Trespasser: Tracking the Beast
Oleg Bykov
Вот любопытный sneak peek Trespasser'а с www.gamecenter.com. Оказывается,
он будет настолько full-screen, что на экране не будет ни количества оставшейся
жизни, ни числа патронов в оружии. :() Здоровье знать не надо, так как главная
героиня (Anne) будет помирать после первого же ранения, а число оставшихся
патронов она будет громко выкрикивать после каждого выстрела. :D Hосить можно
будет только один предмет, будь то keycard или shotgun... В общем, читайте, там
еще много понаписано. :)
=== Cut ===
by Tom Chick
(8/18/98)
I'm huddled over a monitor with Austin Grossman, lead designer of
_DreamWorks Interactive's_ Trespasser. He's matter-of-factly showing me
one of the game's levels in which the lead character, Anne, is navigating
a maze of powered-down, unlocked dinosaur pens. Suddenly, a shrieking
Raptor shoves one of the pen doors open with its nose and surges out into
the corridor.
"Cool!" Grossman cries. "I've never seen them do that--I've never seen
one of them come through the door like that!"
Seamus Blackley, the game's producer and physics guru, says he has
experienced similar moments in which his own engine surprised and
delighted him. "That kind of 'stupid grin' immersive joy is the heart of
Trespasser and my design philosophy," explains Blackley.
It seems as if there is no limit to the way in which Tresspasser's
components can interact. Dinosaurs, for example, have no scripted
behavior or animations. Rather, they are assigned a handful of behaviors
from a list of 40 or so actions, including "bite," "look," "charge," or
"howl." These behaviors are further affected by a list of changing
stimuli, such as fear, hunger, fatigue, and curiosity. Dinosaurs are even
defined by their bulk, which determines whether they can go around
certain objects or plow right through them. Sophisticated stuff...
Darwin's theories of evolution seem to be at work in this unique
action-adventure game--that is, Trespasser has evolved dramatically since
Gamecenter's _first sneak peek_ last December. Read on for a complete
look at how this prehistoric meat eater is shaping up en route to its
savage release on the gaming public this fall.
Trespasser's dinosaurs are like sentient creatures in all their
unpredictable glory. Each of the seven species in the game has a library
of up to 50 sounds, which are associated with certain AI behaviors.
Grossman shows me a fight between a Raptor and a Triceratops, both
creatures circling and charging each other in a dance of feints and
thrusts, accompanied by a veritable symphony of shrieks, growls, snorts,
and whimpers.
The dinosaurs are built out of skeletons with bump-mapped skins
stretched over them. The bump mapping, an effect that gives textures the
illusion of height and enhances the game's lighting, renders the
creatures' skin a lustrous, shimmering quality that you can almost feel.
Amazingly, the artists don't do any animations for the dinosaurs; rather,
the engine's AI and physics dictate the movements that the artists would
normally program into the game.
Artist Kyle McKisic demonstrates how this works by using his cursor to
lift a T-Rex by the scruff of the neck as if it were a kitten. "You can
pick him up and drop him and he just deals," McKisic says. Sure enough,
the behemoth kicks his rear legs, scrambling to hold himself up as his
bulk hits the ground.
The game's sound is also built using the same philosophy of
interacting components. Brady Bell, the game's sound man, demonstrates
"real-time Foley." Although it sounds like a buzzword, it is in fact a
simple concept for creating sound. Every object and surface in the game
is given a property, such as "dirt," "wood," "concrete," "flesh," and
"bullet." When two such objects collide, a recorded sample is played,
with the volume and pitch determined by the force of the collision. There
is even a separate sound library for objects sliding against each other.
Bell gives an example of this by playing several sounds: a board
smacked against an oil drum, a girder pushed along a concrete wall, and a
bullet hitting a dinosaur. Anne's footsteps also use the real-time Foley:
a foot model collides with whatever surface Anne is on, at whatever rate
she's moving.
The setup makes so much sense that I can't help but ask why other
games haven't taken the same approach. "It's the brainchild of a bunch of
really smart engineers," Bell says. "It's really hard. It takes a lot of
time. It also takes a lot of the processor's time and it's memory
intensive."
The interface in Trespasser is designed to provide an unobstructed
view of the game world. At this point, the screen has no numbers or
information; no overhead maps; and no inventory screens. Anne can hold
only one object at a time; whether she's carrying a keycard, a crate, or
a shotgun, she'll have to leave it on the ground to pick up something
else. On one hand, this will no doubt lead to some grumbling among
gamers, who will want to know why Anne can't tuck a pistol or a keycard
in her waistband. On the other hand, it significantly streamlines the
gameplay.
"The interface starts from a base of Quake, with the added effect of
the arm," says Grossman. The basic mouse-look interface will be familiar
enough to gamers. Hold down the left button, though, and Anne's arm
reaches out. While the button is held down, the mouse moves her arm
around the screen; if it moves to a screen edge, the view scrolls. Touch
Anne's arm to something and click the right button to pick it up. Click
the right button again to drop it. If you have something usable in your
hand (like a gun), hit the space bar to activate it.
Grossman proudly shows that there are no overlays or separate screens
in the game. There is no health bar, because Anne can take only minimal
damage before dying, anyway. There's a keypad puzzle in which you reach
out and press the actual keys rather than zooming in on a separate
screen. You aim by peering down the sights of the gun. As Anne fires her
weapons, she counts aloud the number of rounds remaining.
Some clues are rolled into the environment. For instance, scientists
leave notes to each other on blackboards before the labs are abandoned.
In a nod to the movie *War Games,* a password is written on the extension
of an office desk. Additional background and clues are provided by
Richard Attenborough's mellifluous narration of Dr. Hammond's memoirs.
Although it may not make it into the final product, among Sir
Attenborough's recordings was a heartbreaking recital of Percy Bysshe
Shelley's "Ozymandias"--a fitting postscript to Dr. Hammond's Jurassic
Park if ever there was one.
Grossman describes Trespasser as an action game with enough puzzle
elements to also make it an adventure game. "But we're working really
hard not to make any kinds of puzzles that you can solve by chance or
brute force or just by searching," Grossman explains. "We try not to have
too much stuff based on coordination. You should be able to think about a
situation and use tools to solve it. It's all about using physics, the
rules of this physical world, to accomplish goals."
One such puzzle involves dumping over a rickety trailer by rocking it
from within. Another stumper requires pushing a board across a gap,
walking over it, and then pulling the board behind you to cross another
gap. A particularly insidious puzzle, which fits in perfectly with the
game's emphasis on physics, requires you to actually use a fully
functional scale to compare the weight of some electronic components.
"I want the puzzles to be deep but not arbitrary," Grossman says. "The
game world is full of objects and you can use them, but no object has a
special purpose. The idea is that every object has its own properties and
you figure out what to do with it."
Even more so than the game's mighty dinosaurs, the most mundane
objects betray the power of Trespasser's real-world physics. There's
something almost hyperreal about the way objects interact, whether you're
shooting the leg out from under a table, clacking a gun along the iron
bars on a window, or watching a T-Rex nose through a pile of crates.
Seeing a game world reflect The Way Things Work is almost more
spectacular than the dinosaurs themselves. It opens up endless
possibilities. Grossman compares their approach to Nethack, a venerable
RPG that uses only ASCII characters: "One of the things I loved about
Nethack was that it was a complicated world with consistent rules. There
was always a different way to solve puzzles." In Nethack, you could cast
a spell of water-walking to cross a river, you could freeze it with a
wand of cold, or you could dig through from above to enter the level from
the other side. Such depth of interaction is what Grossman hopes to
replicate in Trespasser.
This wide-open approach does have its limitations. For example, the
game lacks fire and explosions, and there are no shovels (you can be sure
some gamers would try to dig to China) or chisels (otherwise players
might be tempted to spend hours trying to break through walls). You also
cannot fill a bucket with water and make 100 trips to try and flood a
room. "There are a lot of things we don't have," Blackley admits. "We
only have things that absolutely, 100 percent of the time, without
exception, work exactly as they should with everything else."
The open-ended nature of Trespasser's game engine is forcing Blackley
to decide what to leave *out* of the game. "The engine enables so many
different things, but it's a question of what's fun. There are a lot of
puzzles that are just too hard, puzzles that are too realistic, but
they're not fun. Realism in the name of fun is what this is about."
It won't be long before gamers get a chance to decide if Blackley made
the right trade-offs. Will the game be so much fun that you won't mind
that Anne can hold only one object at a time? Will the action be so
intense that you'll forget all about the absence of such action-game
staples as fire and explosions? We'll find out this fall.
=== Cut ===
С уважением, Vagabond.
Sergey Shramko
OB> Вот любопытный sneak peek Trespasser'а с www.gamecenter.com.
OB> Оказывается, он будет настолько full-screen, что на экране не будет ни
OB> количества оставшейся жизни, ни числа патронов в оружии. :() Здоровье
OB> знать не надо, так как главная героиня (Anne) будет помирать после
OB> первого же ранения, а число оставшихся патронов она будет громко
OB> выкрикивать после каждого выстрела. :D Hосить можно будет только один
OB> предмет, будь то keycard или shotgun... В общем, читайте, там еще
OB> много понаписано. :)
короче говоря это будет симулятор жизни:)
как выжить на острове с динозаврами!?
Oleg Bykov
Число было Tuesday August 25 1998, Sergey Shramko писал тогда к Oleg Bykov:
OB>> Hосить можно будет только один предмет, будь то keycard или
OB>> shotgun...
SS> короче говоря это будет симулятор жизни:)
Hу не знаю, не знаю... Вообще-то, если я в жизни буду нести шотган, то
ключ в штаны засуну. ;)
С уважением, Vagabond.