Week Beginning June 8
The week was spent reviewing development and reorganizing the team. Since starting out a year ago we have never had the time to stand back and review the situation. The few days respite after E3 gave us the opportunity to do just that.
Many things have changed since the initial organization was built up in the early days of development. It was planned for a team of 18 and there are already more than 30 of us working on Omikron. The nature of the team has also changed, since we now have nearly ten programmers for 4 platforms (basic PC, PC Direct 3D, Glide 3 and PlayStation). More and more scripters are joining us and our internal testers are beginning to make their presence felt.
In a word, the team is evolving. It was beginning to be indispensable to reorganize this little microcosm.
So we strengthened our PlayStation team by adding Olivier, an experienced programmer who has already worked on several PSX games published by Psygnosis. We are also expecting a third programmer to join the PlayStation team next week. With the approval of Eidos we decided to make the best possible PlayStation version and to keep our standards as high as for the PC version by using a large number of technologies hitherto unknown on the Sony console. We also decided to put the game in high resolution.
The other important point about which decided to concentrate our efforts is the reorganization of data. The game requires a mind-boggling quantity of data: several hundred sets, some of which (as in the city districts) are immense, 140 different characters, 70 of whom speak, dozens of enemies and assorted beasts, about one hundred objects, several hundred typical animations for each character, 3 hours and 30 minutes of facial Motion Capture animation with associated voices, thousands of sound effects and atmospheric effects, special effects designed for each specific platform, several thousand lines of code by ten programmers - in short, tens of gigs of data to be filed, classified and processed in four versions.
The order of working on any given set must also follow certain rules: the special fx must be done before the cameras move in, lighting after scripting, retouches to modeling before animation.
Obviously, the slightest mistake in this process, whether in processing the data (the PlayStation data, for example, are processed differently from PC data, the special fx for 3D cards don't work in the basic PC version, etc.) or in versions where tools crash the game.
Organizing so much data is an unimaginable brain teaser. And because Omikron combines elements of adventure, combat and shoot games we have the data of three or four games all in one.
Over the last few months we were weighed down by all these error sources and because of E3 we couldn't get around to solving the problem once and for all.
The system we have now installed is extremely rigorous, both in term of data and programming.
So not great steps forward this week, but some essential reorganization. After one year in development, our review of the year shows that we have accomplished a considerable amount of work but that a lot remains to be done before we get to see the Omikron box in the stores.
That's all folks! Be here next week, for further adventures in world of games.
Autor: David Cage
Source: Quantic Dream
11/01/1999 Eidos Interactive ships Omikron: The Nomad Soul
09/23/1998 September News 2
09/15/1998 September News 1
07/28/1998 July News 2
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06/08/1998 Week Beginning June 8
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Monday, June 08, 1998