The history of BioForge
I continue the series of articles “The History of Creation” and today I will tell you about the BioForge game.
The plot of the game is rather banal - the main character, who lost his memory, found himself on an unknown planet, not knowing what to do next. However, for Origin it was a “completely new idea,” as the project leader, lead programmer and producer Ken Demarest claims, and symbolically, at the beginning of the game’s development, the team, like the protagonist, had no idea purposes.
In addition to the plot, the project was developed as a revolutionary gaming technology. And what if we take and use the new technology called “texture mapping” and combine it with 3D characters, animations and decorations? What would it look like? No one has seen this before, so we had a large field for the experiment. But in the end it turned out the world where there is Lex, Dr. Mastaba and "Reticulum".
')
Working for Origin Systems, which released such a series of games as Ultima, Wing Commander, and Crusader, Demarest was the leader of a team known for its passion for innovative technologies. “We just didn’t think about risk,” he said. “Artists, programmers, designers - all worked for the benefit of creating and testing new technologies. Everyone was so passionate that they even worked at night. ”
Initially, BioForge had the name Interactive Movie 1 and Origin planned to launch a series of games under this name. However, the development of the game was delayed for two whole years, although it was originally planned to complete it in a year (Mark Hamill and his game Wing Commander III forced to postpone the development of BioForge). “At that time, technology was my main passion,” recalls Demarest. “I think it is safe to say that BioForge should have greatly changed the concept of technology, presentation of the plot and the genre as a whole. At that time, no one knew what “interactive cinema” is, so BioForge was able to become a real breakthrough, unlike the games released today. And personally, I saw the term "interactive cinema" as a marketing ploy. "
It has been 18 years since the release of the game, but still the technological part of the game is admirable, especially given the fact that most of it was written by the team itself. “I created the entire animation system from scratch,” explains Demarest. “Then there simply wasn’t the necessary 3D engine that would support the type of animation we needed and that wouldn’t cost fabulous money, so I had to do it myself.
Capturing with the help of optics was unprofitable to use - expensive, slow and inaccurate, therefore, taking the Electromagnetic Flock of Birds costume as a basis, I created my own. The result was a capture technology, processed in real time, which six years later was called motion-capture and became the industry standard. ”
The only drawback of the system - the constraint of movements of the character, very well explained by various experiments on his body. “We dressed people in costume and watched their movements on fully rendered heroes in real time; even a cybernetic predator was depicted by a man, waving his arms like a tail. When we first created this system and for the first time saw the characters on the screen, everyone just went crazy! It was amazing, no one saw anything like it. Demarest planned to develop the animation system even more, and perhaps, therefore, in the final version, the combat system turned out to be very inconvenient. “I remember how I wanted to do complex team battles, but it was too much - the similar was realized only in the Havok physics engine!”
The combat system is surprisingly similar to the model in the games of the Alone in The Dark series. Most likely, it was a forced compromise, due to the complex animation system. “One moment became an unpleasant surprise for us: it was very difficult to determine whether the character was looking (turned) on the enemy or not. Lex could deviate by 50-60 degrees, but often the player simply did not understand this! The key to success is to let Lex stay for auto-targeting the enemy. If you constantly press the buttons, it will just strike past the enemy. ” However, if hand-to-hand combat required skill, then the shootings became an incredible, but painstaking, achievement - after all, the laser beams ricocheted from the walls in real time. “It all started with one puzzle: if Lex gets ambushed in the elevator, the outcome was one — they shoot you and you die.” But then we came up with a system of bounce, as a logical development. "
Beautiful graphics are now a thing of the past, but the game itself is infinitely exciting: thanks to the abundance of journal entries, our hero learns the true reasons for his kidnapping, step by step. Meanwhile, the bio-modified character learns that his name is Lex (despite the fact that he is called the Experimental Object AR-127 in the game) and he became a victim of the experiment of the mad scientist Dr. Mastab, and he needs to save humanity from destruction.
Strictly speaking, Lex looks disgusting. “Disgusting? I think he has some futuristic charm, ”Demarest objects. “In a couple of hundred years everyone will be biomodified, so it’s worth starting to get used to the new look! But seriously, Lex acts as a hero at the same time and as an antihero, surrounded by vagueness and ambiguity, confronting his fears. Lex is a kind of prism through which the player studies and perceives the gloomy world of BioForge. In the game, he binds humanity and aliens, and in the same way binds the player to a new reality. ”
The game is full of amazing details and scenes, especially remember the moment at the beginning of the game, when Lex scores a cyborg named Kainan with his own cut off hand. “This moment was remembered by many - good, such black humor!” - laughs Demarest. In the future, the dark and heavy tone of the story of the game is periodically diluted with similar episodes, which vary from affectation to surrealism. “When the game scenario became absurd, we tried to make this nonsense play into our hands. Anyone in a similar situation, like Lex, would have behaved outside of what is permitted, especially at the moments on which his life depends. ”
Demarest noted his favorite scene in the game — a conversation with one of Dr. Mastab’s “patients” on the operating table; this moment is one of the determining who Lex will be at the end of the game. “I always loved this moment — oppressive, painful — perhaps a cliché, and yet. I am very grateful to the screenwriter Jack Herman, he perfectly felt the bleak and pretentious nature of BioForge. I also like the feeling of relief at the end of the game, when Lex flies through alien transportation channels, as well as when he finds reflective armor (also a technological innovation), and real power is visible.
If the narration of the game is worth criticizing, then only for a hasty and somewhat incomprehensible ending. Demarest however, objects: “The sworn enemy, Dr. Mastaba, should be considered as going beyond the limits of human nature. In another world, Lex’s superpowers seem to be a blessing rather than a cross on his humanity. Their relationship remains unexplained and the ending should have smoothly prepared us for a continuation of the game, which never happened. ” There were two options for Bioforge 2 during the life of the project: first, a full-fledged sequel was conceived, but then it became a supplement called BioForge Plus (the introductory video to which you can watch on YouTube ). Unfortunately, Demarest did not directly participate in any of the projects.
Demarest notes: “I can only express the opinion of a bystander. When we finished BioForge, I noticed that a crazy invention called “the Internet” became a reality. As a hardcore rover - and I was the technical director of Ultima VII - I tried to convince Origin and EA that it was time to focus on the network game in Ultima. However, they had no confidence in the project, so I left and started a new online video game development company, and it was then that the development of BioForge 2 began.
Does BioForge have a future? "I believe that you can quite successfully port the project to the iPhone, but it would be better to completely rework the concept of the game," says Demarest. At this time, he acts as a technology consultant for MMO games and is still obsessed with advanced technologies. “BioForge was an innovative project and in the same way I am now engaged in real-time ray tracing technology, add to this movement based on the laws of physics - you can create incredibly realistic characters! Plus, this innovative Ai will allow characters to interact with the player at a new level, which means that the possibilities are truly endless. ”
Many games that Demarest has worked on, including Wing Commander and Ultima VII, are now considered classics, but BioForge, on the contrary, is almost forgotten. Demarest must be credited with the fact that he is clearly confident that this game is probably his most pretentious creation. “BioForge was evaluated mainly from a technical point of view, and if I had paid as much attention to the gameplay as to the technological aspect, the game would have been much warmer. Nevertheless, I am proud of my brainchild, and BioForge’s legacy clearly shows the superiority of gameplay over technology. ”
The plot of the game is rather banal - the main character, who lost his memory, found himself on an unknown planet, not knowing what to do next. However, for Origin it was a “completely new idea,” as the project leader, lead programmer and producer Ken Demarest claims, and symbolically, at the beginning of the game’s development, the team, like the protagonist, had no idea purposes.
In addition to the plot, the project was developed as a revolutionary gaming technology. And what if we take and use the new technology called “texture mapping” and combine it with 3D characters, animations and decorations? What would it look like? No one has seen this before, so we had a large field for the experiment. But in the end it turned out the world where there is Lex, Dr. Mastaba and "Reticulum".
')
Working for Origin Systems, which released such a series of games as Ultima, Wing Commander, and Crusader, Demarest was the leader of a team known for its passion for innovative technologies. “We just didn’t think about risk,” he said. “Artists, programmers, designers - all worked for the benefit of creating and testing new technologies. Everyone was so passionate that they even worked at night. ”
Initially, BioForge had the name Interactive Movie 1 and Origin planned to launch a series of games under this name. However, the development of the game was delayed for two whole years, although it was originally planned to complete it in a year (Mark Hamill and his game Wing Commander III forced to postpone the development of BioForge). “At that time, technology was my main passion,” recalls Demarest. “I think it is safe to say that BioForge should have greatly changed the concept of technology, presentation of the plot and the genre as a whole. At that time, no one knew what “interactive cinema” is, so BioForge was able to become a real breakthrough, unlike the games released today. And personally, I saw the term "interactive cinema" as a marketing ploy. "
It has been 18 years since the release of the game, but still the technological part of the game is admirable, especially given the fact that most of it was written by the team itself. “I created the entire animation system from scratch,” explains Demarest. “Then there simply wasn’t the necessary 3D engine that would support the type of animation we needed and that wouldn’t cost fabulous money, so I had to do it myself.
Capturing with the help of optics was unprofitable to use - expensive, slow and inaccurate, therefore, taking the Electromagnetic Flock of Birds costume as a basis, I created my own. The result was a capture technology, processed in real time, which six years later was called motion-capture and became the industry standard. ”
The only drawback of the system - the constraint of movements of the character, very well explained by various experiments on his body. “We dressed people in costume and watched their movements on fully rendered heroes in real time; even a cybernetic predator was depicted by a man, waving his arms like a tail. When we first created this system and for the first time saw the characters on the screen, everyone just went crazy! It was amazing, no one saw anything like it. Demarest planned to develop the animation system even more, and perhaps, therefore, in the final version, the combat system turned out to be very inconvenient. “I remember how I wanted to do complex team battles, but it was too much - the similar was realized only in the Havok physics engine!”
The combat system is surprisingly similar to the model in the games of the Alone in The Dark series. Most likely, it was a forced compromise, due to the complex animation system. “One moment became an unpleasant surprise for us: it was very difficult to determine whether the character was looking (turned) on the enemy or not. Lex could deviate by 50-60 degrees, but often the player simply did not understand this! The key to success is to let Lex stay for auto-targeting the enemy. If you constantly press the buttons, it will just strike past the enemy. ” However, if hand-to-hand combat required skill, then the shootings became an incredible, but painstaking, achievement - after all, the laser beams ricocheted from the walls in real time. “It all started with one puzzle: if Lex gets ambushed in the elevator, the outcome was one — they shoot you and you die.” But then we came up with a system of bounce, as a logical development. "
Beautiful graphics are now a thing of the past, but the game itself is infinitely exciting: thanks to the abundance of journal entries, our hero learns the true reasons for his kidnapping, step by step. Meanwhile, the bio-modified character learns that his name is Lex (despite the fact that he is called the Experimental Object AR-127 in the game) and he became a victim of the experiment of the mad scientist Dr. Mastab, and he needs to save humanity from destruction.
Strictly speaking, Lex looks disgusting. “Disgusting? I think he has some futuristic charm, ”Demarest objects. “In a couple of hundred years everyone will be biomodified, so it’s worth starting to get used to the new look! But seriously, Lex acts as a hero at the same time and as an antihero, surrounded by vagueness and ambiguity, confronting his fears. Lex is a kind of prism through which the player studies and perceives the gloomy world of BioForge. In the game, he binds humanity and aliens, and in the same way binds the player to a new reality. ”
The game is full of amazing details and scenes, especially remember the moment at the beginning of the game, when Lex scores a cyborg named Kainan with his own cut off hand. “This moment was remembered by many - good, such black humor!” - laughs Demarest. In the future, the dark and heavy tone of the story of the game is periodically diluted with similar episodes, which vary from affectation to surrealism. “When the game scenario became absurd, we tried to make this nonsense play into our hands. Anyone in a similar situation, like Lex, would have behaved outside of what is permitted, especially at the moments on which his life depends. ”
Demarest noted his favorite scene in the game — a conversation with one of Dr. Mastab’s “patients” on the operating table; this moment is one of the determining who Lex will be at the end of the game. “I always loved this moment — oppressive, painful — perhaps a cliché, and yet. I am very grateful to the screenwriter Jack Herman, he perfectly felt the bleak and pretentious nature of BioForge. I also like the feeling of relief at the end of the game, when Lex flies through alien transportation channels, as well as when he finds reflective armor (also a technological innovation), and real power is visible.
If the narration of the game is worth criticizing, then only for a hasty and somewhat incomprehensible ending. Demarest however, objects: “The sworn enemy, Dr. Mastaba, should be considered as going beyond the limits of human nature. In another world, Lex’s superpowers seem to be a blessing rather than a cross on his humanity. Their relationship remains unexplained and the ending should have smoothly prepared us for a continuation of the game, which never happened. ” There were two options for Bioforge 2 during the life of the project: first, a full-fledged sequel was conceived, but then it became a supplement called BioForge Plus (the introductory video to which you can watch on YouTube ). Unfortunately, Demarest did not directly participate in any of the projects.
Demarest notes: “I can only express the opinion of a bystander. When we finished BioForge, I noticed that a crazy invention called “the Internet” became a reality. As a hardcore rover - and I was the technical director of Ultima VII - I tried to convince Origin and EA that it was time to focus on the network game in Ultima. However, they had no confidence in the project, so I left and started a new online video game development company, and it was then that the development of BioForge 2 began.
Does BioForge have a future? "I believe that you can quite successfully port the project to the iPhone, but it would be better to completely rework the concept of the game," says Demarest. At this time, he acts as a technology consultant for MMO games and is still obsessed with advanced technologies. “BioForge was an innovative project and in the same way I am now engaged in real-time ray tracing technology, add to this movement based on the laws of physics - you can create incredibly realistic characters! Plus, this innovative Ai will allow characters to interact with the player at a new level, which means that the possibilities are truly endless. ”
Many games that Demarest has worked on, including Wing Commander and Ultima VII, are now considered classics, but BioForge, on the contrary, is almost forgotten. Demarest must be credited with the fact that he is clearly confident that this game is probably his most pretentious creation. “BioForge was evaluated mainly from a technical point of view, and if I had paid as much attention to the gameplay as to the technological aspect, the game would have been much warmer. Nevertheless, I am proud of my brainchild, and BioForge’s legacy clearly shows the superiority of gameplay over technology. ”
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/186382/
All Articles