Schizm Info taken from http://www.schizm.com/ JUST LIKE FINDING THE MARY CELESTE You are about to participate in a great adventure. It is the year 2083. Ten months ago, the first humans landed on Argilus. They found cities, towns, industrial installations - all deserted. Doors unlocked. Meals unfinished. Amazing machinery still working. But no people. It was like finding the Mary Celeste on a planetary scale. LIVING SHIPS, FLOATING CITIES, A FASCINATING MYSTERY Science teams were brought in, research bases set up. Four months later, your supply ship has been sent to check on these bases. But when you hail them from orbit, there's no answer. The science teams, too, seem to have vanished. Now your systems are failing and you and your crewmate have no choice but to abandon ship. But where can you go? Where else? WHAT HAS HAPPENED ON ARGILUS? SCHIZM: Mysterious Journey is a thrilling First Contact adventure where you play both members of the Earth supply vessel Angel as you explore the fascinating landscape of an alien world filled with mystery and intrigue. ONLY YOU CAN UNLOCK THE SECRET! SCHIZM: Mysterious Journey is graphical, first person perspective, 3D pre-rendered adventure game with a compelling non-violent SF story combined with highly non-linear gameplay, where the player chooses the order in which most of the puzzles are solved. SCHIZM offers a mix of puzzles of varied type, including mechanical, logical, sound and inventory based, seamlessly integrated with the fascinating story created in collaboration with award-winning Australian science fiction writer Terry Dowling, appealing to everyone from newcomers to the field to die-hard adventure gamers. The story itself unfolds as an intriguing puzzle waiting to be solved. The player simultaneously controls two protagonists who can explore the game independently, further expanding the game's non-linearity and freeing the player from the annoying situation of being stuck at a particular puzzle. Both protagonists can solve puzzles independently, but their co-operation is required at certain points in the game. The story involves interaction with several live characters and information interchange between the protagonists. The player won't feel left alone on a deserted planet. Distinctive environments where the action takes place, both indoors and outdoors, created by gifted individual artists - floating balloon towns, mysterious underground locations, abandoned industrial cities, sea-floating organic spaceships. Breathtaking, highly detailed, photorealistic, 3D prerendered graphics presented fullscreen in high resolution (640x360) and high color. Technologies V-Cruise engine (used previously in REAH: Face the Unknown) allows for an immersive experience and ultra-smooth, fast and effective navigation between hundreds of locations. V-Cruise provides full 360 degree panoramic views in all locations and background animations in most of them, with occasional up and down glimpses and zooms. The way the player's point of view is handled greatly enhances the feel of immersion in a truly three dimensional world. The navigation is entirely controlled by mouse movement, with one mouse button giving the player intuitive and smooth control similar to real-time rendered games combined with the highest quality of prerendered graphics. Fast and high quality video compression technology. Licensed Pegasus Imaging Corporation PICVideo Motion JPEG codec ensures that the original quality won't be spoiled by the compression in both static scenes and animated sequences. It also allows for full motion (25 frames per second), full screen, high resolution video sequences featuring live actors in virtual environments. The game uses a very advanced digital sound library QMDX from QSound Labs. QMDX supports hardware accelerated 3D sound cards allowing for full 360 degree sound positioning. The library also adds support for Creative Labs Environmental Audio Extensions (EAX) further enhancing player's sonic experience. QMDX also features very effective stereo mixing engine working with virtually any sound card through DirectX drivers. The music is delivered in gorgeous CD quality thanks to the Ogg/Vorbis audio compression technology from Xiphophorus company. This allows for lengthy soundtrack but the compression ratio will be carefully chosen in order to avoid any quality degradation. The game is designed to be delivered on DVD-ROM and take advantage of the large capacity and improved speed of this new technology. The classic CD-ROM version will be a scaled down version of this DVD-ROM original. We won't be simply transferring or enhancing the CDROM version. Minimal hardware requirements: Pentium II 300 MHz, 32 MB RAM, 200 MB HDD free, DVD-ROM or CD-ROM drive (2 and 12-speed respectively), Windows 95/98/2000 with DirectX drivers, DirectX compatible sound card. - o -