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JR "Razor" Sutich recently attended Codemasters Connect 08 in England and on site he got the first chance to play Jumpgate Evolution. A veteran of the original game, Sutich offers a unique perspective on how the remake has come.

He also sat down with Producer Hermann Peterscheck for some old fashion Q&A.

The controls felt good and I had heard that there were some concerns that joysticks might not be able to take full benefit of the lateral thruster mechanics, but using the left hat switch on the X52's throttle seemed to work great. For those that want to have a flight model similar to the original, you can turn off the "dampeners" that determine the amount of effect the flight physics have on your movement. Just for the record, real pilots don't need any stinking dampeners.

Read more after the jump.

Jumpgate Evolution is the planned remake of NetDevil's 2001 debut dogfighting space MMOG. We spoke to Herman Peterscheck at the 2008 Game Developers Conference about the game and their plans for it.

"My rule is to try and keep the rules simple and let the complexity come from the interplay of the rules," explained Hermann Peterscheck, the producer of Jumpgate Evolution.

Jumpgate Evolution is about dogfights and real-time, player-skill-driven combat, while EVE is a higher level, tactical experience. Or to use the ultimate space-geek example, Jumpgate is to Star Wars as EVE is to Star Trek. The guns are aim and shoot, the world completely three dimensional (people can fly "upside down") and advancement unlocks new toys, but it is still up to the player to use them.

Read more after the jump.

In their latest Developer Log, NetDevil's president Scott "Scorch" Brown talked about Jumpgate's journey from a personal obsession to an advanced and highly polished reincarnation, appropriately titled "Evolution":

When we started Netdevil 10 years ago to create Jumpgate Classic, we were just a handful of people. Most of us were still working fulltime jobs, but every free minute we had was spent developing the game. For us it was the game that we always wanted to play. At the time the most popular space games were Elite and Wing Commander and those games were our inspiration.

Jumpgate Classic was a true labor of love and because of it we have some great stories to tell. It really shaped us as developers and we gained a lot of experience from it. We often joke that the game was finished on passion alone. Well, passion and a lot of Pizza...

Knowing what we know today and being in possession of much better resources then we were 10 years ago, we felt very confident that we could make a much better game that was based in the Jumpgate universe. A game that would be really special. Thus, the decision was made and Jumpgate Evolution was born.

Read More for the full log plus the latest released screenshots!

In this article format interview, we get a preview of what NetDevil's re-make of their original space MMO Jumpgate has to offer. Producer Hermann Peterscheck talks about the game, its high-action combat, advanced AI and more.

"We created a separate AI server that handles all the behaviors of all the opponents in the game," Peterscheck said. "It's a way for us to make the world more engaging."

"Advanced AI" is a tagline most every game ever launched has thrown on the box, so what does it really mean for Jumpgate: Evolution? Peterscheck explained how they did simple things. For example, if one station is low on a particular product, it calls out for it and then other stations send cargo ships, loaded with the stuff. These ships must physically fly from station to station and that fact does more than just make the world seem alive, it created content for players.

Read more after the jump.