, and when he began to work on Tribes, he was given a mandate to fix those problems.

　　There needed to be a way to communicate with players that didn't require binding keys to lines of text. Messages moving across the console were too difficult to view during intense moment of action so the team incorporated ten different voices (five male and five female) with about 100 sayings each to replace text. The voice files aren't all that magical - just simple 8-bit WAV files, but because of this, it allows gamers to plug their own voices into the game. It opens the doors for some pretty wild sound files, and it should be interesting to see what gamers come up with for alternative phrases.

　　Next up, Youngblood wanted more team play than usual. The Tribes team emphasized strategy by including an overview commander map that gives players an idea of where to find other teams. Setting a sniper high on a floating island to take out players as they come over a hill, while other players sneak in from other angles, is a much more exciting way to win any game. It takes communication and skills to make it happen.

　　Network speed is always a big deal, and the Tribes team is making every attempt at alleviating painful ping times and slow play. The team focused on modem users to give them better gameplay even when their ping times are as high as 450ms. On top of that, Dynamix and Sierra have sought 1000 rogue servers to help build an extensive Tribes network as gamers buy the title. While the team is evaluating who will get to host the servers (winning server hosts get a free copy of Tribes), Dynamix says that it's close to having picked 1000 servers. In the meantime, gamers will have to wait a few more days to pick up the title.

　　Will there be add-ons for the title? Dynamix will more than likely release more levels for the game through its web site, and when it releases a patch for OpenGL, an extensive graphical mission editor will also be released. Tribes already has an editor built into the title, but it isn't as complete as the upcoming version based on the Threads editor.

　　So what's next? "We considered an add-on but decided to get to work on Tribes 2." Youngblood says. "The one big feature we want to add to the next version is water. We have some interesting ideas on using water." While it sounds fairly cryptic, he promises that it will be good. For now, he and the rest of the team are on vacation for a long winter's nap.