DanJW

The new Indiana Jones game apparently uses procedural character animation during gameplay (the so called "biomechanical AI" ). But everyone has been slamming that for looking a bit rubbish.

I'm gussing Huxley's most contemporary competitor will be Tabula Rasa, which does look kind of cool but with the emphasis on PvE rather than PvP. I think Huxley is a great name, referencing [WIKI]Aldus Huxley[/WIKI]. At least it's a move away from things like Future Soldier: Dark Conflict Online or whatever.

Fun to watch, but I doubt it's real.

Well, that was fun Back on topic: I was thinking about how this kind of thing compares to big CG animated movies like Shrek, seeing as that is what the games industry is now approacing in terms of sophistication. But games animators are still building people on the surface only - the Shrek animators built bones and muscles before applying the skin, and it's this that makes them believable. Obviously to cut down on processing power for games the innards will have to be removed once the animations are complete, but I still think it's a stage that has to be done to get really good CG people. Also; the animators in Shrek actually made the Princess Fjona character too realistic at first. Then went back and remodelled her to fit better with the cartoon aesthetic of the movie. I doubt we will get that kind of maturity of direction in games for a while, with most people straining at the leash to more photoreal.

Yeah, the tear worked, but partly because the rest of her face wasn't animated at that point. Having watched it again, I also think that her jaw is hinged oddly. But then I've been studying anatomy for drawing lately. I'm guessing they did the audition thing inspired by the "virtual actor" conceit. Of course, a better metaphor is puppetry.

The Planescape setting is good, I'll give you that. Tamriel has yet to grab me. I'm not familiar with the others. I'm pretty dissapointed that this movie is going to be live action. Blizzard make THE best prerendered cinematic cut-scenes in the industry, better than most animated short films. I've been wanting to see a feature length from their guys for ages. It would beat the pants off the Final Fantasy attempts. I've got a fealing that using real actors will just be too cheasy.

Yeah, the face is way too plastic. The lip syncing is off and the eyebrows hardly move. Also she doesn't seem to actually touch anything, the actor looks superimposed on a prerendered background. Good that they're trying though. They could benefit from doing the same as HL2 and getting a phoneme and facial expression expert in as a consulaltant.

Whoah, there's a link to our Façade thread in there. In fact they use Duncan's transcript to make a point. That I didn't know.

There is gameplay in adventure games, one of the oldest forms of game in fact, namely the riddle. In the old point and clicks there is zero twitch, and 100% intellectual puzzle solving (assuming it's done well and the solutions aren't completely random). And as it has been said already, story and gameplay are in no way mutually exclusive. You can choose to emphasize one over another, depending on where your tastes and strengths as a game maker lie. If you're really good you'll add both, in such a way that the player can somewhat ignore one aspect if they desire. Few designers are that good. One more thing. Gameplay is very similar between games. It is difficult to invent a new genre, which is what you have to do if you want your gameplay to truly stand out. Graphics and art style only seperate you a bit, again unless you come up with something that looks truly different. So, story is often essential to seperate your game from the hundreds of silimar games out there.

There are rumours that The original theatrical edits of the original Star Wars trilogy are coming out on DVD (presumably remastered, but without the extended scenes and cgi inserts). Do we know about this? Do we believe it? Do we care? Are we pissed off that it's taken so much mucking about before releasing them? I might consider buying it this time if it's true.

My friend's, friend's brother-in-law said he saw it in a lake in Scotland.

Ah, well, novels yeah. A novel is nearly always going to be deeper than a game world. I'm wondering if they will attempt a His Dark Materials game after the movie. As a movie licence, it would probably suck (apparently they are downplaying the the gnostic/blasphemous aspects in the screenplay, big surprise). edit: elmuerte; the whole orcs vs humans thing changed in Warcraft III. The orcs are no longer generic tolkienesque(/warhammer) orcs. If anything they are now more the good guys than the humans, who have been increasingly depicted as racist and reactionary. Also with WoW the other races are getting just as much if not more emphasis. The Horde and the Alliance are still skirmishing, but there is no all out war, and they frequently have to work together against some much bigger threats. In a lot of ways they have been bringing more Diablo-type stuff into the world, nearly to the point where the Diablo universe seems a bit redundant.

I'm willing to bet that's not an in-game cutscene, but an intro-title movie like the minotaur fight in NWN 1. I'm not as crazy about NWN2 as I am about the prospect of Dragon Age, but I will definately still be buying it and enjoying it. Obsidian seem to be turning into Bioware v2.0, but I have no problem with that. Nice to hear that the dilogue and scripting will be backwards compatable with the NWN1 toolset. Time to start digging out all those mod ideas I never finished!

Odd, I find Warcraft and Warhammer background a lot more interesting than any of the D&D universes. The D&D worlds bore me to death, especially forgotten realms. It's like the fantasy universe equivelent of being overly PC: every race and every monster must have it's own little country, gods, eponymous metal etc. It's so homogenised and stale. Elves in D&D are humans with pointy ears, dwarfs are short humans with beards. Gnomes even shorter people. There's no culture. And don't even get me started on their theory of magic. Warcraft has never stood still. It's a world created for an RTS of all things. Everything is much bigger and simpler than life, but there's always a sense of history, progress and change. Maybe becuase of that the races clearly are different, and have different cultures and world views - even races that are supposed to be on the same side. It's cartoon, comic book fantasy, but it does that extremely well. brkl, what fantasy universes do you consider "good"?

You're all banned.

Whoah, I hadn't read that. Looks like it's come a long way from the world war II bunker design. I'm looking forward to it even more now. I think I'm going to have plan my next PC upgrade around this game

Oh man, that's amazing. I assume everyone here has seen Be Somebody, Or Somebody's Fool?

Screw you guys, I still found out about it before you did

I'm pretty sure there will be more to do in space besides looking for planets. In the 1up interview Wright mentions space battles... In fact the whole game keeps putting me in mind of Iain M Banks' Culture novels. Amazing technology, the fate of planets, genetic tinkering, meddling in the affairs of uncontacted races, outlandish alien creatures that are considered human (although so far nothing in spore about tanshuman and AI tech). I'm really looking forward to running my own Contact section. Not to mention... Special Circumstances...

There is a "walk" button. Gordon runs by defualt, because he was top of his MIT class athletics team or something. You might be able to find a tab that turns default run off, then you can have a "sprint" button instead. The running can be especially annoying during the patforming moments.

Meh, if their own site doesn't show up when I do several different searches on the topic, they don't deserve my clicks.

Strangely (or not) Nick, I thought exactly the same thing after reading the preview. When Sonic was cute and mute he rocked. Now he's gangly and bad-assed and wisecracking, and he sucks. He's a teenager, and teenagers suck. When he was mute the animators gave him so much personality. It was great. It made Mario look like a little robot midget. Aibo maybe. The thought of RPG elements in sonic makes me cringe too. Maybe the core gameplay will be good, but we'll have to see.

Brings to mind a saying about America and Irony. ¬¬ I've been learning a bit of stand-up and on purely technical note, his gags were great. course I also loved his point (and his balls)

...Or maybe they'll get chewed up and spat out right now

Europe laughs at USA's nipple phobia.