General Game Development – Page 15

Far Cry 3 Set in Africa

Wow, it seems like only yesterday I brought you the news of Ubisoft Montreal announcing Far Cry 2. With that game coming close to release now, Ubisoft Montreal goes further to announce another addition to the franchise. No, it’s not the Far Cry: Africa Pet Zoo for the DS, it’s a full-fledged Far Cry 3.

Announced at Leipzig, it has been confirmed that the game will be set in Africa. Ubisoft Montreal seems to be keen on boosting African tourism industries with their repeated interest in African wildlife and the promise it holds. I agree with that, too: you can only fight so much in Normandy! Still, I was expecting a Far Cry set in, say, an East European urban setting, or maybe the Great Wall of China or someplace equally exotic.

The team has made a commitment to Africa, supposedly, but shows interest in the Antarctic setting as well, which would be totally cool in my opinion, no pun intended. They also admit that the Africa setting will save time. Hmm.

The game will use the same engine as Far Cry 2 and we don’t have any more details on it, as usual. Suffice to say, it’ll involve lots of exotic, open-world, instinct-based action. Crytek is, as usual, out of the picture, probably too busy working on Crysis 2 or some such.

Gearbox Working on Halo 4 for Next Xbox?!

One of the industry’s best upcoming FPS studios, Gearbox Software has been long rumoured to be working on a secret project that is “bigger” than anything they’ve ever tried. Since this is the team that made the entire Brothers in Arms series, the Halo PC port and many awesome expansions of Half-Life, this is something.

Rumour has it that they’re working on nothing but a Halo 4. Apparently the fight isn’t quite finished. Supposedly, the game is in development for a next-generation Xbox console. It should be noted that while we don’t have any announcements of a new console generation, we haven’t even heard talks about anything like that.

The rumour comes from the Official XBox Magazine, and there doesn’t seem to be any hard verification. Still, it doesn’t seem unbelievable or contradictory. Gearbox only has one product on their plate, Borderlands and Bungie announced that they’re done with the Halo franchise.

In any case, Microsoft milking out the Halo franchise definitely isn’t news, what will all that promotion during Halo 3‘s launch. What is news is the weird, outlandish rumour. So is Microsoft working on a next-gen Xbox? How powerful is it? Is Gearbox actually working on a sequel to Halo 3? Will it come anytime before 2015? Questions galore.

We have no doubt that Microsoft has an answer to them all. ‘Microsoft does not respond to rumors’ or some such.

Epic Making New IP with EA

Epic, impressed by their work on the Gears of War PC port, bought People Can Fly not very long ago. Now’s the time for action. Epic has announced that their Poland-based PCF studio will be working on a whole new IP to be released for the PC, Xbox 360 and PS3, all by EA. About time.

And we just got you excited on that, then sorry, we don’t have much else to report. That’s pretty much all that has been released upto now. No title, no hint of story, nothing. Still, being the keen industry analysts that we are, we’re guessing it will be a sci-fi first person shooter, involving either a dystopia or an alien invasion.

Epic seems to have been on a roll recently. While they have always prospered by selling their uber Unreal Engine to other devs, they took a walk out of the tent with Gears of War and are working on its sequel as we speak. They’re also doing great licensing Unreal Engine 3 and have a 4th version in the works.

Their flagship product, Unreal Tournament 3 didn’t do so well, however. This has left the franchise abandoned for the while, as no more news has been announced regarding it yet. Still, in an informal chat conducted by BeyondUnreal, an Epic employee (hehe) had said that Unreal Tournament will last as long as Epic does.

Siggraph 2008: The Year of Softimage?

It may be difficult to comprehend now, but it was only two years ago that many in the video game world had given Nintendo up for dead. Despite the early success of the DS handheld, the company’s Gamecube had finished in distant third vs. its same generation competitors. And with the next generation of consoles dawning, the XBox 360 was lighting up the charts and the Playstation 3 was about to become reality. Then at E3 2006, Nintendo unveiled the Wii and the rest is history.

While nothing unveiled at this week’s Siggraph conference in Los Angeles will have that level of mainstream consumer impact, the event may feature a similar underdog story that will have far-reaching consequences for the business of video game development.

Continue reading “Siggraph 2008: The Year of Softimage?”

Lars Ulrich tries to be evasive about Guitar Hero: Metallica

Who is he kidding now? If a game called Guitar Hero: Aerosmith could work, what’s going to stop a Guitar Hero game on Metallica: one of the most well-known Thrash Metal bands ever? While we have almost certain confirmation that the game will be happening, Lars Ulrich was still acting a little cagey when asked about the game.

Talking to MTV News, he was caught saying:

“Let’s put it this way, [Our next album] Death Magnetic comes out in September, and the day it comes out, it will be available in the ‘Guitar Hero 3‘ format, which we’re obviously super-psyched about. As I’ve born witness to in my house, its all about the next generation. My kids play ‘Guitar Hero’ every day, and to be able to get the Metallica record the day it comes out, that’s super cool.”

“There’s an Aerosmith game out there that’s super successful, and if somebody’s gonna follow that up…we’re talking, and its exciting, and the people at ‘Guitar Hero’ and Activision are rapidly becoming our best new friends in the world. You can put the rest of it together yourself.”

Here at StuffWeLike, we’re hard at work putting the rest of it together, but our extreme calculations show that the result will be a glamour-filled, guitar-screaming, drum-killing title called Guitar Hero: Metallica! Or perhaps a variant on that name.

QuakeCon: More on Rage, Rage Extended Trailer, Doom 4

Finally, with QuakeCon going, we can get some more dope on Rage, id’s flagship project for their much-touted id Tech 5 Engine, which appears to have been dubbed the Rage Engine now, albeit unofficially.i

Carmack clears the fact that even though their website claims Rage to be a “vehicle-based” game, the vehicular element is not the focus of the game, and it’s still a very first-person shooter. It won’t be a “mindless” open world game, and all its missions will be pretty story-based. Still, it’ll put quite a bit of focus on the open world aspect, seeing as that’s what id wants to prove with id Tech 5.

The engine which Rage will be showcasing is pretty much near completion, according to Carmack. It’s been in development for some three years, and id still has some polishing to do, such as working on the animation system and some tweaks to the big-time MegaTexture system. But all the biggie stuff is done and the engine is almost ready.

While Rage will showcase all the large world environments in the engine, the real meat should be “the next Doom” game, which is to you and me, Doom 4. According to Carmack, Doom 4 will have 3 times the horsepower of Rage, but will have to run at 30 FPS, which is half of that of Rage.

Doom 4 will also be significantly better on the “creative aspects” and “level design”, which isn’t surprising since Doom 3 blew everyone else out of the water for level design. As for what it will feature, Carmack merely says that we’ll have “guns, blood, demons, and gibs” which is a shocking departure from Doom‘s tradition of magical pixies, fairy dust and ponies.

Still, details on Doom 4 are pretty bleak, so we’ll head back to Rage.

Rage will be delivered for the Xbox 360, PS3, PC and Mac. On the Xbox 360, however, id seems to be coming across some problems. The game will fit on 3 DVDs for the Xbox 360, which seems to be a limiting factor. Due to royalties, the cost of a third DVD would go into millions. This would mean that id would be forced to compromise on textures and compress them into 2 DVDs. Darn you, Microsoft!

The PS3 goes sailing smooth with the Blu-Ray discs and the game should come on both DVD and Blu-Ray formats for the PC and Mac. As for when it will arrive, ask any id fanboy and you will get the curt reply of “when it’s done.” id isn’t really sure, but denies it would take as long as 2011. I’d place my bet on early 2010 then, with Doom 4 later that year.

And finally, id played an extended trailer at QuakeCon, which the folks at Shackvideo caught. It’s almost the same as the one at E3, but has some extra stuff. Check it out!