Question: Tell us a little bit about yourself (who you are, what you do on KA, how long you've been with Interplay, etc.).

Raphael Hernandez: I'm the producer of Klingon Academy. I manage the team and overall vision of the product, and I've been with Interplay for six years now. If I was granted three wishes, I'd ask for one billion dollars, a secret underground volcano base from which to plan my diabolical ambitions for world domination and... uh... world peace.

Question: How many people are working on KA?

Raphael Hernandez: The development team consists of 14 people in-house and one external developer working on our multiplayer code.

Question: What are you guys trying to accomplish with KA?

Raphael Hernandez: We created a deep, sophisticated space combat simulator that is a lot of fun to play. In addition, we've created a storyline that flows perfectly into the missions to really give the player the sense that he is playing a crucial role within a compelling drama.

Question: What's the storyline of the game?

Raphael Hernandez: The player is represented within the game by Torlek, a young cadet inducted into the Klingon defence force's elite command academy. This institution is an advanced school for warriors who are being groomed for command of a warship. While at the Academy, the player is taught directly by General Chang, the greatest living Klingon warrior of that era. As part of the curriculum, Chang takes the player through a simulated full-scale war against the Federation, and teaches him the Klingon warrior's code.

Upon graduation, the player is subsequently recruited to fight in a large civil war within the Klingon Empire. It is there that the player is put to the test in a real war, as he fights for the faction led by General Chang.

Ultimately, Klingon Academy's storyline was written to be a prequel to Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country. We follow the perspective of General Chang and, at the very end, explain his motivations for his actions in Star Trek VI.

Question: Tell us about the FMV sequences. How many are there within the game? Will the game have to ship on multiple discs because of the FMV?

There's 90 minutes of live-action sequences, and about 30 minutes of CG movies. The total combined comes out to two hours of cinematics. As a result, the game will be shipping on six CD's. We hope to have a DVD version after the initial release, but that is yet to be confirmed.

Question: Give us an example of a few missions.

Raphael Hernandez: There are two full-scale wars in the game. The first is against the Federation. The player will start with simple missions that help pave the way for the Klingon fleets pouring across the neutral zone. These missions consist of destroying observation outposts and small Federation patrol groups; but very quickly, the missions take on a grander scope. The player will be called upon to fight in major fleet actions, the boarding and capturing of critical enemy warships, and assaults on powerful battle stations. And, ultimately, these missions will culminate in an assault on Earth's doorstep itself...

Question: Exactly how long does it take before you're able to blow the crap out of the Enterprise?

Raphael Hernandez: Most one-on-one battles seem to take between 10 and 15 minutes, but it really depends on the tactics you employ. For starters, these ships do not die very quickly like fighters; they take time to cripple or kill. Some players like to surgically destroy key systems aboard a star ship, like warp or impulse engines, sensors -- which will leave them blind -- or even deprive them of their weapons systems by blowing them out. Others still prefer to knock down an enemy's shields, board them with away teams to cripple the enemy from the inside, while they pummel their opponent with weapons fire from the outside.

The quickest way to take out an opponent is to overload your weapons for maximum damage, then keep pounding on him until pieces start falling off. This direct approach can work, but at higher difficulties the AI will easily counter any tactics that aren't thought out very well.

Question: Are there branching storylines, or is there one straight flow through the game?

Raphael Hernandez: Because our storyline is a prequel to Star Trek VI, we are limited in the amount of branching that occurs within the missions. Where we break away from a linear progression, however, is within the actual missions themselves. The player is able to take different routes to complete most of his mission objectives and will be able to uncover special or hidden scripted events that may have an impact on subsequent missions.

Question: How many different ships are there for players to fly?

Raphael Hernandez: There's over 50 different warships for the players to command in the solo play or multiplayer, consisting of 10 different classes from six different races.

Question: Besides blowing up those pansy Federation morons, what other familiar races might we expect to see in the game? Will there be any famous Star Trek episodes re-enacted from the Klingon point of view?

Raphael Hernandez: The player will be able to fight against the Romulans, Gorn, Tholians, fellow Klingons and the Sha'kurians, a brand-new race in the Star Trek Universe. Through our solo play quick-battle feature, the player will be able to set up battle scenarios from classic episodes and movies.

Question: Your damage models are spectacular. How does the game figure out how a ship explodes?

Raphael Hernandez: The ships in our game have resources like warp, impulse, sensors, tractor assemblies, etc. These resources are assigned to each appropriate polygon on our ship models. When these polygons are struck by weapons fire, the damage is assigned to the corresponding resource. We have a pretty sophisticated system, and it allows the player to concentrate his firepower on a target's subsystems.

Question: How much of the original Starfleet Academy engine is left within KA?

Raphael Hernandez: A lot of it. We've had to build on top of what was there, and in one case, rebuild certain sections of the code. The old multiplayer code, for example, was completely ripped out of the code-base and we started over from scratch. We had to do this because there was no other way to get acceptable multiplayer performance on Internet games. But this was the only thing that was entirely rebuilt in Klingon Academy. The fact that we've done so much with KA, considering where we started, is a testament to the talent and hard work of our programmers.

Question: Starfleet Academy was created before the advent of 3D accelerators. What changes have you had to make to the engine to bring it up to today's standards?

Raphael Hernandez: A lot. Our lead programmer, John Panettiere, went to very great lengths to get the performance out of the engine that we see today. All of the old interfaces were scrapped because the game design was fundamentally changed. Our sound engine has been overhauled, and our AI has been substantially reworked to allow for all the different new weapons in the game as well as new ship systems and interactive space terrain.

Question: SA left a sour taste in the mouths of a lot of gamers. What steps are being taken to guarantee that Klingon Academy is a more palatable experience? Are there any members of Starfleet Academy on the KA team, or is this an entirely new group?

Raphael Hernandez: We've taken the goal of simulating a Star Trek capital ship very seriously. To that end, we've gone to great lengths to provide the player with the 'feel' of commanding a large warship, as well as implementing the systems and features everyone is used to seeing in Star Trek.

For example: The player doesn't click on interface buttons to control his ship, he *barks* orders to his crew, who will then follow through with his instructions; a player's warship has powerful weapons spread out across 360 degrees; away teams can be used to cripple or capture an enemy ship, and, warships *move* like real capital warships.

Question: What is the biggest difference between KA and other space sim games (StarLancer, Descent: Freespace, Wing Commander, etc.)?

Raphael Hernandez: Two big differences:

1) The player is commanding a large Star Trek capital ship, not a fighter. That means a player has a variety of options at his disposal for destroying his enemies that fighters do not. Some of these have already been mentioned, but I'll mention one more: Skilled players can use their tractor beams to hold an enemy fixed in space while they pour destruction into a weakened shield.

2) As in Star Trek, space is a dynamic environment, not just a void to fly around in. In Klingon Academy, the playing environment for each mission occurs in multiple star systems. Each star system is the relative size and dimensions of a real solar system. We populate each star system with a variety of celestial bodies we lumped together under the term interactive space terrain. Each terrain type has a unique impact on the performance of your ship's weapons and systems.

For example, a nebula may help shield the player from overwhelming enemy forces by masking him from their sensors; the corona around a star may boost the performance of certain weapons while killing a ship's crew with radiation for those unlucky enough to have a shield down; dense asteroid belts provide a hazardous obstacle course that may help even the odds a little for smaller, more manoeuvrable warships. The player will be able to travel to any of these terrains, in real time, within a star system through the use of in-system warps. This will allow him to take the fight to a different environment if it serves to give him a tactical environment. In Klingon Academy, we have: nebulae, black holes, planetary rings, asteroid belts, gas giants, solar coronas and a variety of different planets.

Question: In Starfleet Academy, ships handled like F-16s. Is KA a sim or an action/arcade game? Will the battleships in KA feel more like gigantic vessels? How does that affect gameplay -- does it tend to make battles slower?

Raphael Hernandez: In Klingon Academy, capital ships move and feel like big ships. I can guarantee this because we've spent months getting ship movement to feel right. As a natural consequence of this, manoeuvring is extremely important in the game. While you are trying to train your weapons onto your opponent's downed shield, he is trying to manoeuvre that shield away from your line of sight. The fact that these heavy warships manoeuvre ponderously makes skilful manoeuvring even more crucial.

Question: Running a star ship in the middle of battle is a fairly complicated thing to do by yourself, which is why Kirk always had those other guys on the bridge with him (although he probably could have managed the Enterprise on his own, cause he's so damn manly). How have you guys simplified the many different aspects of ship management to make KA a fun videogame?

Raphael Hernandez: We've carefully designed our control interface with two goals in mind:

1) To give the player the easiest, simplest means of controlling a sophisticated sim, without ever having to take his eyes off the action.

2) To give the player the sense that he is really there, in the Captain's seat, issuing orders to a diligent crew.

We've succeeded in achieving these two goals with our Verbal Orders System. This control interface is essentially a menu system, built off of the numeric keypad, that allows a player to very easily instruct his bridge crew. In addition, each individual order is accompanied with voice-over of the Captain's voice ordering his crew, with an appropriate response from that crew member.

Question: What has been the hardest part of developing KA?

Raphael Hernandez: Persevering through the negativity and lack of faith that this could, and would, be a great game. Many people didn't believe our design assumptions would ultimately lead to a fun gaming experience, and it's been an uphill struggle getting to this point where we have now proven them wrong.

Question: Tell us a little bit about the gunnery chair mode in the game and how that works.

Raphael Hernandez: Through the Gunnery Chair interface, the player is able to manually control all of his weapons across all four firing arcs (fore, aft, port and starboard). The player is able to always keep his opponent on the screen, no matter which way you are facing, and manually fire at him as he passes through a weapons arc. The player has options for how this will work for him as well; he can manually steer his ship while always keeping the enemy on screen, or independently control the gunnery chair view and steer the ship, or steer his ship and always keep the target onscreen from a camera view outside his ship.

Question: What are you guys doing with multiplayer? Can you give us some examples of different types of MP games (we're guessing that there won't be a "Capture the Flag" mode). Will there be cooperative modes?

Raphael Hernandez: There will be your standard death matches and team death matches. The variety will come from the over 50 different warships the player can command, as well as the seven different terrain types at his disposal. More complicated, multiplayer-only missions may be forthcoming in future add-ons.

Question: Will there be a mission editor released to the public? Will hard-core players be able to build and import their own models and skins?

Raphael Hernandez: We've been planning on a mission editor to release with the game, but we've had to put this on hold for the initial release. Our plans are to complete this after the full game is released.

Question: What are you most proud of with KA? What do you think is going to make gamers sit back and go "Damn!"?

Raphael Hernandez: I'm proud of the fact that we've taken our original vision for this game and, through the raw talent and hard work of our development team, made it all a reality.

I think that when players, especially Star Trek fans, sit down and actually experience everything we've put into this game, everything from the most dramatic visual effects, to the rich and enveloping sound effects, from the elegant control interface, to the subtle and devious ship AI, they will realize that we've accomplished what others only promised: the sense that you are really there, in the captain's chair aboard your star ship -- just as you would experience it in the movies, but with you in command.

Question: Are there any surprises in the game that you can hint about?

Raphael Hernandez: Yes, beware of ancient, alien-artefact planet-killers.

Question: Why aren't there more star ship battles in Star Trek TV shows and movies?

Raphael Hernandez: Probably because of limitations in budget. All those big special effects cost a ton of money, and it probably is not feasible to portray big, intense battles once a week.

Question: Doesn't Paramount realize that we'd be perfectly happy watching a forty-minute battle between the Enterprise and a passel of Klingons or Borg? What's the deal?

Raphael Hernandez: Their loss is our gain. If anyone wants to see a large, visually stunning star ship battle, all they have to do is load up Klingon Academy.