So I was over at a friends place last night delving into my Xbox library. Over Sparks and Maker's Mark (lousy combination I know, but at least we didnt drink them together huh Freyja) we took a look at Beyond Good and Evil (very good and recommended) and the new "Chronicles of Riddick" game, which Id been looking forward to for awhile because the game was produced by the guy who worked with me on the NBA Jam titles at Acclaim some years back.
Its always cool to see your friends succeed brilliantly and boy does the Riddick game deliver. Moving through the first part of the game, the fighting especially made me sit up and take note.
Back when I worked at Acclaim, we started on a PSX game for the movie Batman and Robin with our team in England, Probe Studios. Our vision for the game was to do a first person perspective Batman game. A Batman game where you not only beat the crap outta bad guys, but did detective work, drove around in the Batmobile chasing down leads, etc. It was very ambitious game design and our execs needed convincing about the fighting which would be first person martial arts/boxing something never tried before. Sure you could blow things away from a distance in games like Quake, but melee combat mano a mano? People were skeptical. So, we had to go shoot some motion capture tests and mock up some flipbook animations to show what the combat would look like. This basically looked like a bunch of gray blobby polygons vaguely shaped like Batmans arms within an empty gray 3D environment. You see the arms make fist and approach a grey humanoid ragdoll. The camera starts to bump and weave like a boxer as the ragdoll attacks. You duck as he swings and deliver an uppercut and the camera moves subtly upward, panning as your head would if you were doing the swinging yourself. We wanted an absolutely realistic camera track, down to a 360 spin as Batman delivers a finishing roundhouse kick. The flipbooks looked good, and we were green-lit, but people were skeptical about it still, afraid that the realistric camera moves would make players queasy (people did and do get queasy from some 3D games, so the concern wasnt unwarranted).
Anyway, about a month later, we were all laid off and the game was completed without us though it was incredibly late and changed to a 3rd person (outside the character) style game.
The point is, that Riddick is the first game Ive seen that delivers the type of fist fights I saw eight or so years ago, and its funny it was produced by my friend. I cant remember how close he worked with me on those flipbooks and I dont know if he had any real input on that combat system, but it is cool to see something made real so long after the fact. Proving to me again, that I am WAY ahead of my time. A nice boost considering my miserable and nearly hopeless employment situation. But fuck it, this all means Ill keep trying.
Its always cool to see your friends succeed brilliantly and boy does the Riddick game deliver. Moving through the first part of the game, the fighting especially made me sit up and take note.
Back when I worked at Acclaim, we started on a PSX game for the movie Batman and Robin with our team in England, Probe Studios. Our vision for the game was to do a first person perspective Batman game. A Batman game where you not only beat the crap outta bad guys, but did detective work, drove around in the Batmobile chasing down leads, etc. It was very ambitious game design and our execs needed convincing about the fighting which would be first person martial arts/boxing something never tried before. Sure you could blow things away from a distance in games like Quake, but melee combat mano a mano? People were skeptical. So, we had to go shoot some motion capture tests and mock up some flipbook animations to show what the combat would look like. This basically looked like a bunch of gray blobby polygons vaguely shaped like Batmans arms within an empty gray 3D environment. You see the arms make fist and approach a grey humanoid ragdoll. The camera starts to bump and weave like a boxer as the ragdoll attacks. You duck as he swings and deliver an uppercut and the camera moves subtly upward, panning as your head would if you were doing the swinging yourself. We wanted an absolutely realistic camera track, down to a 360 spin as Batman delivers a finishing roundhouse kick. The flipbooks looked good, and we were green-lit, but people were skeptical about it still, afraid that the realistric camera moves would make players queasy (people did and do get queasy from some 3D games, so the concern wasnt unwarranted).
Anyway, about a month later, we were all laid off and the game was completed without us though it was incredibly late and changed to a 3rd person (outside the character) style game.
The point is, that Riddick is the first game Ive seen that delivers the type of fist fights I saw eight or so years ago, and its funny it was produced by my friend. I cant remember how close he worked with me on those flipbooks and I dont know if he had any real input on that combat system, but it is cool to see something made real so long after the fact. Proving to me again, that I am WAY ahead of my time. A nice boost considering my miserable and nearly hopeless employment situation. But fuck it, this all means Ill keep trying.
VIEW 5 of 5 COMMENTS
you didn't MIX the sparks and the makers mark, did you?
malt+energydrink+bourbon????