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Vampire - The Masquerade
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Technology/Tools
The Game Engine
V:tM Redemption uses an in-house engine developed by the programming team, Robert Huebner, Yves Borckmans, Ingar Shu, and Ray Gresko. A new engine was designed specifically for this game to provide elements essential to immerse the audience into the story. These elements include quality of light, shadows, ripples, fog, smoke, reflections, atmospheric effects, sun rise, sun set, 3D sky, moon shine, seasonal changes, and the generally moody atmosphere. In addition to the these elements, the engine includes a decal system for such things as dirt, blood, cracks, etc that can be displayed on surfaces within the level. Models will be dynamically lit within the game. This means that shadows are created on the fly based on each lighting source available. So as a character moves in the game, the shadow will change and move according to the available lighting sources.
An existing engine wasn't licensed for the game for a variety of reasons. The primary reason is the fact that no current engine would provided the required elements needed for multi-player capabilities, RPG data management, or story flow. Any RPG related code would have had to be shoehorned into technology not originally created for it.
Development Tools and Environment
V:tM Redemption will ship with the entire engine exposed to the user. It will also be packaged with all the tools necessary to extend the game and create new chronicles for either single or multi-player play. Tools will be provided to create new types of items, weapons, or enemies all with a interface that is simple and easy to use. New conversations, puzzles, or pretty much anything can be achieved by using a tool or editing some text file. If however, someone wanted to do something not covered by the data files or tools, then a script can be written in the codex scripting language.
The
Codex scripting language is a derivative of Java, a programming language, with a number of special native function calls that allow interaction with the game engine. Most standard Java code should successfully compile and run in the game. It is not necessary to know Java, to write scripts in the game. All that is important is the syntax (structure) of the code, which codex shares with Java. If you go to Sun's Java Site and read the on-line documentation to the point where you know how to write the "hello world" program and maybe an if/then/else statement, that should be sufficient. When the game ships, a manual/explanation of the programming interface for engine "objects" will be made available in standard HTML format either on the CD or on a website.
The
Embrace level editor is an editing tool based on the QERadiant editor licensed from id Software. The editor uses a brush-based system, that will create files which must be compiled for about 5 to 20 minutes (mostly for creating light table information for world geometry) to form a playable level. Despite it's resemblance to Quake, this is not a bsp-based engine, and though the tool looks the same on the surface (as the original QERadiant), the resulting compiled level files are not compatible or similar. The editor will load and save the traditional MAP format, but for compiling, it is necessary to output to the NIL format. The actual tools to compile the levels will be built directly into Embrace and should not be available for someone creating a third-party level editor.
Character Models
Character modeling is an area that has received a lot of attention with this new engine. With the Sith engine, co-developed for the game Jedi Knight by some members of the Nihilistic programming team, each character body part was a single "mesh" of polygons, making it difficult to make joints look natural. V:tM Redemption supports what is called "soft-skinned" models, where a single mesh of polygons can be stretched over the entire skeleton to make gaps a thing of the past. Movement will appear more natural thanks to a supported feature called "weighted-vertex skinning", which means that as bones move, the skin stretches over the joint in a more natural way.
Another improvement since the days of Jedi Knight is the polygon count, the number of flat surfaces that make up the surface of the model. In Jedi Knight, the main character has around 350 polygons at it's maximum. In V:tM Redemption, a number of characters will have nearly 2000 polygons and typically contain 30 to 40 individual 'bones' used for animation purposes. When models are animated, the improved system called "Skeleton animations" will help provide a variety of different animations and unlimited interpolation between frames. This will make the animations seem very fluid and smooth. The polygon models also utilize a technology called "progressive mesh" or "continuous level-of-detail" that will allow them to be rendered a lot faster when they are further away.
With all the possible weapon/shield/held item combinations, models have more then 50 unique animations each. That's because every different type of weapon has its own walk, run, stand, and attack animations, and each of those has variations depending on whether or not you are holding an item or a shield. The model of Christof itself will change over the course of time. There are four body 'upgrades' in the dark ages and two 'upgrades' in modern times. These upgrades may be due to dress or armor, and represent a new model.
The Nihilistic team is using Alias/Maya to model over 140 characters. The file formats used for the models will be made available to the public when the game is released. It's the team's hope that some enterprising programmer will release a model editor or plugins for popular 3D modeling programs not long after the game's release, Alias/Maya is unfortunately an expensive program.
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