News

2006

Game is now enough ancient so that we can librer source in the community to allow those who want to use them or to divert them.
We are going to make it, it is just necessary that they find the time to take a shovel and a pecker and to go to search archives to put everything online.
We are going to try to make this shortly...

2001

ICE and Fahrenheit put everything else on hold. Also, after Omikron, the team and I wanted to work on something else (the Dreamcast version was just released last year). Excitement on Omikron comes back now, especially with new members joining the team today who played Omikron and who would really love to work on the sequel. We have a lot of new ideas for it. Now that the ICE technology is available, it makes any new project easier to set up.

It was there is a little more than ten years now. I had a company which was called Totem, which was occupied of making music, mainly for the houses of discs, the tele series, the cinema...

2000

Honestly speaking, this is not entirely correct opinion. For a similar project three and one-half of year - not this already larger period, at least less than in many other games, on the scale compared with our. For example, Outcast were developed four and one-half of year,

We will try to have virtual actors, virtual directors and of course musicians for all our future products. The experience with Bowie has been so positive on a personal, professional and financial point of view, that it really gave the will to the team to continue with different guest stars. We hope to find other people as open-minded as Bowie.

I'm the Senior Designer for Eidos Interactive (USA), and have been walking the streets of Omikron for over two years "maintaining Eidos Interactive's commitment to design." Basically that means a bit of everything! Concept and level design, additional story, voice-talent wrangling, translations, integrating the"Bowie" aspects of the game....

Last week, GameSpot News broke the news that Omikron is indeed being ported to the Dreamcast, while we reported that work on the PlayStation version had definitely ceased. Now we've learned that now cancelled PlayStation version was actually more complete than most people thought - 70 percent complete. Considering the game was still on target for a May 2000 release date, this had many people surprised - the developers included

1999

Az indulástól kezdve az Omikron tökéletesen mutat be egy altarnatív világegyetemet. A legtöbb konfliktus alapú játékhoz hasonlóan itt is egy alapvető jó-a-gonosz-ellen összeesküvéssel indulnak a dolgok, de a gonosz természete nem teljesen nyilvánvaló. Valaki, vagy valami, gyilkolja Omikron város lakóit és Kay'l, egy rendőr, időn és téren át utazott, hogy segítséged kérje.

David Bowie in der Rolle des Boz, des virtuellen Wesens. David Bowie lieh Boz seine Stimme und erlaubte die phantasievolle grafische Umsetzung seiner Person für das Spiel. Auch seine Frau, das Top-Model Iman, stand Modell für eine der Spielfiguren (Iman 631), von der der Spieler durch die "virtuelle Reinkarnation" Besitz ergreifen kann.

When the straight-up adventure portion is being played, this reviewer had a lot of fun. The game has a decent story, great visuals, and lots of nice little touches to draw you in. Unfortunately, when once encounters the other portions of the game, the fun can be severely diminished.

Music from the game, include David Bowie's album "HOURs"

All video available from the NET. Promotion trailers, interview and so on..

Work pictures you can't find anywhere.

Our studio is equipped since Y2K with a high-resolution 24-camera Vicon Mcam Optical Motion Capture system from Oxford Metrics. We have a capturing area of 350mІ with a ceiling height of nearly 10 meters. The effective capture range is 7m x 4m x 3m height. This very large capture range enables us to capture complex animations such as:

This pictures are the result of graphic bugs. Collected by Antoine (the pictures, not the bugs ;-)

Great collection of game art

We still working collecting posters, CD-covers, official print guides.
This is not high resolution verions of images during limits of hoster service.

Some screenshots from the game

Collection of wallpapers from different sources

This Prima's Fast Track Guide[TM] provides a basic walkthrough of Omikron. While it provides enough strategy, story line, and tips to complete the game, Omikron: Prima's Official Strategy Guide contains additional material such as plot details, training, secrets, and descriptions of distinctive locations, non-player characters, inhabitable characters, and specific items that you pick up.

Beyond that minor drawback, the gameplay is first-rate. Aside from the massive exploration you'll encounter, there are also Tekken-style battles, and Quake-style shootouts at various critical points. Die during one of these crucial battles, and your soul is damned for all of eternity. Win and you can be a hero for more than just one day.

Killer graphics, reincarnation and Bowie. Dude, this is the kind of game we'll play with a black light on

French Bowie fan web site The Stardust Page is running a competition this week (ends December 3) to win one of 10 posters (a limited numbered series) from The Nomad Soul computer game All you have to do is answer the simple question "What is David Bowie's character's name in The Nomad Soul" and mail it in. For the full details, visit the Stardust Page Concours Page.

The eight songs from Omikron are all on my new album "Hours ..." but different versions. The 35 or so instrumental tracks are only available within the game. The parallel world scenario of Omikron actually suits the songs -- I found they were equally at "home" in the "real" world, partly through the simple nature of the emotions they portray.

So, in retrospect, is Omikron worth the dollar of the average poor computer gamer? I think so. It has a few rather minor glitches, but in general, this is a very solid game, with a very involving story line, different modes of play (adventure/fight/shoot/swim, though the latter is fairly redundant – they should’ve incorporated the swim controls into the adventure mode…

Unfortunately, all the pretty textures and complex models force you to pay through the nose in performance. On a Celeron 450 with 64MB of RAM and a Voodoo3 2000, we had to turn most of the quality settings to medium or low, have a very near clipping distance and run at the lowest resolution available, 640x480.

Five years ago, the words “adventure game” meant shuffling a mouse pointer around a two-dimensional world searching for a hot spot that indicated a clue, complete with 8-bit SoundBlaster music and more text than you could rattle a fistful of floppies at. Fast forward to today, and the same expression indicates real-time three-dimensional worlds filled with seamless interactivity and nerve-frying action. Not to mention world famous musicians and enough voice acting to fill three CDs

Eidos has released a collectors edition of the recently released The Nomad Soul to French stores such as FNAC, Virgin and Micromania.(A special collector's edition limited to 5,500 copies available only in France). It includes:

Eidos Interactive is running a special t-shirt offer for those who buy The Nomad Soul (the new Windows 95/98 computer game which features Bowie and Gabrels' music along with their and Iman's animated characters). If you order directly from their site, you'll get a long sleeve black t-shirt with the words...

San Francisco, Calif., Nov 1, 1999 -- -- Eidos Interactive, a leading worldwide developer and publisher of interactive entertainment software, today announced the release of the eagerly-awaited PC game Omikron: The Nomad Soul. This epic, designed by Paris-based Quantic Dream, crosses new boundaries in game design by combining elements of action, adventure, and fighting.

The game begins with a corny on-screen title. There are only a few, dull, clashing colors and horrible music. The player clicks on Start Game. The first picture is as artless as the presentation screen hinted. The player directs a small, ugly character across a screen depicting the inside of a house. The game looks a bit like the first "Maniac Mansion" game, only worse. Loud, violent colors, slow movement, dumb jokes and tinny, quartz-watch music.

Coming across my digital alter-ego in a dark street is not necessarily my idea of fun - but to anyone else who comes across my character in the game, well, I think they'll judge my performance in terms of its cinematic characterization like one would any dramatic performance. So, lucky for those digital creations in there who don't have real-life counterparts to be analyzed! The game has turned out to have a very cinematic feel, with the music adding emotional depth to the playing out of the drama.

It's not really a question of "characters." The projects developed in a kind of friendly unison, as of course they should when one is writing for a parallel universe! I think the nature of the album reflects experiences from a variety of viewpoints, and this works well in the game in setting a series of different moods. Sometimes Reeves and I would view a scene and create something as if we were scoring a movie;

So, concerts, reincarnation, Bowie, and perpetual salvation. The plot undulates in and out of themes, but the gameplay is where it should all logically connect. Albertazzi told us what we could expect from the average level found within Omikron: "Talking about [a] level is not exactly right; there are no such things in Omikron. The story just unfolds as you progress with no clear separation, only logical turns.

We received many e-mails reporting problems running "Omikron : The Nomad Soul" under Windows XP. Released in 1999 months before Windows XP came out, "Omikron : The Nomad Soul" has therefore never been tested or certified to be compatible with what was - at the time - still a "soon to be" operating system. Please, make sure your version of Windows XP has its "Windows 98 compatibility mode" activated. If so, and if you are still experiencing problems, please contact Eidos or the customer services of the shop where you bought the game for a refund.

Thursday's Child (5:24)
Something in the Air (5:46)
Survive (4:11)
If I'm Dreaming my Life (7:04)
Seven (4:04)
What's Really Happening? (4:10)
The Pretty Things are Going to Hell (4:40)
New Angels of Promise (4:35)
Brilliant Adventure (1:54)
The Dreamers (5:14)

Written and Directed by
David Cage - Founder, President of the Board of Directors As a professional musician, David creates TOTEM INTERACTIVE in 1993, a company specialized in sound and music productions. Works as a freelance on original soundtracks for several video games for publishers such as Sony, Psygnosis, Virgin, Cryo or Sega. Writes sci-fi short stories and novels.Founds Quantic Dream in 1997. Game designer and writer of Omikron - The Nomad Soul and Fahrenheit.David is the creator of some of the most innovative concepts in video games of the past years...

You know that any video game that has anything to do with David Bowie is going to be... ah, interesting. From his early incarnation as Ziggy Stardust to his Berlin period with Eno and Iggy to his work in such films as Roeg’s The Man Who Fell to Earth, Bowie has been riding the cutting edge for most of his protean career, fearlessly bending both gender and genre.

Impressive and entertaining as the game may look at this early beta stage, there is nonetheless one worrisome factor to consider—Omikron might be trying a little too hard to resemble a console title. Sadly, this consolewannabeism is a common malady among action/adventures, and Omikron exhibits its most classic symptom—restricting the player to pre-determined "save points".

When the player accomplishes a given task, or meets a key enemy, the game switches modes dramatically, either into a first person shooter mode, or hand-to-hand combat mode. These modes were still early when we saw the game, but expect simple mouse/keyboard based shooting in the FPS mode, and Tekken-style combos in the hand-to-hand mode.

I have been held spellbound by the development of Quantic Dream and Eidos Interactive's Omikron: The Nomad Soul for nearly two years. The reason is simple. Since the project's beginning, the team at Quantic, with the blessing of Senior Designer Philip Campbell, has laid bare each and every nuance of the development process through their website. Without a doubt, this has been one of the most candidly open projects to date.

Quantic Dream, qui developpe actuellement The Nomad Soul (anciennement
nomme Omikron), recherche des testeurs pour cet ete, pour les aider r mettre au
point le jeu. Voilr donc l'annonce en question :

There are two videos available.

SAN FRANCISCO -- May 12, 1999 -- Eidos Interactive, a leading worldwide developer and publisher of interactive entertainment, today announced a collaboration with legendary rocker David Bowie on Omikron: The Nomad Soul�. Bowie and Reeves Gabrels, Bowie's collaborator and guitarist since 1989, worked closely with the game's developers, Paris-based Quantic Dream, to create original music for the game, including eight new songs.

1998

The Boss of Quantic Dream gives you a piece of his mind.

The Report on the E3 in Atlanta (1997)
France and Game Play - An Impossible Marriage?
Toward a 3D Game Play ?
What does the future have in store for independent developers?
How to Sell a Game.
Report on E3 Atlanta 98.

To tackle it, Quantic Dreams has developed something it calls the Intelligent Adventurer Manager, or IAM. The developers explain how it works:
"Rather than trying to predict everything that a player might do (which would be very hard to do, if not impossible, in a 3D universe with no restrictions), we start from a completely different principle…. We can offer problems for the player to solve, and we can also offer the means to solve them. IAM doesn't require us to program a solution to each problem, it only watches out to make sure that every problem does have a solution."

Lara, straight back into the Omikronian furnace (for Antoine and me, Pierre and his fiancee have gone on vacation in San Francisco ;-)
My week was particularly difficult (for a changeЕ), remodeling the Game Design, Game Play settings, meetings about IAM and important discussions about the future of Quantic Dream. We are currently negotiating with several different publishers.

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).

I am one of the fortunate ones who were lucky enough to attend E3. In between Omikron demo sessions at the Eidos stand, I managed to have a look about the place for good games coming up. Which of course gave me the opportunity to criticize the competition (my favorite pastime) and declare to one and all that I've had a bellyful clones!

The saves were a real monkey puzzle: how to find a system that would enable us to keep the idea of linear time in a parallel universe (therefore no going back), function just as well in the adventure, the shoot and combat, be adaptable, original, easily understandable and integrated into the scenario, while still being compatible with Virtual Reincarnation?
It's an important point.

Philip Campbell, designer of Tomb Raider Gold, is back with us this week. He has officially asked Eidos to work only on Quantic Dream games. His work with the team is coming along well in spite of the language barrier. His talent and generosity make all the difference. So he should be in on Quantic's future projects.

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.

From the very first day Antoine, Loic, Tony and myself felt that we would get a good reception. Omikron's strong visual impact - the city with hundreds of passers by and sliders in the streets - immediately attracted the attention of the crowds. From a Game Play point of view, our demo showed adventure sequences (with dialogs in Motion Capture), shifting to Shoot scenes and the Feet/Fists Combat.

Omikron is a new 3D action-adventure game, replete with a combat system like that of Tekken 2. It's currently in development at French company Quantic Dream and is slated to be published on PCs and PlayStations by Eidos in October. We spoke with Tom Marx of Eidos to find out more about the title.

We are finally making progress with the game play for the Arcade part, after a few weeks of confusion while installing the technique. Shoot and Feet/Fists Combat entered the settings phase last week.

There are just about as many game projects are there are gamers. Everyone has a game in their head that they dream of realizing one day. Projects are built up in the course of all-night conversations between enthusiastic friends, or after smashing a piggy bank for the more (or less) fortunate.

The English crew was closely followed by John Kavanagh, the man who signed Omikron for Eidos. John is an important member of the managerial team at Eidos and he again assured us of his faith and support. Like us, he has great hopes for the project. While speaking of John I would just like to say how pleased we were to work with him.

In preparation for E3, where the Anekbah district will be presented, we have decided to devote some time to retouching the decor. Stephane spent the week retouching all the textures. Everyone agrees that Anekbah is now much more visually impressive, more coherent and sinister, even more realistic than before.

Do artisanal development teams still have a valid role in the video game industry, or must they make way for the large internal studios or the game publishers?

Philip and I very much wanted to have some real acting worthy of a film. So we worked hard on that, as well as on the facial expressions, in order to get the most out of Motion Capture. We asked the actors to act as naturally as possible, without hamming it, as is often the case in games.

The best news is without any doubt the fact that it took less than one hour to script this whole scene. Which means that all our hopes for IAM, our adventure editor, were justified. It has proved to be an adaptable and pleasant tool that is also simple and reliable. It will be a real pleasure to script the adventure part of Omikron.

The team increased again with the arrival of Sophie. She is going to deal in particular with relations with the marketing people and the press, as well as with the maintenance of this site. I really no longer had the time to update the screenshots. I will of course continue to write this newsletter every week and have you share in the stress of the end of this development. We will also try to bring some innovations into this site with a few little surprises.

The arrival of 3D on the scene makes for major changes in the way the Game Play is dealt with. Is it possible to keep the old recipes for success, or should we throw it all out the window and reinvent a 3D Game Play?

Loic spent the week between the design of the Palace of Ix, the final scene of the game, and the Story Board of the trailer in computer images. This film, which will be produced by a specialist company, will serve as a basis for the marketing of the game (shown at the E3, distribution on promotional CD, television and cinema advertising spots, promotional shots, etc.) With out producer Herve, we spent some time going to see various Paris companies likely to make this film.

The week coming up will be devoted to adding the last options still lacking in IAM allowing the start of the scripting of the adventure. This concerns chiefly the interfacing with our publisher of the functions already written by Fabien. So everything should be ready.

French developers have a reputation that apparently sticks to them like their shadow. They make great games but with no Game Play. Is this a curse on fair France?

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.

1997

On the Fighting side, we are continuing to implement new animations with our animator Tony. The Fighting part is progressing rapidly, thanks to the combined efforts of Jean-Charles and Antoine.

The Atlanta E3 is undoubtedly the best place to get an idea of the current state of the video game market. Everyone is there and trying to outdo each other to highlight their latest productions.
Present for the first time as an exhibitor with Omikron on the Eidos booth, I suggest you take a look backstage.

On the graphics side, production is carrying on normally. The Catacombs level should start this week and the level of the snows (which promises to be especially beautiful) will be completed this month. The characters are coming along fine. Philippe is working this week on our first demon.

With Tony and Antoine, for the last two weeks, we have been working 12-hour days to integrate the bases of the Feet/Fists fighting. We have already reached good maneuverability of the characters for the adventure part, with in particular a good compromise between the beauty of Motion Capture and the Game Play. The fighting continues with the animations of a character 70% finished. The result is starting to be interesting. We are eager to get the chance to meet an opponent. The week coming up is again going to be tough.

The adventure Game Play is now set up, after over a year of grinding work on paper. A few adjustments will still need to be made at the time of integration. Sometimes as well, when reviewing the sets modeled and mapped out, we have fresh ideas about better exploiting the geography of the area.

Now that we have the interactive lights, opacity, transparency, animated maps and an animated 3D sky, the graphic rendering of the game is practically definitive. The last thing we still lack are the characters' shadows. If Fabien manages to make the idea he has in his head work, this will certainly be most impressive. Fingers crossed and watch the news.

This week also saw the latest developments of the engine prior to its final optimization. Jean Charles, most overworked person of the week, has already added transparency and opacity and is about to take on more technical improvements.

The graphics crew have now finished Neighborhood 2. Edouard, Eric and Pierre are starting work on the interior decors of Section 2 of the adventure. And Natalie will be installing the urban dressing e.g. benches, garbage bins, vegetation, as well as signs like billboards, advertising, shop signs, etc. in Neighborhoods 1 and 2. Neighborhood 3 is well on the way and should be finished in about ten days.

Another hard week. On top of the already heavily loaded milestone for the end of month Eidos has now asked us for a supplementary demo for an important marketing meeting. So we brought together all the work of the last five months on one CD. This enabled us to have an overall view of the graphic work already done, and a first impression of what the game play will be like.

Our new animations editor developed by Antoine and designed by Tony, our animator, can now be used in its first version. With it we can easily view the animations in our 3D engine. This gives Tony real control over his work by enabling him to view his animations directly in the game. He can also define the way animations link up as well as the controls applied to them. In the coming weeks Antoine should be adding the management of a second character and work on the Fists/Feet combat game play can then start.

I have been writing the interactive dialogs since the beginning of the month. I though I had the hardest part behind me when I finished the scenario, but the dialogs are at least as difficult if not harder. Rather than a simple system where the player would press the space bar to scroll the different responses we opted for a dialog system in a tree structure. Although the result is undoubtedly preferable for the player, it is also much more complicated to design.

This week we also managed to integrate our new sky routine, so instead of an ugly black background we now have a lovely 3D sky with moving texture :-o

he Playstation version now holds in 1 VBL (60 images/second). The final game with the city, all the passers-by and the vehicles in the streets, and the script of the adventure should hold in 2 VBL (30 images/second), which would be a minor feat for a game of the complexity of Omikron.

Our trainee, Nathalie, is working on various objects of the adventure. Their modeling will be simple but there are so many objects in the adventure that it is preferable to get started as soon as possible. The arrival of a feminine element in the team was somewhat disturbing for some, who were seized by a sudden passion for object modeling...

Whilst we are completely satisfied with the quality of the animations, the toughest remains to be done : the Game Play. I'm not fooling myself : I'm quite aware that even having animations of the level of Tekken, what will make the difference is the way in which they are integrated and made usable by the player. We are going to be working very hard in the coming months.

On the adventure management side, IAM, our intelligent editor, is making good progress thanks to the joint efforts of Fabien and Simon. We hope to be able to start managing the Inventory of objects very soon.

As for the scenario, I’m starting to see the end at last. The main difficulty has been exploiting to the maximum the 3D world, the huge outside sets of the city, the freedom of movement and action given to the player, and the non-linear nature of the game. I have tried to arrange for the setting of the adventure to be as rich as possible, without complicating the story or disturbing the player.

The good news of the month is that thanks to the testing Philippe did at home, we have found a way of spending three times less time on characters whilst retaining the same quality of rendering. Instead of working fourteen days per character, we will just spend five. This means we can spend more time on design, and have more different characters.

The welcome given to Omikron was extremely positive, from both professionals and players. Many people thought that the soft version of the game used a 3D card. This frankly enthusiastic feedback about our 3D engine and our Motion Capture technology (a Japanese from Namco came to tell me he was most impressed by our animations...) confirms our idea that we’re on the right track.

Furthermore, the press is also starting to talk about the game, with two pages in the English magazine Edge (picked up by Next in the US) of next month, one page in Joystick, a double page in Playstation Magazine, plus other U.S. magazines. Let’s say, everything is going pretty well for the time being.

Tony has virtually completed the swimming animations (diving, breaststroke, leaving the water, etc.). We have also made initial contact with various martial arts champions, for the motion capture sessions due to take place in July.

We've also incorporated the collision animation, where the character gets run down by a car. The first time Fabien integrated it, we had a great half hour getting the cars to run us down. The impact is really spectacular, and the character is flung violently backwards. Why rack your brains for complicated adventures, when you can have good fun with the simplest of effects? ;-)

We were visited this week by a very well-known 3D card manufacturer, who's interested in our engine. There's an outside possibility of an agreement to put Omikron specifically on the card (in addition to the soft and Direct X versions). There could be an official announcement after the E3, with a presentation of the game running on the card. Will keep you informed in the next few weeks.

Design side, we've changed paper illustrator and graphics policy. Elisio, our new draftsman has been working for a week on the new look to Uzal, an Omikron policeman, the first flesh and blood character in the game (no more bioman-style red tights!).

This first week was devoted to getting things up and running. Everybody had time to get themselves ready. The new team is made up of five programmers, headed up by Fabien, seven Graphic Artists, headed up by Olivier, one illustrator and one animator.

My name is David Cage, I'm the Omikron Game Designer, and also, when I've got the time, I'm the Boss of Quantic Dream. The team calls me Boss, with affection I hope. You'll be hearing about the development through me. Just as we did during the pre-production phase, I'll try and keep you in touch with events as we live them, both the good and the bad, and be honest and up-front about everything. After that little preamble, here is Week 1's news.

The good new of the week : OMIKRON has now a publisher : EIDOS - that's all

n terms of the development, we have decided to stop extending the city for now and to concentrate instead on the area of a neighborhood we've already got, as well as the interiors. The scene we are handling contains more than 35,000 polygons - the maximum that can be held in RAM without using swapping. The rest of the city will be loaded from the hard disk using our dynamic transparent loading system.

This week-end we worked on getting ready for a visit by Eidos next week. GT Interactive should be coming to Paris for the second time to talk about the game. Electronic Arts is also waiting in the wings (our meeting with them will be set up in the next few days). Sierra also seems to be warming up (they were among the first to come see the game); we have an important meeting with their Marketing Managers early in March.

The next step is when the English publishers come to our studio, which they will do in the next two weeks, to meet with the team and discuss the game in more depth. We are continuing to work on improving the demo version.

Yet another mad week of work! We worked over the week-end to finish version 1.5 of the demo that will be shown to English and American publishers next week. It will include quite a few additions over the previous version, 1.0

Our next deadline is Release 2.0, set for 10 days from now. We will then be showing the prototype officially to English and American publishers.

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.

For now we have added just two anti-gravity vehicles (slider) that move through the streets, and a motorcycle. Newt week we will be integrating the passers-by walking through the streets. Making the city come alive is one of the main challenges in Omikron.

Lots of new stuff this week involving the game. It is slowly coming into form, and watching it progress day after day is a real pleasure. Vehicles now move around throughout the streets, and we are hoping to integrate the first people walking in the streets, next week.

1996

The final Game Design for Omikron is now being translated into English, along with a Technical Design, the Bible of the Scenario and verious other technical documents. The first contact with publishers is going to be soon. We are now ready to meet with the main ones: Electronic Arts, Virgin, Psygnosis and others.

Maybe we are being a little prejudiced, but I swear I can't recall having seen a city developed entirely in 3D of this quality in any other game. What's more, we haven't even started to include the Gouraud lighting on the scenery, or the shadows, and still it's looking very nice.

The Team's morale is holding up. The press is still talking about us (a two page article in Joystick will come out in January). This is, as far as I can tell, the first time anyone is talking about a game this much after only two months of development. The Omikron project seems to be arousing quite a bit of interest with the people we have presented it to.

The end of week 10 was a time to review the overall progress of the programming that's been accomplished since we began two months ago. In terms of the graphics, we now have a large part of the city done, five characters in real time and some vehicles.

The film for the Imagina festival is coming along. We have basically finished the settings, and are now dealing with the trajectories of the anti-gravity motorcycles (Bike-Slider), passers-by and special effects (explosions). As for the game, Olivier has put Betsy into real-time mode.

The press has begun to show interest in our project. This makes everyone in the team more than happy. An article about us will be appearing in the French magazine "Joystick", and France 3 Television (the Microkids show) and Canal Plus (Nulle Part Ailleurs variety show) will be coming by to visit.

Bernard Bittler brought the story-board of the film in computer-generated pictures which we will try to present at the Imagina Film Festival in Monaco.

Jeu d'Arcade/Aventure offrant à la fois un scénario complexe et original, et des scènes d'arcade de grande qualité. - Liberté complète d'action et de déplacement dans une ville en 3D temps réel avec des passants et des véhicules - Nouveau concept de "Réincarnation Virtuelle" - Combats Pieds/Poings en 3D temps réel et Motion Capture, avec des coups spectaculaires réalisés par plusieurs champions du monde d'Arts Martiaux - Séquences de tir en 3D temps réel - Game Play orienté 100% fun.

QUANTIC DREAM is a new video game development studio based in Paris, France. The first product we are working on at Quantic Dream is an Arcade/Adventure game in real time 3D, called «OMIKRON»

A slightly unpleasant week, highlighted by the mysterious crash of my computer. I am now working on a laptop, which I am not thrilled about.

This week marks the official debut of Philippe Aballea, our animator, who will have the difficult job of integrating and reworking the Motion Capture Animations.

The main event this week is the preparation of the motion capture sessions that take place at our partner Acti Vision's office in Dijon. I have been preparing for this for three weeks.

Pierre finished his character this week end and is now working furiously on the first setting. For the prototype we have chosen the lower city of Omikron, the sleaziest areas of town.

The installation of the hardware was completed with an (almost) flawless setup of the network. Olivier finished the first playable character, a female soldier from the Militia whom we've named "Katzeva". Pierre has practically finished Syao, a Eurasian smuggler.

The first week was dedicated to installing the computers, with the standard hassles of IRQ conflicts, the vagaries of installing Windows 95 and the inevitable problems of trying to run it alongside Windows NT.

Labels: Omikron Nomad Soul, project main information

Friday, December 31, 1999
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• Komplettlösung zu "The Nomad Soul" Teil 4
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