Wild West Online Devs Reiterate Why They Chose The Nightshade Engine

Yesterday, we reported on drama that was unfolding in the Wild West Online community following the discovery that the game was using Free Reign Entertainment's Nightshade Engine. To recap, the drama basically revolved around questions about whether the developers' choice of engine meant that Sergey Titov, the man behind games like The War Z, Romero's Aftermath, and Shattered Skies, was, in fact, involved in development. Statements were made by someone at one of the companies that are involved in the development of Wild West Online, but an official statement was also promised.

The official statement is here and, to be honest, all it does is reiterate what was already said. It is as follows.

We'd like to address some concern that has been voiced regarding use of the Nightshade engine. We decided from the outset that we did not want to develop a new engine - our strengths lie in game and story design so we wanted to use an existing engine that would be suitable for an online, multiplayer game and allow us to scale over time. We chose Nightshade because it provides the best tools for our team in terms of building/scaling the game, and it has some robust anti-cheat features already embedded that would save us time and expense that we could then allocate towards feature development. We're happy with our choice, and are working to bring you a fun game experience built atop this engine.

This is the only post we will be making regarding this subject and we expect this will allay the concerns of certain members of our community. We now want to focus on the game and working with you guys to make something pretty badass for PC. We hope you guys will judge us on the outcome of the game and give us your support so that we can bring this to fruition.

Thank you all for your support, and stay tuned for some exciting news soon!

In short, as mentioned before, Titov is not involved and the Nightshade Engine was chosen due to the amount of development time that it saved the companies involved.

Additionally, the third round of community Q&A has been added to the FAQ. Some of the more interesting points include the fact that players will be able to host their own private servers. A "gameplay walkthrough" is set to be released "sometime before the Closed Alpha" begins this summer. The "public plan" at present is to release the game before December 31st. The game itself will not separate players into clans, but players will be able to roleplay Native Americans, should they want to. The inclusion of wildlife is still in the air and is currently considered to be an "extra" feature that is not part of the core game. Shooting while riding is still up in the air. The possible inclusion of mini-games, such as horseshoes, lasso throwing, and shooting contests will be assessed after the "initial Alpha tests"; the same goes for quick draw duels.

You can find the full FAQ here.