The 4th edition of the Stellar Vox Community Bulletin is out, covering the recent interviews that you may have missed and also news of forthcomining interviews coming from Voodoo Extreme, Warcry Network and the online games magazine Thirteen1. - keep an eye out on those sites.

There is the usual pick of the threads of interest started by a few pilots...including one thread where a pilot asks who would win in a bar fight - Tyi or the Genide? Although we would have to ask what would happen if General Gira turned up in the bar fight!?

Head over to the official forums and have a read.

The first community Question and Answer session was today published by ReaKKtor on the official Black Prophecy forums. Snowcrash took some of the most commonly asked questions from the forums, and asked Kirk Lenke (CEO of ReaKKtor) and Simon Bachmann (Development team leader). Also finding out about some of their habbits and hobbies.

More after the jump.

There is a new interview out. This time a Q&A with Kirk Lenke from Reakktor, with GameSNAFU. The questions and answers concentrate a lot more on the details of the gameplay of Black Prophecy, so it is worth a read.

Read the full interview at GameSNAFU.

Today Reakktor has released three more in game screenshots. On the first screenshot you can see a Tyi fighter ship being chased by several combat drones of the mysterious alien race known as the "Restorers". The second screenshot shows a human shuttle bursting asunder blown to smithereens in a huge explosion. And last but not least, the third screenshot shows a Tyi fighter going into close quarter combat with a Genide fighter within the remains of a demolished space station.

See them here.

All looking very good, especially the first screenshot - jawdropping. 

Discuss more here

The digital magazine, MMOZine has a single-page preview feature on Black Prophecy in their latest issue. Of note, they also have a three-page preview of Jumpgate Evolution, which features a suprising amount of reservations for a preview. There is nothing particuarly new to be found in this single page on BP however - expect a dark tense atmosphere from KK they say. For those interested, you should be aware that MMOZine consists of a large and intrusive pdf file, consisting of the full "magazine" - the intetion seems to be very much to be similar to print magazines.

Another issue of the Stellar Vox Community Bulletin has been released on the official black prophecy forums, covering the news released in the last few weeks, and quite a few threads of interest.

There is some more news about the previously mentioned dev diaries.

"The previously announced dev diaries are beginning to take shape. We have decided to present a monthly diary in which a selected team member will talk about the specific aspects of Black Prophecy that he or she is working on. This will, amongst other things, include topics like the game’s physics and graphics but also a lighthearted view on the funny side of working for a game development company.

Another goodie I have in preparation for you is a Community Q&A where members of the team are interviewed to get answers on questions you have posed in the forums, and also to bring the people behind the curtain a bit closer to you. I will try to repeat this Q&A regularly but it will be heavily dependent on the team’s schedule."

There isn't any more news about the publisher, but we are not expecting any news until a deal is signed. It's entirely possible that something could be announced at E3 about Black Prophecy, which starts on 2nd June.

The German arm of Eurogamer had landed an interview with Kirk Lenke, Reakktor's CEO. While obviously to promote Black Prophecy, a large part of this interview is about the company. As such, we hear about Reakktor's history with Neocron (it doesnt go further back than that) and the 10Tacle insolvency, the number of people working on BP (39, in line with the 40-50 we were told years ago, although perhaps suggesting some layoffs) plus the use of outsourcing for music (Dynamedion) and graphics (Rocketbox, watch this space for more details) as well as the company's plans for the future.

With regards to game details, we get more of the emphasis on space-fighter combat over trading or such. It is explained that the skills, contrary to my earlier guesses are purely requirments and do not influence effectivness. Micheal Marrack is also stated to be available to work on expanding the storylines, along with many references to continuing development of the game post-release.

For those of you without a stunning grasp of German and perhaps slightly scared by what Google does to the interview, Renfield has again provided a translation on the offical forums.

Snowcrash today has been talking to (apparently Chinese, but all written in English) MMOSite.com. The interview retreads much of the same old ground, however we do get a few more details about the motivations and nature of the Restorer - they definitely aren't human and they definitely are xenophobic. I had some problem with MMOSite's page - it kept fowarding me on to a 404 error page, even though I had been reading the article for the past few seconds. If anybody else has trouble, Parallax has reposted the whole thing over at the offical forums.

Today, Reakktor have revelead 3 new screenshots at ridiculously high resolutions (2560x1024 - that's two 1280x1024 monitors together you'd guess). Each is taken from inside the cockpit of a Tyi, Genide and Human craft. Presumably these are taken from a reasonably recent build - we can see some changes to the HUD system (sadly not integrated into the cockpits) - a change of units to metric, along with a 3D radar view in the bottom right.

Beyond the glass, we see not much other than some lens flare effects for the Tyi. The Genide ship appears to be at some form of station around a planet with a ring system. You can see the rings far below the plane. The human "shuttle" ship is in some form of debris field with a larger spacecraft below it. Combining that ship design's appearance in the gameplay trailer as part of a "protect the colony ships" mission and the eerie resemblence to Homeworld's Khar-Toba, I'm guessing it's a colony ship of some kind.

Onlinewelten.com has been speaking to Kirk Lenke about Black Prophecy. Not many new details about the game dates, but there was some new information on clan stations and resources. Here are a few snippets.

On Clan stations.

A clan station will contain several functions: beginning with a dock where the member can change their ships, a shared depot with access right management, living quarters that define the member capacity of a clan and many more. The larger the living quarters are, the more members can join the clan. These functions can be increased by using better or bigger module versions. Some modules are only available to clans who reached a specific clan level...

And on resources.

The resources have three purposes. First of all they are needed to modify items such as ship parts or weapons.

Resources are also a kind of tax for the factions. A part of the resources gained by clans have to be handed over to its faction. These resources will be used in big PvP faction battles and define how often the faction member can respawn during the fight...

You can read the original interview in German, or you can head over to the official forums where Pilot Renfield has once again been kind enough to translate the article for the English speakers.