News from the Net From our reporter, Alex van Kaam @~Voodoo Extreme, my favourite site, has put up an interview with @~Lord British over the upcoming Ultima Ascension, which seems to @~really be the last Ultima game, but Lord British is already @~thinking of new plans. You can get the whole interview here @~http://www.voodooextreme.com/interviews/lordbritish.html but for @~those of you who are not connected (and to reach my news Kb quota) @~here is an extract: Voodoo Extreme: Will you be providing the voice of Lord British? Have you ever in the past? Richard Garriott: Actually, I don't think we've used my voice as LB in an Ultima. I will be in this one, but how... you'll have to see for yourself. Voodoo Extreme: Is there any truth to the rumors that a demo containing the entire Earth level might just be released some time this summer? ;-) Richard Garriott: More like fall (note: September - November). Voodoo Extreme: Everyone knows that Ultima IX: Ascension will be the last time the Avatar quests in Britannia. Does that necessarily mean that there will be no more Ultima games, or just no more Ultima games with the player as the Avatar? Richard Garriott: There will be no more Ultima Games in Britannia that have the Avatar as the main character. Anything else is still a possibility. But the Ascension teams next game is a new fiction I am now creating, that will likely not be called Ultima. However, it is very Ultima-esque. Voodoo Extreme: Could there be a possible expansion pack for Ascension, like The Silver Seed and The Forge of Virtue for the VIIs, and the ill-fated add-on for Pagan? If so, is a possible storyline for it already in the works, or will you cross that bridge when you come to it? Richard Garriott: I don't think so, but you never know. Voodoo Extreme: Do you feel Verant's recent EverQuest and Microsoft's upcoming Asheron's Call will pose a threat to current UO players? Richard Garriott: Some to be sure, but a lot less than we feared originally. EQ has had no negative impact on our growing number of players. We expected to take a measurable hit. AC has Microsoft, so it could be a bigger threat, but we are confident that the market is growing faster than the offerings. I think it's kind of sad that of the nearly 100 OL games we have web sites for, about 60 are Ultima-esque FRPGs and 30 are Wing Commander style space trading and combat games. Few if any are new entertainment in this new medium. Voodoo Extreme: What are the chances of a third Ultima Underworld, to round things off? I know Looking Glass did the other two, but maybe you could do the third yourself? It'd be nice to cap off that trilogy as well... Richard Garriott: Great idea that we've never been able to capitalize on. Voodoo Extreme: How advanced is the companion AI? What features does it offer? Are your companion's actions scripted or can they adapt to new situations? Richard Garriott: Your "companions" do not travel with you as in Ultimas 3-7. Instead they do deeds of their own while you do yours. One new companion does spend a huge amount of time by your side, but still not in the way we had before. You'll have to see yourself. @~If you want some more Ultima info try @~http://www.allgaming.com/ultimaix/, a good site! @~System Shock 2 is already been out for some time in the US but @~still has to hit the European mainland, there have been lots of @~reviews about the game, even complete walkthroughs can be found, @~but for now I will just stick to this URL: @~http://www.ingava.com/guides/pc/ss2_weapons/index.htm It's a @~complete explanation of all the weapons in the game, and how you @~can modify then according to your profession. Quite helpful I @~think. @~BTW, if you don't yet have the Demo, then go get it, @~www.3dfxmania.com has it, it's well worth the download. Don't @~expect something like Quake, just expect System Shock 1 in a new @~coat :-) @~Last week I discovered http://www.ga-rpg.com/bio/ which is a @~column that presents the thoughts and feelings of both Greg @~Zeschuk and Ray Muzyka joint-CEOs and co-Executive Producers of @~BioWare Corp ... to make it short, the people behind Baldur write @~a column here, and it's quite a good read. Below you will find an @~issue that was written by Scott Greig, the Lead Programmer on @~Neverwinter Nights. He was the lead programmer on Baldur's Gate, @~and is currently the Director of Programming at BioWare Corp. Zen and the Art of Game Programming ----------------------------------- Back in that misty daze that I refer to as my school years, I would fantasize about what it would be like to be a video game programmer. I used to dream about vanquishing seemingly insurmountable technical problems with a single stroke of the keyboard. I filled many a notebook margin with game graphic doodles. Looking back I can't begin to estimate the number of hours that were killed playing arcade, console and computer games. "The life of a game programmer, that's the life for me!" I would often think to myself. Reality turned out to be something rather different. Not better, not worse, just different. Throughout university, the theory of software engineering was drilled into us like religious dogma. "There isn't a software problem that can't be effectively dealt with if software engineering principles are applied." we were told over and over again. Armed with the assurances of my professors and several years of non- game programmer experience, I was ready to apply myself to programming video games. My first major task was to produce a proof of technology demo for what would become Baldur's Gate. What software engineering principal should be applied here? Rapid prototyping of course! That's tech speak for hacking at it until it works. In a matter of a month, the team and I took the "Roids" direct-x demo and turned it into the required demo. The code was some of the worst I had ever written, the artists had to jump through hoops to integrate the art, the sounds were cobbled together from bits and pieces we had lying around the office, but it worked well enough to land us a contract. With the prototype behind us, I was ready to start from scratch and show what a real application of software engineering could achieve. One of the tenets of software engineering is that you design the framework and then fill in the details later. What this doesn't account for is the need for demos. Demos are simply the bane of the game programmer. I can't think of another industry where you are expected to have significant working features after only 5% of the development is done. There are several reasons for this. First, the release window for video games is very small compared to the development time. A three-year project usually has a six-month release window. Add to this the fact that you need to start building interest for a project over a year before it is released and that most print magazines have a three month delay from the time you buy advertising space until your shows up in stores. In most other industries, you can develop a product, and let it sit on the shelf until the time is right to release it. We were caught completely flatfooted by the need for demos. "What do mean, you need the next demo to contain the fireball spell?! We don't have the game object management system in yet, much less the spell system!" I would cry in dismay. Eventually we adapted to the need for demos and I even began to appreciate the demo. There is something very satisfying about seeing a pile of new features appearing almost by magic over the course of a couple days. During the initial development of Neverwinter Nights, a completely different approach to "the Demo" was used. With the entire programming team for Neverwinter Nights still absorbed with finishing Baldur's Gate, demos for NWN were created using the MDK2 engine. The artists were able to prototype a lot of art, control issues were worked out, and there was something to show people when they came to visit. One of things that I learned from Baldur's Gate is that the biggest challenges aren't necessarily technical. The biggest problem that we had with Baldur's Gate was the sheer size of the data. There were over 4 million individually loadable data items called resources. A resource could be anything from a sound to a rule- table or animation. Even with a strict naming convention and directory structure, a disturbing amount of time was spent trying to locate files. Another interesting aspect of game programming is that practically every aspect of computer science is applied to games. Artificial intelligence, memory management, networking, 3D math, sorting, data compression, and even database theory are all used. I can't think of a single computer class in university that didn't contain at least one nugget of knowledge that can be applied to gaming. Demos and problems aside, the programming on Baldur's Gate continued. Time estimates were made, revised and then thrown out. One of the programmers was scheduled for two weeks of user interface programming before he was to be transferred to the MDK2 team. Those two weeks ended up stretching into a year. None the less, progress was made. Some of it was elegant, well thought out code. Some of it wasn't very pretty. In the end, despite the demos, and the extra features, it was finished and it worked. It took three years, but the sense of pride and accomplishment was something completely indescribable. The experience wasn't what I had expected but it was none the less, interesting, challenging, sometimes frustrating but overall quite satisfying. Unlike every other job I have ever had, I honestly say that I never been bored. @~Tiberian Sun is out, and just to show you how wanted this game @~is/was read this little bit: Electronic Arts' Command and Conquer: Tiberian Sun is at the top of the PC market. EA UK announced that it shipped 153,000 units of the game the first day of its release and 40,000 more the following Monday. @~Well I do know that stores over here were opening up at midnight @~to sell the game......and people were there to buy it !!!!..... @~kinda like a new Star Wars movie ?? @~At Computer Games Online there is a review of Darkstone, a game @~very similar to Diablo, check it out at: @~http://www.cdmag.com/Home/home.html?article=/articles/022/085 @~/darkstone_review.html for those of you not online I will just @~skip to the conclusion: The fly in the ointment ----------------------- Is Darkstone the Perfect Game? Well, not exactly. At low levels, enemy critters are pathetically easy to defeat, and this difficulty factor increases only slowly as you progress through the various dungeon areas. The "second character" AI is innately bloodthirsty, and players might very well find that their active characters are gaining experience far slower than their sidekicks. Monsters are tough to target when either they or the player-characters are standing in a doorway, although many offensive spells will at least travel in the direction you indicate and hit the enemy anyway. Assuming, of course, that you know what you're casting. The game's primary font is tougher to read than an amateur charity newsletter, especially at smaller point sizes. The characters could use a few more polygons, the NPC models could be a bit more varied, and an option for 800x600 viewing would have been nice. Many of the incidental quests seem pretty arbitrary, and the rewards are often anticlimactic. The game has a dearth of really powerful and cool weapons. Oh, and as brainy as your AI companion might usually be, his or her survival skills take a definite plunge when traps are involved. No matter how carefully you manoeuvre the active character, skirting carefully around that explosion trigger or acid pool, the following hero will inevitably take the path of most painful resistance, thus necessitating a clerical break and probably another pointless and loudly-delivered safety lecture. But these annoyances are minor, and can occasionally even be useful, as they break the game's hypnotic spell and remind you that (perhaps) sleep might be a valuable asset to your personal or professional life. In short -------- When all is said and done, Darkstone may just be Diablo in 3D with a spare character, but one thing seems certain-it's good Diablo in 3D with a spare character. Darkstone might very well be the best thing to come out of France since the chocolate truffle, and dungeon-crawl connoisseurs will spend many happy hours Hack-ing their way through its depths. @~So it sounds like an okay game, I wonder when Diablo II is finally @~coming out, must be the most mentioned game on the net. @~While I was at CDMag I also found a review of Star Fleet Command @~at http://www.cdmag.com/articles/022/115/starfleet_command_revie @~w.html, I downloaded the demo of this game and was totally lost, @~controls everywhere, but how to work them.....this is one for the @~die hards would be my first comment I think. @~And the last review I spotted on CDMag worth mentioning was that @~of Draken at @~http://www.cdmag.com/Home/home.html?article=/articles/022/073 @~/drakan_review. html. @~At GamePen they have a preview of Settlers III : Quest of the @~Amazons (http://www.gamepen.com/preview/PC/08_31_1999_812_1.asp) @~since it's not so big I will just place it here for those of you @~who (yes, yes) can't get online: Blue Byte's Settlers series has been a love-it or hate-it real-time experience. Unlike other real-time strategy games that focus on giving individual units their orders, The Settlers III had players issuing orders to their virtual communities as a whole. Those individuals in the settlement do what they were good at doing - whether it is building, digging, or gathering - and thus this game introduced labor unions to the real-time experience. It actually required the player to give consideration to not only what buildings to create, but also in what order. Making sure that the community functions at peak efficiency is a big part of the game. Instead of assigning individuals to a new task, players must direct the percentage of labors to specific tasks - making less units that actually build, but more that dig the foundations. The process can be a bit overwhelming since units do nothing until they have something to do. Builders won't build if they are waiting for the foundation to go in for example. What this expansion, Quest of the Amazons, adds are new characters and buildings, so those that found the original gameplay enjoyable and compelling should be thrilled with the added options. But gamers who weren't moved by Settlers III certainly won't find enough from what this expansion has to offer. In fairness, there is quite a bit, more than most expansion pacts and certainly matching the expansions of Age of Empires or Seven Kingdoms. The add-on contains new maps for both single and multiplayer games, as well as two full campaigns. Of course the biggest addition is that of the 4th race to Settlers III, the Amazons. Where the races most stand out in this series is in their magical abilities, since the worker and warrior units are pretty standard no matter which race you play. Like the original game, magic and mana management just don't come in early enough and with the game's learning curve, some players may give up before they get to the good stuff. Everything that has been added is pretty comparable to the original game so there really isn't a whole lot to say. Visually the game is on par with the original Settlers III - that is with somewhat dated and unimpressive graphics, which are actually reasonable considering that this is one new game that isn't demanding that the player go upgrade their computer to play. As a whole the look is implicative of Theme Park rather than a serious real-time strategy simulation. The individual units resemble chubby little kids rather than realistically animated peasants or warriors - and when playing the Amazons, it is hard to tell that the units are actually women. In all honesty the units lack enough detail to distinguish any gender. The animations look like they've been slightly revamped with the Amazons and the developers seem to have put just a bit more detail into this race's buildings. The developers should have taken a cue from more recent strategy games and implemented ways for the player to better find and manage non-productive units. More than once an entire game was played with some workers doing absolutely nothing. It could be a bug, or perhaps a union thing, but the same units just stood around the whole time, even when there was abundant resources and work to do - but yet the game lacks any way of telling the player why this is so! Further military units can get lost behind trees - they do show up on the radar map but are difficult to find on the map screen, meaning that the player has to attempt to highlight a wide area to get to them. Most of the problems with this expansion were in the original game - but perhaps the biggest is the radar screen, which doesn't really give enough information to the player. Only areas where current military units, pioneers, or the player's village are will be shown on the radar screen. The rest appears as the blackened fog of war. This makes it hard to direct forces to explore new areas, especially towards the early part of the game when players would easily like to know where already discovered coastlines might be. The gameplay is probably also a bit too cartoonish at times, limiting who it might appeal to - it uses a fairly complicated resource management system when compared to games like Age of Empires or TA: Kingdoms, but yet has graphics that might turn off serious gamers. The Settlers III was a much bigger hit in Europe than it was in the United States, and the look and gameplay are consistent with "Euro-hits" like Theme Park and Populous. Perhaps the market for less serious, and less graphic real-time strategy games is big in Europe but in the States, Settlers III still has a lot of fierce competition in a crowded genre and even with some bad-ass Amazons settlers, the game is going to need some divine help to stand out. The other problem is that Settlers III is quite similar to Knights and Merchants, one of Interactive Magic's final CD-ROM titles. It should be mentioned that K&M was developed by some of the same people who had worked on earlier Settlers titles. Settlers III has a much better combat system than K&M, but it is that title that looks more visually appealing. The expansion requires ownership of the original game so the reason to buy is simple - if you already bought and enjoyed The Settlers III, then the expansion will serve you well. Hopefully Blue Byte will do a special edition of The Settlers III, which will include both this expansion as well the Mission CD, which would certainly make this a good package for those looking for a different kind of real-time challenge or those with aging computers. The Settlers III doesn't require an overly powerful system so gamers who want a solid experience and a lot of gameplay, but still want to play something current, will get their money's worth with this game. @~I guess you Settlers fans might like this.......and that's not me. @~Since I am still at GamePen here are just a load of URLs for you @~to checkout: Indiana Jones: http://www.gamepen.com/preview/PC/08_30_1999_807_1.asp Disciples: Sacred Lands : http://www.gamepen.com/preview/PC/08_27_1999_804_1.asp FreeSpace 2: http://www.gamepen.com/preview/PC/08_26_1999_797_1.asp Sinistar Unleashed: http://www.gamepen.com/preview/PC/08_23_1999_791_1.asp @~At Gamespot they have a Games Villains top 10, quite a cool idea @~so have a good read at @~http://www.gamespot.com/features/tenspot_villains_rc/index.html - o -