Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Can I make money by
From: tim.middleton@canrem.com (Tim Middleton)
Path: nntp.gmd.de!news.rwth-aachen.de!news.rhrz.uni-bonn.de!rhein!bnc.net!ins.net!news.maz.net!Germany.EU.net!howland.reston.ans.net!newsfeed.internetmci.com!in1.uu.net!fonorola!news.crso.com!canrem.com!tim.middleton
Distribution: world
Message-ID: <60.7431.4154.0N2016B7@canrem.com>
References: <49cpn3$ilj@odin.diku.dk>
Date: Sun,  3 Dec 95 12:07:00 -0500
Organization: CRS Online  (Toronto, Ontario)
Lines: 125

 = What the big companies don't understand - or simply son't care about -
 = is that a textual NPC which acts and reacts naturally is much more
 = believable (and enjoyable) than digitized bad actors who reuse the same
 = replies and sequences after their lives have been fundamentally
 = changed.

Hey have you folks heard of an up and coming adventure game for OS/2 called
"Avarice" from Stardock software? (graphical, but static graphics it seems).

It sounds very impressive, but i'm personally skeptical if they can pull off
what they claim.... you can check out their claims at

http://oeonline.com/~stardock/avarice.html

They are trying to develop a "conversation" engine for the game so that
NPC's can create conversation with you dynamically to a certain extent
(eliza?!). Also the NPC's are claimed to talk to each other in the
background (the game is multi-threaded), sharing info about things, and
about you-- not sure how that will work. They say they are trying to do
something completely new and not have dialog "trees" like adventure games
have had up to this point...

It could be interesting if they can pull off this "dynamic" conversation
thing... the thing that confuses me is that by looking at the (not so
amazing) screen shots (who cares about the stupid orange!!) is it seems to
be menu based... so ... that seems amazingly limiting to me?!

Anyhow... could be interesting... there are a lot of interesting ideas in
their quite long HTML file about it anyhow-- whether this particular game
lives up to it's claims has yet to be seen...

Here's a few excerpts to see what you think....
(sorry i quoted a bit more than intended... but it's a very intersting text,
worth reading I think... )

 =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

   About ten years ago, adventure games such as Infocom's Planetfall and
   Zork allowed us to enter a virtual world. Admittedly, in those days,
   you could only interact with the game through a text interface. You
   would type "Pick up the orange" and it would get an orange that was in
   a room. You could, to a limited degree, interact with that world. I
   remember playing Planetfall for weeks and imagining what the world
   looked like and feeling like I was really there.

   As time went on, game companies abandoned the text adventure as
   graphical games became the vogue. But something got lost -- the
   feeling that you were there. That you could taste, touch, and *really*
   manipulate objects in that world. To me, virtual reality meant I was
   in a "virtual" world where I could do things as if I was there. While
   this concept may seem like common sense, the label "virtual reality"
   seems to be spread pretty easily. In an age where games have
   increasingly become a bunch of nice artwork and videos being thrown
   onto the screen with little interaction with the world, it might seem
   that game companies have forgotten about true adventure and true
   virtual reality.

   However, with the introduction of Avarice, a return to true virtual
   reality exists. Early beta testers of Avarice have labled it "A Myst
   Killer". But Avarice's scope goes well beyond Myst. In Avarice, you
   are in a real 3D world. You can pick up objects, manipulate objects in
   ways the authors may not have considered, and truly interact with the
   world.

   For example, in Avarice you could pick up an orange, peel the orange,
   break the orange into pieces, step on the pieces and squeeze other
   pieces into orange juice or whatever. The beauty of this is that
   Avarice is a 100% visual game. You actually see the orange (in true
   24bit photographic color detail). You actually see the crushed orange
   or the pieces of it. You can put those pieces on a table and see the
   pieces in their actual size on the table and its size will depend on
   how far away you are from the table.

   Perhaps you read this and say "No way! No one's ever done that
   before!" or "That's impossible! PC technology isn't there yet!" I
   include with this file snapshots of the upcoming Avarice Preview in
   which you see what I am talking about.

   But it gets better than that. There are people in the Avarice world
   and you can talk to them -- have real conversations from that. The
   people in Avarice will talk to each other and how you talk to them may
   affect those conversations. In other words, they are dynamically
   controlled people. And like the orange, they are in full 24bit color
   detail.

   You can manipulate objects such as this oranage in the Avarice world.
   Almost like "Myst meets Infocom".

   Of course, Avarice takes place in a fully rendered 24bit color world
   with an advanced AI so that its graphics are stunning. It offers a
   full digitized musical score with mood changes depending on the
   situation you are in.

   The trick to this is partly the improvement in computer gaming
   technology and partly because of the availability of advanced
   operating systems such as OS/2 Warp which allows us to create a
   dynamic virtual world and still have good performance.

   I think you'll find that Avarice may perhaps be the first adventure
   game where you feel like you're really there in a way that you can
   visually see, touch, and interact with its world.

   Bradley Wardell [author?]

Specifications
Full Multimedia support (sound, music, etc.)
24bit graphics support
Multithreaded artificial intelligence engine
Multithreaded dynamic world engine
Super-High Resolution Available.

Requirements
OS/2 Warp 3.0 or later
SVGA 256 color support (hi-color even better)
Double Speed CD ROM
486DX
Supports 640x480, 800x600, 1024x768, 1280x1024, and higher...
8 Megabytes of ram
Mouse

 =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=


---
  ...with love and tomato sandwiches.      <as544@torfree.net>
