Well, it's here! Demis contacted me a while ago and asked if I wanted to pose a couple of questions to him - well, I couldn't exactly refuse that, could I?! This is not the first Demis interview on a Republic The Revolution fansite, but certainly the first on an English speaking fansite. It's short, but very sweet. Enjoy!

1) Most of us have read your diaries on the website, so we know your thoughts and feelings during the first stages of the games development. Did you really think at that time that you would be able to accomplish everything you wanted to do? And now, a year before release, have you implemented all of the ideas that you originally had?

Of course when you start off with an ambitious vision for an original game by its very nature there are no guarantees as to what will work and what won't as no-one has ever done the stuff you are trying to do before. There are no blueprints or well-trodden paths to follow. Looking at Republic as it stands today, the thing I'm most pleased about is how close we are to the original insanely ambitious design we were shooting for when we embarked on this journey more than two years ago. Virtually all the major aspects of the game we had planned to put in should make it when all is said and done.

2) A lot of talk has concerned the new graphics engine, 'Totality'. In a previous interview, you mentioned that the engine can "cope with scenes of unlimited complexity", yet the minimum computer specification will be only 64Meg RAM. How is this possible? Will a computer with 512Meg RAM still be pushed to the limits?

It is possible because of the use of innovative Level of Detail techniques. These very efficiently reduce down arbitrarily complex graphical scenes to something that is manageable resource-wise even on a machine with 64MB. One nice thing about the engine is that it is fully scalable, so if you have 512MB of RAM you will get higher quality and more detailed scenes. The engine is basically designed to make the best use of any hardware power thrown at it.

3) You have also mentioned a multiplayer mode, based on a LAN network. How would this work exactly? Would it be similar to the scenario mode, with each player battling it out to become a certain rank?

The LAN game works in exactly the same way as the single player game. It's just that in this case the opposing faction leaders will be human rather than AI-controlled.

4) A lot has been said about "1,000,000 different citizens". How have you implemented this idea? Does the computer generate 1,000,000 random new characters at the start of each game from a 'pool' of possibilities? How many characters have been pre-designed (i.e. the president and other important characters), and do you have a favourite?

The head of every citizen will be made different through the use of morphing technology (this works by real-time morphing between any two artist defined target heads) to give different head shapes and then the use of 'stick-on' facial features such as beards, eyebrows, hair and then varying the colours of all these objects. A citizen's clothes can be chosen from any bottoms or tops and have any colour scheme. So by the use of these features we can make every citizen in Republic look unique. The stats for every citizen will also be unique and at the start of the game a citizen's initial stats will be generated by using their job and residential location as input and then adding some random variation to give colour. Of course these stats will change through the course of the game as events and actions influence the general population. On top of this we will have hundreds of specially designed and hand-crafted characters whose stats will have been individually entered and balanced. This will be done for all the key characters on the game and also other important characters such as the President and opposing faction leaders. As to a favourite character, well, we have one that is modelled to look like Ian Livingstone (Chairman of our publisher, Eidos). He is a police chief at the moment!

5) Finally, a question that was recently on the forum, regarding the gamplay itself. Can you forge alliances with one of the other faction leaders? Can you trade or loan specialists or resources with other faction leaders?

Yes, there have been many good questions on the forum, which we read and take note of every day. Very shortly we will be instigating a system whereby we will regularly round up the best questions and suggestions on the forums and periodically post extensive answers to them. But anyway, back to the question :-) You will be able to forge alliances with other factions and share resources to some extent, probably as you say loan key characters. The full range of what you will be allowed to do has yet to be finalised.