September News 1
I know, it's been a while since I last updated the News. For three days at ECTS I was abused by everyone I met for not doing so. I really had no idea there were so many people keeping up with our adventures.
Since that's the way it is, here's the latest:
Of course it's the fault of ECTS that I didn't have much time to write to you. And although the team was relatively hostile to preparing a new demo just three months after E3, we complied with the virile encouragement of Herve, our much-loved producer.
You have to realize that each demo causes us to lose three to four weeks from our schedule. Between the pre-requisite internal Publishing Meeting with Eidos, testing, debugging and final settings, we lose a lot of time in our already very tight schedule.
The result was that we worked very hard, slept little, ate innumerable pizzas and hamburgers. In short, the usual.
For those who saw the Omikron demo for E3, the ECTS version shows a few more things: a new district (Jaunpur) with passers-by and interior sets, new Shoot animation (with a new and very effective technique of interpolation), new Combat animation, new special effects with our particle engine.
The VIPs had the good fortune of being able to see the colored lights and the reflection (mirror effect) in separate viewers (we didn't want to run the risk of integrating them in the demo at the last minute).
But the most significant progress is certainly in relation to PlayStation. We finally managed to show the city of Anekbah, with several hundred passers-by and vehicles moving about, plus the colored lights.
The ECTS presentation enabled us to judge the impact of Omikron on a large public, the press and professionals from the industry. The very good impression created at E3 was very largely confirmed. Almost everyone who met us had already heard of the game and many had visited our Internet site. We even met a journalist from a Russian magazine who showed us a two-page article on Omikron (in Cyrillic script).
For the occasion we decided to have three people for the demos (Pierre, our head graphics man, Antoine, the programmer, and myself). Six other members of the team were invited to visit the fair for one day.
And of course we took advantage of the opportunity to have a look at what the competition is doing. The games that most pleased me: Blade for PC (a Spanish team game in 3D real time with an impressive system of shadows and a physical engine), Legacy of Kain 2 for PlayStation for the quality of the 3D engine (we hope to beat it with Omikron), Shadow Man (although not everyone on the team agreed with me), Crash 3, the Papyrus Formula 1 game (nothing new but we're fans anyway), MediEvil (a really neat engine with RGB lights for PlayStation), Spyro for PlayStation.
Many of our competitors (including Messiah) seem to be at the same stage as we are. The months to come will see the installation of the Game Play and will determine who wins the prize. Nowadays, people are fed up looking at wonderful technology: the playability will make all the difference.
The big news, and some will be jealous, is that Olivier (the project manager for Omikron) and myself were invited to a private Dreamcast presentation. We saw a presentation film showing Sonic Adventures and other products being developed. If Sega keep their promise, the on-screen result will be worthy of a high-powered PC with the latest generation 3D board for the price of a console. It seems that several developers have already taken the big step (Core Design, Peter Molyneux, No Cliche and many others).
It's still too soon to make any pronouncements about the real possibilities of the console. We should soon be receiving a Dreamcast Development Kit in order to study the possibilities of porting Omikron.
Although we worked hard over the three days, we also had a lot of fun. The Eidos part was a total success as usual, with red-hot music and beautiful girls all over the place (Lara Croft, you're really very beautiful…). In short, lots of fun, although ECTS didn't have the same crazy atmosphere as E3.
A final last word for those who tried to show their personal project like us, and failed. We met three or four French teams in this situation. We would really like to see ambition and courage being rewarded, but not everyone was as lucky as we were when Quantic Dream was created. Once again we wish them success so that we can finally prove that French teams are capable of producing more than pretty graphics…
Be here soon for further news of our adventures.
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
07/14/1998 July News 1
06/08/1998 Week Beginning June 8
06/01/1998 Weeks Beginning June 1
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5/26/1997 Week 2
5/19/1997 Week 1
5/19/1997 Preamble to Week 1
Tuesday, September 15, 1998