Gaming Links
Some very interesting links today.Matt Barton's outstanding series "The History of Computer Role-Playing Games" has a new installment. Part 2 is called "The Golden Age" and covers the years 1985-1993. You can read it here, and it's highly recommended.
Lara Crigger has another fascinating article in this week's Escapist, this time about Gunpei Yokoi, a seminal (and enigmatic) figure in the history of Nintendo. It's a great read, and you can find it here.
N'Gai Croal published an interesting article from GDC about Organic Motion, a company that is developing a motion capture system without markers. Instead of attaching hundreds of markers to someone, then gathering data from all the markers (which is how traditional motion-capture systems work), this new system works in a more refined way:
Organic Motion, Tschesnok says, is different because it visualizes and captures thousands of natural points on the subject. "We track thousands of natural points--the corner of the eyes, the edge of the arm, the bend of the knee--effectively capturing the entire person in a lifelike manner, similar to the way your eye watches edges and motion. In this manner, Organic Motion authentically tracks the entire person, enabling us to provide a full 3-D scan of the subject in real-time."
In other words, much more data and it doesn't need to be scrubbed. This sounds like it could potentially be a huge development in gaming technology, leading to cheaper and more accurate motion capture, and you can read about it here.
John Catania sent me a link to a project porting the 3DO version of Star Control 2: the Ur-Quan Masters to Windows. I played that game on the 3DO (of course I had one), it was excellent, and I bet it aged very well. The game is available for download here.
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