Post
by Johannes » Mon Feb 16, 2009 6:55 am
First and foremost, I want this game to succeed on a much larger scale than all of David's games combined have so far. It will not be just another game known almost exclusively within 'the mac underground'. With steam and other distributers on board so far I am feeling extremely confident there. (And I'd like to see an update on the blog post of whether any of the other ones have agreed to distribute OG)
One thing I feel that prevented Lugaru from really leaking out into the mainstream was its lack of good graphics. Now I don't need to go into a long explanation why it was a great game none-the-less, we've all played it here and can certainly appreciate it, however it cannot be denied that many would-be fans might have been turned down by the less-than-spectacular screenshots that they first looked at.
However, already we know that OG will be far closer to cutting edge, being less of a technical study and more of a next-gen game with a full-blown team behind it.
Which leads me to one thing I'm really looking forward to: the Eye-Candy. I won't deny it, I'm a huge sucker for graphics. This means both static scenery, as well as animations, and really just how everything fits together. I drool at the thought of taking what Aubrey has shown us so far in the bare demo maps, and extrapolating it to a whole city, with full vegetation, characters walking around, and even more improved graphics like HDR and Bloom. My only concern is that the Dev team will opt for a more desert-y look, and therefore have an excuse to not have as much vegetation. As I've said on several previous occasions, ideally I personally want thousands of trees, millions of grasses, and all together with an amount of buildings you can call a town or even a city, without having to break the bank for a top-of-the-notch computer to be able to get a decent framerate.
Animation-wise I am giggling in gleeful expectation to seeing super-smooth animations using some of the technologies we've been introduced to in the blog, such as the inverse kinematics grabbing, since in the original Lugaru characters would often magically fly into the the right position for a grab or a hit if they weren't aligned perfectly (which was especially apparent in slow-motion).
Which brings me to Combat. Lugaru was, at least for me and the games I had played before, a breakthrough in dynamic combat. It took lots of thought, timing and finesse to even attempt the campaign on the hardest difficulty setting, yet it was simple enough to get after only a few minutes in the tutorial (though I still can't figure out how to do those damn wall-spin-kicks =P) and I am hoping for a much broader combat system, which however does not become so difficult that you have to read the manual or some guide on. All the calculations and rules that the devs have so far set up in their recent combat post should be transparent, and completely intuitive to the user after playing only a little bit.
And last but not least, finally, finally, finally Multiplayer; A feature that really should have been in the original Lugaru, if only just for direct LAN matches.
