Week 3
This week we completed the video-ad tape for the Atlanta E3. All that's left now is the interactive demo. Fabien and Antoine have had to work hard to get the engine back into shape. They made great progress during the pre-production phase, to get things quickly back into working order. Now they've got to make minor but important improvements on some parts of the code, before they can build the game on it. After we'd done the changes, some things which had been working simply stopped. But now everything's been put right (phew!).
As regards the rest of the game Tony, our new animator, has put a lot more passers-by and vehicles on the streets, and Fabien has just finished the collisions with mobile objects. You can now get run down by a car when you are crossing a street.
The graphics are going ahead rather well. Philippe is working on a big park, whereas Eric and Olivier are virtually totally reconstructing Neighbourhood 1. Our two mappers (Stephane, whose nickname is "The Legend of Mappers" and Corentin (known to his fans as "The King of Trams") are reworking all the demo textures to integrate them into Neighbourhood 1. Pierre is finishing the graphics of the shoot sequence in the air-conditioning ducts.
We were visited this week by a very well-known 3D card manufacturer, who's interested in our engine. There's an outside possibility of an agreement to put Omikron specifically on the card (in addition to the soft and Direct X versions). There could be an official announcement after the E3, with a presentation of the game running on the card. Will keep you informed in the next few weeks.
The interactive scenario writing is going ahead more or less O.K.. We are gradually beginning to solve the problems of the total freedom we want to give the player (and problems there are a-plenty!). Extreme cases have to be taken into consideration, such as " I want to shoot down all passers by with my gun ", " I want to be run down by a car ", " I want to get the shopkeepers in my sights ", " I want to commit suicide by throwing myself off the top of a high building ". It's fun to talk about, but credible solutions aren't so easy.
If you really want to give a player total freedom, you have to take into account illogical behavior as well. Games players are a nasty crowd. They never do what you want them to do.
See you next week.
Autor: David Cage
Source: Quantic Dream
11/01/1999 Eidos Interactive ships Omikron: The Nomad Soul
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Monday, June 02, 1997