It's called "Star Ancestor", and I thought of it years ago with my brother. It's an action/adventure game that takes place in a plausible future. You play Demetrio, a solider and you command a crack troop of elite soldiers with the aim of protecting our solar system from an unexplained invasion. You can move and accomplish your missions as you like on foot, in a ground vehicle, a helicopter or even in space. The game has a real story and plunges you into a world with a background.

Finally, the cinematic aspect of the real-time cut-scenes will be really carefully designed (with more than 800 scenes) in order to truly submerge the player into an interactive Space Opera.

Your name isn't very French. Where does it come from?

It's true, I'm of Russian origin. Let's say that I'm French with a Slavic mind — that's why I'm very emotional! :)

I would say that people shouldn't charge into it and take their time to evaluate tools in respect of their needs.

You should pay as much attention to the experience and advice of veterans of the industry as to young companies but don't slavishly apply their advice to what you want to do. I've noticed that many of the pre-established rules have been listed as "the laws of video games" and you're told "You have to do it this way or it won't work!". Of course, there are rules that should be followed, but there aren't any "Ten Commmandments".

Find a "hook", something that can show that your game is something new that hasn't been made before and get busy with the gameplay aspects immediately. Unless your game is designed for it, don't embark on interminable development of physics simulations and don't develop something your 3D program already offers.

Spending six months developing a softbody or lipsync engine is all very well, but nobody will care and your game won't be any more interesting. Be canny: there are tons of little plug-ins that can easily save you months of work - work carefully, but don't spend weeks on a single texture or model! :)

With integrity, patience and a huge amount of work, how can it fail?

You were disappointed with 6.0. Are you more satisfied with 7.5?

Laughs! :) Version 6 wasn't a beta?!

In fact I was furious and turned to 3ds max. It's a powerful application but I didn't get it at all and once my anger had passed I came back to my first love once 6.5 was out. LightWave and I made up, plus I could play around with particles!

Now, with 7.5, LightWave has matured. Of course, it still needs to evolve further but I'm completely satisfied with all that it offers for the price. It's really stable, the optimisations for the P4 (especially for HyperVoxels) are incredible and the tools for animation have made plenty of progress.

And you know what they say: You are always tough on the one you love… and I really love LightWave!