Hello everyone! Before we jump into the interview i just want to say thanks for having me here on Orville Central. I’m a big Orville fan so I will do my best to bring you good Orville content!

The Orville Interactive Fan Experience is a fan developed game by Messy Desk Interactive. After the announcement of this fantastic project we sat down with Dan Govier the project lead to discuss about the project.

OC: When did you guys decide to start developing this project?

DG: Around the end of September 2018, maybe beginning of October. We certainly had the Bridge, Ready Room and some corridors built by the end of October. We were so excited about making the Orville, we wasted no time at all after the Stage 9 C&D.

What’s the progress of the project right now?

Right now we’re at the point where we can release a fairly solid set exploration, so that’s basically the entirety of the studio set on Fox Stage 15. We’re looking to have that ready for download sometime in the next 3-4 weeks.

We’ve been working hard on the tools and systems, so we now have fully addressable RGB LED strips all over the ship, just like how they work on the studio set, and we’ve made the walls/floors/ceilings etc into lego-brick style pieces so we can build decks rapidly

What Game Engine are you using for this project?

We’re currently using Unreal Engine 4.22.2, which is the latest version available.

What are the advantages of choosing Unreal Engine from others engines Unity for example?

We’ve always favoured UE4 for First Person style games, because that’s what it does very well. It’s got great visuals, and a lot of widespread compatibility out of the box. The blueprint system is also great for quickly cobbling together prototype code, and the Epic marketplace has tons of great plugins and community content.

What’s the size of your team so far?

We’ve got 3 mostly full-time developers (myself included), and a wider team of perhaps half a dozen or so contributors who produce content on an ad-hoc basis. We’ve also got a great QA Team who handle moderation and bug reporting.

You guys have the blessing of Fuzzy Door Productions, I would assume that is a big deal for you guys?

It’s actually the biggest deal. Considering what happened to our previous project, it was imperative that we contact the Orville show runners before devoting any development time to a new project. None of us wanted to go through that again, so when Tom Costantino responded favourably to our pitch video it was huge for us. I cannot praise Fuzzy Door enough, their support for their fan community is absolutely phenomenal.

Can fans help the project in anyway?

One of the founding principles of Messy Desk is that our community of fans are very much a part of the business. We are in constant communication with our Discord community, and we absolutely welcome their thoughts, suggestions and observations on the project’s development. For example, we’re not just going to lay out a bunch of decks and call it job done, we’ll be sharing the designs and concepts with our community and getting their feedback on what they think of the design. Fans are very much a part of the development process, so get on our Discord and be heard!

Thanks to Dan for taking the time for siting down and talk to us about this fantastic project.

Below are some images from the project.