Anyway, more to the point, I noticed while reading the RareWare site that Chris and Tim Stamper had left Rare. This was news that although not unexpected, heads of companies tend to leave 3 to 5 years after a buyout, however I hadn’t noticed it…

Ultimate and Rare were responsible for some of the best games ever made, and if it hadn’t been for setting up Smoking Gun, I would have joined them back in 97. They were and still are, the only games company that I would really like to work for. However, with the Stampers gone, I don’t think my feelings would be the same. That said, whatever the Stampers decide to persue in the future, the chance to work with them would be one of the few things to tempt me back into the games industry.

In the background you can here the sound of a ZX Spectrum loading a game. The voice over says “Does the sound of Manic Miner and Jet Set Willy loading, tingle your skin… then you need Nivea for Men…” blah blah blah.

The real scarey thing is; I know it wasn’t Manic Miner or Jet Set Willy that was loading – it sounded wrong!

However, despite its strong sense of location, there was little impetus to idly explore the countryside. While the land of Midnight has a stark beauty, the limited range of elements leaves little room for any surprises. If you’ve seen one mountain you’ve literally seen them all, so the few times the game does surprise, the impact is all the more for it. One of the more spellbinding moments came late into the game, when I felt like I was further north than any other man had ever been, and I saw ahead of me distant tower. Except that it nestled safely behind the frozen wastes. Having become accustomed to the frozen waste’s role as the implacable edge of the game, this seems like a mirage. Or a bug. Any thought about the campaign at hand was put to one side as I explored this anomaly. And so it was: in one corner of the world it was possible pick a path through the wastes into a little oasis of land. It’s a small, unremarkable thing, but when I was there, surrounded by the claw-like peaks of the frozen wastes, it felt like a real discovery.

I gave it a little thought and wondered what it is about the game that has drawn me to it for 20 years. I think that the beauty of Midnight is in the atmosphere of the imagination. For some reason that game landscape just allowed the imagination to run free. Once I started playing the game I would just get lost in the story of it. I still do. Which is one of the reasons whyI set up the wiki to try an realise all the information that we know about, and create so much more that we don’t. I want the place to be real, I want the place to live. Yes, the story is full of typical fantasy cliches but there are so many oppurtunities to iron them out and create a very interesting place that more people could inhabit. I am closer to the characters of Midnight, than probably any book that I have ever read. Would I rather have Midnight or Lord of the Rings? Midnight every time!

Wayne Britcliffe caught the mood just about right in my Retro Gamer Article..

Even when actually playing the games your imagination takes you beyond, especially in the case of the original’s 8-bit limitations, what you are actually presented with. Swords clash, men scream, the plains fill with marauding enemy armies and smoke rises in the distance as snow begins to fall. Lord Blood dies surrounded by those he has slain in the gatehouse of his overrun Keep – a valiant defence against impossible odds. Shimeril escapes by the skin of his teeth only to have to turn and fight before his Citadels walls.

He discusses the merits of the game when you consider it as a Lord of the Rings inspired epic.

See Also: Similarties to other Fantasy Stoires…

Alternatively why not check out Retrospec for more goodies…

I’ve been having a hard time with my work on The Midnight Engine I get so little done nowdays and I’ve started to get disheartened by it. Anyway after a plea for help from the rest of the midnight commuity I think I may be ready to get on it again… watch this space…

Live Publishing, the publisher who brought you Retro Gamer… seems to have gone bust! This ‘aint a major thing; Retro Gamer brought out 18 issues and they have been slowly deteriorating issue by issue. The real downer is that they owed me about £500 in freelancer fees, for the last two articles that I wrote for them… Delta4 and Gilsoft. Like I’m really in a position to not get paid money right now…. ho hum!

I guess the thing that’ll will annoy me the most, is that I never got round to ordering these rather excellent T-Shirts…

I had a large batch of graphics from Jure today. And the results as you would expect are stunning. The new skies really make a difference.

We all know how much impact the initial dawn shot has in Doomdark’s; it was so different than LOM but that Red and Yellow colouring was so atmospheric.

After much messing around with the Dawn shot myself I felt I was going to be in big trouble trying to recreate that feel. Some of you may remember me asking in the group if I could drop that look… to be told emphatically no!

Anyway, I’m glad to say; Jure hit the nail on the head and the result I found to be breathtaking. I’ll try and upload a screenshot soon.

The new haze effect is really working, and I know how two styles of moon, night and evening/day. I also have a separate sun to drop in as an overlay this time rather than having it painted onto the backdrop.

Anyway, more later.

Work has been usually slow, however the graphical changes that Jure and I are making are increasing the visual appeal all the time.

I fixed a number of issues with the tunnel rendering code and this is now almost complete. Just to give you and update on the issues; they are one of view angle. In DDR we took the decision to only allow N E S W view points. This is in keeping with the original in that only movement is allowed on these axis. However we extended this to the UI in order to avoid looking in directions that are not valid.

A point of interest that came up during testing is that of the old DOOM 2d sprite view. ie: Whichever way you look, the sprite faces you. This is the same for the original LOM and DDR. We have kept this mechanic on the landscaping view, however we found that applying this technique in tunnels really jars. The problem is in simplicity that if looking north along a tunnel, there is a stone pillar on your left. When you move up the tunnel and look south it should be on your right. When this is not the case it looks just plain wrong… however your mind seems to except this in the landscaping view, ie: You should see the back of a keep etc…

We added coded haze between all the landscape terrain scales. This has a big impact on the visual quality of the graphics.

Jure is currently working on all the time states skies and floors etc.

I think most of the landscape graphics are done now, and all the dynamic stuff to give multiple terrain variations works really well. Jure has worked hard on this area; the amount of work put into the forests is amazing. You really won’t feel like it’s a tile forest anymore.

I would be interested to hear people’s views on 3d cards. I am considering taking TME over to use 3d hardware, not in a real 3d way but harnessing the power of the GPU to help process the increasing graphical workload. I know that older machines do not all have the luxury or 3d cards, but I would be interesting in hearing from anyone interested in playing LOM and DDR who do not have 3d support or have very old support.

I have had a number of talks with Matt Davies ( sorry can’t remember the correct number id! ) about the future of TME, and I have to say that there are some really interesting possibilities. However I will wait until DDR is out with you before I start the major overhaul that TME will be getting!