Anachronox News

Bei VE gibt's ein paar interessante News zu dem Spiel von ION Strom. So zum Beispiel wird es ganze drei Spiele in dem Universum geben, lassen wir uns ueberraschen.

Hier
Ion Storm, with offices in both Dallas and Austin, is a PC game developer that will release the role-playing adventure game Anachronox in March. One of its unique features, says lead artist Dan Martinez, is that its battles are actually played in the game rather than off in a special battle room (as is the case with most traditional RPGs). The animators have used NewTek LightWave V5.7 running on PIII 450s. A crucial tool in their development process has been "Boner", a special bones program developed just for Ion Storm that allows their animators to fine-tune facial deformations on the main characters in cinematic scenes. "For special effects models, this program also allows us to select vertices on the model and specify going from transparent to opaque with the texture so we can create really nice transitions of opacity," says Martinez. "For example, if you're creating a fireball, you want the front of it to be opaque then transparent as it trails off so you get a nice trail when you put it into motion." Anachronox has been in the works for almost four years, in large part because it has relied on the old Quake 2 engine, which has been laboriously updated by the studio. "Our programmers have done vast modifications - a lot of it is our editing tools," says Martinez. "We have a camera scripter which is like a movie studio for the game. With it, we can make in-game cinematics. This scripter/editor is called 'Planet'. With it we can do anything; any scene you see in the movies, we can create with this. As far as we know, the only limitation to it is the imagination of the user." After its PC debut, Anachronox will probobly be transferred to Playstation 2 or X-Box. Anachronox 2 will probobly be developed for console only. The story is a trilogy.

04.01.2001, 02:31 [Joe]