Weeks 33 & 34
With the Publishing meeting of the month of December scarcely over, another deadline has already cropped up. We all know that deadlines are now going to follow on each other at a hectic rate until the game comes out. The next is the presentation of Omikron to the Eidos United States marketing team. I am to spend a week in San Francisco for this purpose to meet with the main people in charge and to show them the latest version of Omikron. This (brief) stay will also enable me to work with Tom Marx (our American producer) and Philip Campbell, the famous and talented Irish designer who is collaborating on the Game Design. For Philip and I, this will be the chance to refine on paper certain Game Play aspects which have still not been settled. This joint work is to spread over two weeks, since Philip and Tom are coming back with me to Paris to meet the team and see the latest developments. Still during the same week, we will be visited by John and HervE (our new producer). To cut it short, quite a few visits in the days to come.
On the development side, things are speeding up. After months spent on IAM, Simon and Fabien's work is starting to get results. New functions are added every day to our adventure publisher which is progressing swiftly towards its final version. Our objective is to reach Alpha (a short sequence of the game with all the programming elements). To do this, we have selected the bar scene: customers are drinking at a table while two strippers are dancing, the barman wipes his bar and serves his customers. The doors open automatically in front of the player, who has the possibility of starting up a dialogue with the barman. All in 3D real time, of course. To achieve this result, we had to set up a system allowing precise positioning of the animated characters in the set, a zone detection system with a condition (for example, if the player walks into a zone, the door opening animation is triggered). As virtually the whole Adventures part of Omikron will be based on this complex system of conditions and zones, once this bar scene is finished, we will have resolved almost all the technical problems of the game. We will then just have to position the characters, objects and animations thanks to IAM, which should not take us too long.
The graphics are also forging ahead quickly. Edouard, StEphane and Olivier are working on the various parts of the Catacombs while Pierre and Corentin are getting on with Mahahaleel, the temporal island of Kushulainn. The level reached by our graphic artists on the latest sets will certainly force us to go back over the first sets we created. With experience, they have made a lot of progress and it will be indispensable to upgrade the old graphics.
The time has also come for me to start reflecting on future projects. The move to the second project is often a difficult phase for young developers. The team is throwing itself 200% into the first project and once this comes to an end, nothing has been prepared for the follow on. So I have taken a little time to reflect about other ideas. Our aim is obviously to make use of all the technology which has been developed for the needs of Omikron in 3D real time. We already have a few interesting ideas...
See you next week.....
Autor: David Cage
Source: Quantic Dream
11/01/1999 Eidos Interactive ships Omikron: The Nomad Soul
09/23/1998 September News 2
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Monday, January 05, 1998