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Day five was the final leg of the GDC, so today I tied up any loose ends that I felt needed covering. Here I’ll cover two groups in particular, Zona and DTS Interactive. Zona provides the middleware for clients like Game Factory/Capcom, Gamania and others, while DTS obviously is touting the virtues of their surround sound speaker systems and in-game implementations.
Zona had some very, very interesting things on display here. Given that the show floor hours are reduced by three hours on day five, only the two most ‘important’ will be addressed here.
Ghouls and Ghosts Online. I was utterly shocked to see this game at the show, considering the fact that they’re realistically looking at a late-term 2004 release. There was a demo on display, which showed several of the characters in action, as well as some enemy models. The graphics are excellent, and utterly true to the series from what I can see so far. I will say that the cartoonish color scheme has been ditched in favor of something a bit more realistic, but it’s a change I can live with, as I think it probably widens the accessibility of the game.
The actual playable demo was coded in seven weeks, and features no enemies of any kind. There are a variety of structures to investigate, an underground dungeon and a few outside areas. There is limited interaction with the environment at this point, the game being really a pre-alpha. Had this exhibit been at E3, there’s no way in hell that I would have been able to take all of the footage that I did, that’s how early this game is.
But even so, Arthur’s offspring runs the way he should, swings his lance (doesn’t throw it!), can double jump, has a special jump attack, and can interact with stairs and other rudimentary objects. He can still walk through most walls at this point, but I love the fact that the game was even here. Be sure to check for the movies when they surface this weekend.
It’s developed by a Taiwanese company Game Factory, all of whom are depicted at the end of the G&G promo vid you’ll be seeing in a matter of time. A bit of an announcement (as far as I know) is that according to the official Zona press kit, Game Factory has signed on for not one but two G&G projects, the second of which is called Ghouls & Ghosts match fight, which sounds like a fighter, bit I cannot confirm this until I check with someone. What is certain is that the game exists, and is currently under development by Game Factory.
Noah’s Ark is another game developed using Zona’s server tech, this one published by industry giant Gamania in Japan. This features a cast of cute characters (designed for kids – you always know a game is for the younger market in Japan when it starts out ‘mukashi, mukashi.. .’), who work to rebuild the world after the flood of 40 days and nights. But there are bad animals and good animals warring against each other with magic (cute magic), so you can both create and destroy here. It looks nice, and seems to incorporate the sim, the mmorpg, and the Diablo click-fest all in one sickeningly cute package.
Now as for DTS Interactive, they had a nice booth set up with their 5.1 digital surround speakers, trying to compete with the Dolby guys next door.
At this point, the first two games to actually implement DTS Interactive surround sound technology are SSX Tricky and GTA: Vice City for PS2. In fact, DTS Interactive is focusing solely on the PS2 for the time being, since it is the most widespread of console platforms at this time (obvious, non?).
It sounded quite nice with SSX Tricky even though it only used 4.0 surround – I didn’t get a chance to hear GTA (which uses 5.1), but from what they told me you can hear the direction from which shots are coming, directional dialogue, et cetera.
They also showed me a 70% build of a new game from Codemasters – Indy Car Series. Brain in a Jar developed this one, with Codemasters on the publishing end. Plays nicely, and looks ok for being 70% complete. The DTS surround sound is really good for this type of game (indy stock cars), as you can hear where the cars are coming from in order to cut them off, things like this. It was implemented very well into the game, and in order to hear maximum amounts of car noise, we drove the opposite way on the track, winding up 12 laps off the lead. Brilliant.
The SDK for the DTS technology is free, so any developer can implement this into their games at the cost of programming only. This makes perfect sense when you consider that DTS Interactive makes their money off of the speakers and the technology, not off of royalties.
brandon sheffield
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