Week 16
The city of Omikron is getting bigger every day. We have added a park with a central square and statues, the Weather Center, the Watchtower, and a few stores (weapons shop, fast food restaurant, pharmacy, sorcery shop). It is now possible to walk around a rather large city, in streets with aerogliders going through them. This week we tested collisions applied to characters, for the first time. We tested in particular a street with an incline to see if the character goes up it in a normal way. Also, with collisions programmed by Fabien, we put stairs into the park, which allows the player to wander around on different levels in a hanging garden. We had some problems with gravity (the character goes up quite well, but jumps around strangely when coming back down). This bug should be corrected by the beginning of next week.
Integration of the Motion Capture animations is continuing. This week we set up animations with the laser pistol (walking, running, ready to take aim and aiming in 3D, etc.) We will go on next week to the combat animations.
Antoine's work on the Z-detail is finished. This technique will let us display the numerous passers-by in the streets by controlling the level of displayed detail (thus the number of faces) depending on their distance. The closer they are, the more details are visible, and as they go further away, fewer facets are displayed. Antoine has also finished the installer program that will make it possible for us to burn our own CD-ROM so we can present the project to publishers. The installer works directly in Windows 95 and handles placing the necessary elements onto the hard disk. As for the programming side of things, we have also completed the sound section, with a routine for reading the sound track off the CD and the sound effects routine.
Our objective for this first version of Omikron (which genius has lead us to call "Release 1.0") is to include a maximum number of animations and, if possible, a large number of vehicles and passers-by walking in the streets, as well as an initial version of the interface. We will also be setting up an initial version of our technique for handling the covering of objects. This is our major imperative at the beginning of the week, with the objective being to improve the frame rate. Fabien has already programmed an algorithm that he is now converting to Assembler. Antoine is going to take care of integrating it into the engine, and the integration into an initial run. Integration of the collisions will probably not happen until the next release, since Fabien's routine still needs work with handling available memory (it takes up too much memory and causes Windows to use swapping).
Contacts with the publishers have now begun. We have sent off the four packs for Omikron (180 page Game Design, a Bible of the Screenplay, with color illustrations by Bernard Bittler, a Technical Design and a folder of Appendix texts) to 15 French, American and English publishers. The whole team is hoping that the enormous amount of work we have already done will convince them that we are capable of creating a game as ambitious as Omikron.
Until next week, same time, same channel...
Autor: David Cage
Source: Quantic Dream
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12/30/1996 Week 13
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12/16/1996 Week 11
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12/02/1996 Week 9
11/25/1996 Week 8
11/18/1996 Week 7
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10/14/1996 Week 2
10/07/1996 Week 1
Monday, January 20, 1997