faetal on 19/3/2012 at 23:05
Ulukai - yes on the Q2 engine. The graphics are shitty, but still manage some charm. The hash key speeds things for me, so the combat can be sped through a little bit.
Shadowcat on 20/3/2012 at 09:30
Hardly "shitty". Anachronox looked great when it came out, and some of the reasons for that don't age with the technology. I think it looks damned good for its age.
Thirith on 20/3/2012 at 10:04
Anachronox never looked *great* (blocky models, low-res textures), but the art design has oodles of character, as does the entire game.
henke on 20/3/2012 at 11:04
I also seem to remember reading that they had someone who was actually trained in cinematography directing and doing the camerawork in the cutscenes. Which, for a small games studio, was kind of rare those days.
faetal on 20/3/2012 at 14:45
Even when it came out, it looked pretty poor due to using a 5 year old engine. The environments were ok, but the character models were very low-poly compared to its peers. The giant clenched fists being particularly noticeable. It didn't detract from my enjoyment of it though. It still doesn't in fact.
Jason Moyer on 20/3/2012 at 16:06
Quote Posted by henke
Which, for a small games studio, was kind of rare those days.
A small games studio?
henke on 20/3/2012 at 16:24
Poor wording on my part, I meant team, not studio. IIRC Ion Storm was divided into teams, the biggest one working on Daikatana and then two smaller ones on Deus Ex and Anachronox. Anyway, small or not it was still unusual for a studio to have someone with actual training in the area directing cutscenes, and not just letting some coder do it.
ZylonBane on 20/3/2012 at 17:39
Quote Posted by faetal
Even when it came out, it looked pretty poor due to using a 5 year old engine.
The engine was fine. The problem was similar to the issue that bit SS2-- they severely lowballed their polygon and texture resolution budgets. If Anachronox had been released when originally planned, instead of years later, it would have looked perfectly acceptable by then-current standards.
Anachronox's version of the Q2 engine was technically ahead of its time in a lot of ways. It had 32-bit color support, much-enhanced particle systems, lip-synched speech, full facial posing (albeit with few control points), the amazing in-engine cinematic system, and a scripting language so powerful that all the arcade games and action sequences were written using it.
EvaUnit02 on 20/3/2012 at 21:50
Quote Posted by henke
Poor wording on my part, I meant
team, not
studio. IIRC Ion Storm was divided into teams, the biggest one working on Daikatana and then two smaller ones on Deus Ex and Anachronox. Anyway, small or not it was still unusual for a studio to have someone with actual training in the area directing cutscenes, and not just letting some coder do it.
Deus Ex's IS Austin was a full fledged studio onto itself, thank you very much.
