Randy Smith interview posted at EvilAvatar... - by Jandar
Goldmoon Dawn on 16/7/2006 at 18:44
I'm a little confused. When you say custom engine, I assume you mean like Deadly was a custom engine. Because the LGS games didnt use custom engines. Since this seems to be your major fight against me here, it would help if I understood your terms. Furthermore, what is wrong with undying love for a company and a genre that transcends the internet?
From what I've seen from playing these games, you had a bunch of 1st person rpgs where movement through the game world was one click at a time, with graphics updating every click. All the companies made their own engines at that time, of course! How many were there then, compared to now.
As the late 80's early 90's approached, vga and sb16 advanced as the 1st person rpgs looked and sounded better and better. The next level, everyone knew was free-moving 1st person.
And guess what?
Two companies made it happen. LGS and id. LGS went on to make original epics games with the tech, and id went on to spawn the mindless drivel that takes up half the gaming world now.
Or is it more than half now.
Tony on 16/7/2006 at 19:20
To be fair, I wouldn't call Quake mindless drivel. It's only mindless drivel when compared to Thief: The Dark Project.
Matthew on 16/7/2006 at 19:34
To be fair, I wouldn't call Anachronox mindless drivel either.
Krypt on 16/7/2006 at 19:42
Quote Posted by jermi
Yet at the same time someone "hacked in" third person. There's those stupid climbing gloves and other features that don't belong. I still don't get it. Dark Engine style rope arrows and water seems almost like a trivial addition.
Sometimes the simplest things can be deceptively difficult to implement in game development. Neither water or rope arrows were anywhere near trivial. Third person was something that happened to end up being pretty easy to implement. It was planned from the beginning to have body awareness, meaning you could look down and see your legs and hands as part of a real player model rather than a hacked first-person only viewmodel. Since we had the player model anyway, adding in 3rd person only took a little bit of work. We didn't cut rope arrows or water so we could add third person. Those were all completely unrelated decisions made at different points in the development.
Quote Posted by Tony
Well, what about the animations? Why not just use the animations from the Looking Glass games, which were years ahead of Deadly Shadows'? And what about the Hollywood blue darkness?
All the models in TDS were completely new, which required new animations. I'm not sure what the problem is with the animations themselves, aside from the control quirkiness they caused, which was indeed unfortunate. The animations themselves looked ok to me with a few exceptions, though we couldn't get as many as we would have liked (the statues in the endgame using normal human animations is a good example of a place we wished we could have more anims).
The blue smoke was a convention meant to show the player where the map transitions are. Prior to their implementation there was no way to tell where a map transition was, becase it was usually just a normal-looking hallway. This was very confusing for new players because they would just walk down a hall and hit a map transition and wonder where it came from. The smoke also served to cover up the fact that there was nothing on the other side of the transition. It would have been impractical to build out a bunch of geometry for an area the player can't go to, considering the memory and performance limitations. It was either an effect or switch/button activated map transitions like DXIW, which I don't think anyone wanted.
Quote Posted by Gestalt
The gloves were hacked in once it became clear how much difficulty implementing rope arrows would be. Past posts by the devs have stated that integrating the physics system with the rest of the engine was what caused a lot of the difficulties, which is why water and rope arrows were cut out. The climbing gloves were implemented late in development once it became clear that their efforts to implement rope arrows weren't going to work out. This is why so much of the rope arrow stuff is still visible in the editor.
Incorrect. It was planned since pre-production to have both climbing gloves and rope arrows. Rope arrows had a lot of work put into them before they were cut due to the difficulty of implementation, whereas climbing gloves were already working at that point. As I said, no one wanted to cut them. We got in a tough situation where something had to be cut and we had two features with overlapping functionality, one of which was already working ok and the other bordering on impossible to implement in our engine. The choice, while difficult, was the only practical one to be made at that time.
Gestalt on 16/7/2006 at 19:52
Interesting. Thanks for the correction, Krypt.
ZylonBane on 16/7/2006 at 20:02
Quote Posted by Goldmoon Dawn
I'm a little confused. When you say custom engine, I assume you mean like Deadly was a custom engine. Because the LGS games didnt use custom engines.
What the hell? Almost every Looking Glass game used a custom engine.
Quote Posted by Krypt
It would have been impractical to build out a bunch of geometry for an area the player can't go to, considering the memory and performance limitations.
Memory must have been
really tight, because this is exactly what most games with loading zones do.
But if I could change just one thing, it would be the way Garrett's feet lag behind his head when you're turning. I still can't believe this wasn't disabled in first-person mode.
jtr7 on 16/7/2006 at 20:02
Thank you, Krypt, for your patience, and for taking the time to explain.
If I had the time, I'd list the links to all the posts where a dev let us know that something wasn't working and why before the game was released.
Gestalt on 16/7/2006 at 20:20
Quote Posted by Goldmoon Dawn
For anyone who doesn't know already, LGS created the Dark Engine themselves. They didnt "rent" the popular engine of the day and try to "make things work"...
With the Project, LGS created the tech to fit their vision. That is a large part of why the game is so memorable.
...
When you say custom engine, I assume you mean like Deadly was a custom engine. Because the LGS games didnt use custom engines.
...
Way back in the mists of the earliest 90's LGS was building engines. Ya know, back then, it really wasn't all that common.
...
All the companies made their own engines at that time, of course! How many were there then, compared to now.
Goldmoon: You're already an expert at logical fallacies, but you're the wrong sort of expert. I'd suggest reading up on the subject. (
http://www.csun.edu/~dgw61315/fallacies.html) Here is a link that outlines some of the more common ones for you. It's short, so you should be able to slog through it with a little effort. You've no doubt discovered a few new and exciting logical fallacies, but you should concentrate on learning the basics of logic before further unveiling your discoveries to the world.
demagogue on 16/7/2006 at 20:46
Thanks for that, Krypt. I for one always appreciate the little insights you give us.
Vigil on 16/7/2006 at 21:26
Indeed! Lurk less ;)
