Incline Ion Fury (formerly Ion Maiden) - Build Engine powered FPS by Duke Nukem 3D mappers - now with Aftershock DLC

[Darth Roxor]

more faceless grey industrial levels how exciting

 

[axx]

more faceless grey industrial levels how exciting

and the obligatory acid pools

 

[Melan]

Looks good to me. Talk shit, get shot!

 

[geno]

It's weird how they didn't show new weapons or enemies and specially how the bike doesn't has a HUD, considering one of the devs made this mod:

The previous trailers were cool, this is just ok at best.

 

[Hobo Elf]

Meh.

 

[Luckmann]

more faceless grey industrial levels how exciting

I'll be honest, I could have sworn that we've already seen some of those places.

I don't mind "faceless grey industrial" in my games, but some of that looked like it was straight out of the base game already, even though the base game does manage to create varying surroundings with what it has.

I can't help but to feel that taking a few pages out of the Blood and Shadow Warrior playbook(s) might've helped. Dystopian jungle environs or sci-fi cult locales, anyone?

 

[Valestein]

Will this expansion have ogay bottles though?

 

[DalekFlay]

Will this expansion have ogay bottles though?

Amazing how that whole thing just went away after a short while, even with them eventually telling the media to fuck off. It's almost like companies could almost always ignore the Kotakus of the world and nothing would ever come of it.

 

[soulburner]

Will this expansion have ogay bottles though?

Amazing how that whole thing just went away after a short while, even with them eventually telling the media to fuck off. It's almost like companies could almost always ignore the Kotakus of the world and nothing would ever come of it.

It's the best strategy. If you ignore the SJWs they will fade away. If you apologize and promise "to be better" they will keep demanding more and never be satisfied. I recall id Software did something while promoting Doom Eternal that pissed off the SJWs but it was ignored and it also became forgotten.

 

[geno]

http://thegg.net/interviews/ion-fur...opment-and-ion-furys-past-present-and-future/

Ion Fury interview with Voidpoint – Game development, and Ion Fury’s past, present, and future

You know, I (Robin Ek, TGG) have more or less been a supporter of Voidpoint and their retro FPS game “Ion Fury” since day one (yes, I’m talking as far back as when “Ion Fury” first got announced as “Ion Maiden”).

Well, I don’t regret that one bit, because I got sold on the game as soon as I saw the first trailer for “Ion Fury”, and as soon as I got a chance to play the PC preview build of “Ion Maiden”, I got sold on the game forever.

So much so that I got super thrilled that I got a chance to do an interview with 3D Realms about “Ion Maiden” back in 2018. Well, that was almost two-years ago, and a lot has happened with Voidpoint and “Ion Fury” since then (like the recently announced expansion pack for “Ion Fury”, for example).

That’s also exactly why we decided to reach out to Voidpoint for a new interview in the current year (2020), and luckily enough for me and you, Voidpoint accepted our interview request.

So with that said, please enjoy our interview with Richard Gobeille, the founder of Voidpoint and Director of “Ion Fury” =)


“Ion Fury” (originally called “Ion Maiden”) became a huge success story once it launched for PC back in February of 2018, and Voidpoint more or less became a world-famous indie games studio over a night.

Spoiler

Cola Powered Gamer:
Just out of pure curiosity, what exactly was it that made you decide that you wanted to create a game such as “Ion Fury”?

Richard (Voidpoint):
A:It’s hard to really distill it down to a single reason. I mean, everyone who worked on the game had been interested in making something like this for a long time. For me personally, it also had something to do with being completely broke, but knowing that releasing a good game would solve that problem.


Voidpoint is an indie game developing studio that originally consisted mainly of Build engine modders.

Cola Powered Gamer:
From what I understand, a lot of you are modders, right? So with that fresh in mind, was it hard to assemble a game development team?

Richard (Voidpoint):
Yeah, everyone on the team made mods beforehand.

This particular game actually started with someone from 3DR posting a thread on our duke4.net forums, asking for people who knew how to use Build to apply to work on a project.

Evan Ramos and I then connected with 3DR regarding it and took it over completely pretty soon after we had a bunch of people apply and then went through all the applications and picked out the people we already knew could get the job done, more or less.

The game was originally supposed to be some promotional tie-in thing for 3DR’s Bombshell game, but they didn’t really bother with giving much oversight to the project so we ran with it in our own direction. They wanted some promo thing and we wanted to make a real game.


That’s right, “Ion Fury” was built with and runs on a heavily modified version of the good ol’ Build Engine (“Duke Nukem”, “Shadow Warrior” and “Blood” made the Build Engine famous).

Cola Powered Gamer:
This is something which I (and most likely, a whole lot of other people) have wondered about. So, why did you decide to use the Build Engine for Ion Fury? I mean, why not any other given modern engine? You know, like the Unreal Engine for example?

Richard (Voidpoint):
I guess that’s a combination of already having a ton of experience with Build, and wanting a gimmick that was completely unique among the other retro games coming out.

All of the ones on Unreal or Unity etc sort of prove that “anyone” can make a retro-styled game on a modern engine. It’s a lot more difficult when you go hard in the paint and actually have to fight against ancient tech vs having a modern engine that you just stick old looking assets in.

For example, some of the retro-style games using Unity etc actually use legacy data formats and just have their own code attached to Unity that handles loading and using said formats.

Well, those ones are a lot more “legitimate” to me than some of the others I guess it’s kind of like restoring an old car versus building a replica. It’s just not the same thing.


One of Voidpoint’s biggest obstacles while developing “Ion Fury” was that they didn’t really know what they were doing plus the lack of oversight during Ion Fury’s early development.

Cola Powered Gamer:
What would you say was your biggest obstacle during the development of Ion Fury?

Richard (Voidpoint):
The biggest obstacle was probably not really knowing what we were doing and the lack of oversight during early development. It’s the same thing that allowed us to turn it into a full game instead of promotional material, but it was definitely pretty rough for a while. Another big obstacle was the lack of funding.


“Ion Fury” offers some of the most advance and biggest game levels that’s ever been seen in a Build Engine-driven game in the current year (2020).

Cola Powered Gamer:
From my point of view, the level design in Ion Fury is like a lost art. I mean, most of Ion Fury’s levels are bigger than the levels that are found in other Build game on the market right now. So, how long did it on average take to create one single level in the game?

Richard (Voidpoint):
That’s hard to quantify as all the mappers were working on multiple maps at the same time.

Most of the levels took a couple years from start to finish, but that of course includes time spent waiting for art assets to be completed, etc.

The levels in the DLC seem to be going a lot faster, possibly because all of the questions about how to create things that came up during the production of the main game already have answers.

When we were doing the main game there were a lot of times when a certain map effect was needed but didn’t exist yet,or specific art was needed for something, or a combination of both where a new object was required that needed both new art and new code. There isn’t as much of that with the DLC.


“Ion Fury” might just be one of the most fun to play and best looking Build Engine FPS games ever created. As a matter of fact, “Ion Fury” is pretty much the “Duke Nukem 4” that we all wanted but never got (imo).

Cola Powered Gamer:
During the development of Ion Fury you switched to voxels for item pickups and objects. Well, why was that the case? And was this hard to implement in an older engine?

Richard (Voidpoint):
Well, since Blood and Shadow Warrior both had voxels, we already had support for them in the engine, we decided to go for the voxels pretty much just because we could. I wanted to have spinning weapon pickups.

They’re “retro” and they can be helpful to draw the player’s eyes to an item they might have otherwise somehow missed.


Voidpoint had a lot of sources of inspiration while creating “Ion Fury”. However, one of the biggest sources of inspiration is actually the real world itself and everything that’s currently going on in our world (the whole “1984” police state roll-out all over the world via lockdowns).

Cola Powered Gamer:
What was your biggest inspiration for the setting in Ion Fury?

Richard (Voidpoint):
I can’t speak for anyone else on the team but I was personally inspired by the direction I see the real world headed. It’s just an exaggerated and sarcastic view of the path we’re already headed down I guess the guys who actually made the maps would probably have answers that name specific media they were inspired by for certain sections.


Yes, that’s right. “Ion Fury” is getting an expansion pack in 2021 for both PC and consoles! And based on the announcement trailer, Voidpoint is pushing the limits for what the Build Engine can handle even more in Ion Fury’s upcoming expansion pack.

Cola Powered Gamer:
Just recently, the expansion for Ion Fury recently got announced. So, could you perhaps give us some more details about this said expansion pack?

Richard (Voidpoint):
I guess most of what I can say about it at this point is probably pretty obvious–it will have a bunch of new levels and include new weapons and enemies as well.

So if you’ve seen the teaser video you can probably tell that there are some vehicle sections as well. I can also say that we’re aiming for settings for levels that are different from the main game. There will be more open and outdoor areas and fewer corridors and labs.


Creating “Ion Fury” was anything from a “walk in the park” experience for Voidpoint… Because not only did they run into problems during the development process of the game, but they also struggled with plenty of financial issues throughout large parts of the development of “Ion Fury”.

Cola Powered Gamer:
This is something that I have thought about more than once actually. Well…did you have trouble financing “Ion Fury”? I mean, this being your first commercial game and all?

Richard (Voidpoint):
Yes, definitely–that aspect was pretty difficult.

Most of the people who worked on the game did it for no up-front pay, only the promise of royalties once the game was released, but this arrangement wasn’t possible for everyone.

For example, one of the mappers had to pay the 3d modeler himself and when the game came out I had to pay him back. There were a few times during development where I personally completely ran out of money and couldn’t afford, like, anything.


Not everyone might be aware of it…But “Ion Fury” was originally named “Ion Maiden”. However, Voidpoint had to change the name of “Ion Maiden” into “Ion Fury” once Iron Maiden (a British Heavy Metal band) threaten to sue them…

Cola Powered Gamer:
Oh boy…I bet that you’re going to have a blast with this question *cough cough* So, did you ever expect that you would end up being sued by Iron Maiden during the development of “Ion Maiden”?

Richard (Voidpoint):
Not really. I still don’t personally believe they ever had anything close to a winning case, but fighting it would have been very expensive and would have delayed the release of the game by much longer than we could survive for.

We aren’t the first people they’ve pulled this shit on and I doubt we’ll be the last. They used to be my favorite band but it turns out they stole my favorite song (hallowed be thy name) from someone else anyway.

Oh well…


At no point in time did Voidpoint (not in their wildest dreams) think that “Ion Fury” would become such a success story and smash-hit. For example, “Ion Fury” won IndieDB’s “Indie of the Year” award back in 2019, and “Ion Fury” was the third best selling game on Steam back in 2019.

Cola Powered Gamer:
Now, for my final and wrap up question for this interview. Ion Fury won several awards and even is compared to the classic FPS games. So, did you ever think Ion Fury would become such a success when you started the development?

Richard (Voidpoint):
I had no idea it would be as popular as it ended up being!

Like, I knew that I personally thought it was good, but I attributed it more to it just being full of things I like (because I was the director) and figured I was just biased when we released it and then everyone else liked it too I was pretty surprised.

Credit:
Robin Ek – Editor and co-writer.


An interview to Ion Fury's director, talking about the struggle that was the development.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

I recall id Software did something while promoting Doom Eternal that pissed off the SJWs but it was ignored and it also became forgotten.

https://www.gamerevolution.com/feat...l-mortally-challenged-joke-offensively-boring

Spoiler

Doom Eternal “Mortally Challenged” Joke is Offensively Boring
ASTRID JOHNSONWednesday, August 15, 2018

At first glance, you’d assume that Doom Eternal exists purely to provide catharsis for those craving a responsive, ultra-violent shooter. These qualities are what made the Doom Eternal gameplay demo at QuakeCon 2018 last week so exciting. Although, what’s less exciting, at least for me, is how id Software‘s writing — specifically the “mortally challenged” joke — seems to have dangerously stumbled into the current political climate.

In the Doom Eternal gameplay demo, the Doom Slayer blasts, tears, and grapples their way through a futuristic cityscape scorched by the fires of hell. Throughout this, there’s what appears to be a city-wide VI that broadcasts dialogue sympathetic to the demons running rampant. These few scant lines are the cause for concern. Three phrases, in particular, stand out: “Earth is the melting pot of the universe,” “let’s make our friends feel welcome in their new home,” and the aforementioned “Remember, ‘demon’ can be an offensive term, refer to them as ‘mortally challenged.’”

There’s a lot to unpack here, and none of it is especially fantastic. This parodying of new words to replace offensive terminology is a commonplace gag in right-wing circles, often a means of ridiculing the stereotypical “social justice warrior” that, in the eyes of the right, have become too sensitive and overly-offended by the minutiae of controversial comedy. As the tides of social progression wash over society, we have come to realize that some words and terminologies that were once commonplace have damaging origins and connotations, especially for the people that these words and terminologies are used to describe.

Until around the 1970s, people with physical disabilities were called “cripples.” That’s not common vernacular anymore, and when it is used nowadays then it’s often as a derogatory slur. White people used to call Native Americans “Indians,” transgender people used to be called “transsexuals,” and British colonials used to call anyone from Asia “Oriental.” All of these words were phased out of parlance, on account of the fact that they were harmful or insensitive to the people they were being used to refer to because those people voiced discontent and fought to be treated with greater empathy. The problem herein with Doom Eternal’s joke is that it’s a false conflation.

Saying that “Demon is an offensive term,” while hyperbolic in nature as a deliberate means of generating laughs, implies that the absurdity of being asked to treat a murderous hellspawn with decency and love is equally “absurd” as treating a trans person, a disabled person, or a non-white person with decency and love. It compares, in one way or another, people who aren’t white, straight, cisgender, and able-bodied to literal demons from hell. “Mortally challenged,” specifically, is a direct offshoot from the term “mentally challenged,” and it’s a offshoot that’s none too appreciated.

It’s entirely possible that id Software did not intend this to be the message it put across. It’s plausible that, for a franchise built on the foundations of angering overprotective parents and bringing violence in video games into the public sphere of debate, that this was just an “edgy” joke. It could just be offensively boring, and I think that it will be regardless of any other factors at play. But whether intentional or not, what cannot be argued is that humor like this will appeal to and enable a very specific, very dangerous community on the internet — the far-right

When you factor in the other previously mentioned red flag quotes in the gameplay demo, Doom Eternal paints a picture of a world where forces that pose a threat to humanity are being welcomed with open arms by gullible people who blindly treat them as if they’re people. And when the language that you use to paint that picture is dangerously close to what is parroted by white supremacists and ethno-nationalists, you have to ask yourself: “Is my game sending the right message here?”

The alt-right will all too often adopt free speech talking points in order to position themselves as “rational” in a political debate and will take every opportunity to “troll the libs.” That alone will have piqued their interest. It gets worse when you critically think about those other quotes. “Let’s make our friends feel welcome in their new home” can not only be seen as a phrase often used by pro-immigration campaigners, but the inherent deceit laced into the game’s use of the phrase adds a sinister edge that the alt-right attribute to the “great replacement” conspiracy theory. Labeling an apocalyptic city as the “melting pot of the universe” makes a melting pot of culture sound like something doomed to fail.

Perhaps I’m reading too much into this. Like I’ve said, it is an out-of-context demo of an unreleased game and I would love to give id Software the benefit of the doubt — you only need look at publisher Bethesda Softworks’ Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus to see powerful messages that convey the opposite of what Doom Eternal may be implying. But when clips of the dialogue from your video game are being shared about the internet with captions like “Doom Eternal vs PC Culture,” and people are using your joke as ammunition for highlighting that “politically correct ideology is just junk,” then you need to reevaluate whether that’s the message you really want to send.

And then the game became a massive success.

 

[Citizen]

This parodying of new words to replace offensive terminology is a commonplace gag in right-wing circles, often a means of ridiculing the stereotypical “social justice warrior” that, in the eyes of the right, have become too sensitive and overly-offended by the minutiae of controversial comedy.

Oh god, the irony You must be a special kind of retard to write a paragraph about how untrue the overly-offended sjw stereotype is in a fucking 5000 word essay about being triggered by a videogame joke

 

[taxalot]

more faceless grey industrial levels how exciting

This a thousand times.

I am playing the game for the first time these days, and I'm genuinely shocked at how uninspired the environments are. You're kinda happy to be fighting in a building engine cyberpunk world, but it's all factories, sewers, offices. There is no creativity. There is only one palette of colours.
Duke Nukem 3D and Shadow Warrior tried to innovate with each levels, but this time they went for more realism and it's really not what's to be expected for this kind of game.

That they are redoing the same thing for the expansion is basically adding insult to injury.

They had my attention when they mentioned the add-on. They lost it when they showed it.

 

[Zombra]

Yeah, I was glad to play the whole game and get to the end, but none of the level design was so outstanding or memorable that "even more of the same" sounds worth my time or energy.

 

[Turtle-Zone 3000]

Expansion announced.



https://www.gamespress.com/Ion-Furys-Aftershock-Expansion-Reloads-More-90s-style-FPS-Action-on-PC

 

[PEACH]

I liked Ion Maiden fine enough but that trailer looks like "more of the same" which was one of the biggest issues with the base game already.

 

[Zombra]

"She brought some new toys" - shows one new toy and in less than a second goes back to the old toys

 

[PEACH]

"She brought some new toys" - shows one new toy and in less than a second goes back to the old toys

 

[CyberModuled]

More generalist urban industrial environments? Really? It's fucking Build Engine, be creative.

 

[Darth Roxor]

So in other words, it's going to be just as bad as the base game.

 

[geno]

 

[Zombra]

Nice one!

Higher res, no logos for desktop purposes https://global-img.gamergen.com/ion-fury-aftershock-dlc-10_00FA009600967669.jpg

 

[thesheeep]

Can't wait to get right into it again.
Will also be a great time to replay for all the secrets - couldn't for the life of me find even half of them. But I'm also not patient enough to click or shoot every surface in the game

 

[HansDampf]

Much better than the main cover.

 

[geno]

One revealed detail I'm happy about is the addition of "Arrange mode," which will integrate some of the new stuff Aftershock adds (like weapons and enemies) backward into the original Ion Fury campaign.

https://www.pcgamer.com/retro-fps-ion-fury-is-getting-an-expansion-this-summer/