What's Next?

[Gobalopper]

I have been getting a lot of people asking if Emperor will have a expansion, sequel, map editor, etc recently so I figured I would provide you with at least some details on what we know:

Map Editor - Although we don't know when yet the map editor is most likely going to be released. There are also a few other people who are working on the map formats which might lead to fan-made editors but those are probably still a long ways off. We will try to get some more details on Westwood's map editor this week, if you have any questions feel free to ask here and I will add them in.

Map Packs - Map packs are still being released every two weeks. Looking at the map data files there will probably be at least 5 map packs. If you are really desperate for new maps I suppose you could try seeing if the campaign maps work for multiplayer games but there could be some differences between the two.

Patches - There has been some mention of another patch sometime but no date has been given. It was mentioned that it could fix the disconnect exploit but again nothing final on that yet.

Next Dune Game - Hard to say on this one as Westwood hasn't really been saying much about it, although a recent interview with Chris Longpre looked like it was possible. As I did when Emperor was just rumoured to be under development I checked IG's job page and noticed they are hiring. The positions are interesting, an AI programmer (hmm... Emperor could use one of those :)), some designers ("Experience of building 3D levels in a published title."), and a few others. From reading the descriptions it looks pretty promising that there is some sort of sequel or maybe a new game based on the Emperor engine under development. Of course this is all just rumours right now and don't expect an announcement anytime soon, unless I'm right that is. :)