Yes, I bought "The Manhole" for my niece and nephew when it hit the shelves. I played all the Myst games, each as they were released, and loved them all. But what I was really waiting for were full-motion 3D rendered worlds.
Like Clat, I'm most interested in the game format as an immersive storytelling device. All indicators point toward an eventual overlapping zone between movies and gaming, something I've been waiting for for decades.
I'd been closely following the development of computer graphics since about 1979, via professional groups and trade magazines, so I knew what was being done on high-end machines. And I knew that eventually the technology would become affordable to the average consumer-level computer user.
When Ultima IX: Ascension came out in 1999, I was thrilled. Even though the Wolfenstein/Doom franchise had predated it by six years, and despite its problems, Ascension still had a beauty and charm unlike anything else before. When Elder Scrolls: Morrowind came out a few years later, I enjoyed that much, much larger environment as well.
URU was my 2003 Christmas present from my family. I was very impressed: the amount of work that had gone into its development was astounding. Not that it was flawless, but you could see that its creators had really cared about integrating form, texture, lighting and sound to create an immersive environment that was not photo-realistic, but certainly plausible and convincing. It wasn't until I'd completed the basic Ages that I remembered there was an online component, and I was just able to slip in for the last few weeks of that before it was closed. My computer, which just handled rendering ABM, barely crawled through the first multiplayer URU.
Now, with many tech hurdles overcome and improvements on the way, I'm looking forward to more options for Age creation in URU and better experiences for the players. I hope we can all inspire one another, both to create new and improved tools and to use those tools to make our new visions into new realities.
"[Writers] are trying to create a universe in which they have lived or where they would like to live. To write it, they must go there and submit to conditions that they may not have bargained for.... In any case, by writing a universe, the writer makes such a universe possible." ....from "Remembering Jack Kerouac" by William Seward Burroughs |
| Among other things, Emor has worked as a dishwasher, a signpainter and commercial graphics artist, an art gallery owner, and for over 30 years has worked in motion picture visual effects as an art director, technical director, and primarily as a camera operator. He aspires to working as a dishwasher again one day, and believes that his time spent on URU will further that goal. His wife agrees. |
