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Black And White Screenshot Jamboree
Niceguy writes: "Lionhead Studios released 51 screenshots for your viewing pleasure, which you can see at Liongames.com. Although not being released until February of next year, now is a good time to start salivating and putting aside that spare change. All Bow Before Peter!"
Black and White is a freeform god game. There is no interface to speak of, you do everything through the "Hand of God". (By the way, these are all my terms and interpretations. Things may have changed since I've looked at B&W.)
Lionhead coded hand gesture recognition technology. You do things by making gestures with your hand/cursor. For example, let's say you wanted to light a village on fire. You would cast the fire spell by doing a certain set of motions. The fireball would come blazing out, severity varying depending on how accurate you did the spell. (For example, if the casting shape was a circle and you made a really bad rounded rectangle, you could expect a very weak spell).
As a god, you are neutral. You can deal with a situation any way you wish. So, you can impose your own will upon the people in the game. In a bad mood? Toss the child into the ocean to teach the mother a lesson for not paying closer attention. Feeling generous? Cast a growing spell on the village's crops. The availability of the spells depends on whether you lean toward the good/bad side. Almost like Star Wars.
The objective of the game is to gather as many followers as possible. Your followers will erect places of worship toward you, and you gain more power from it. There are other gods, too, though. You have to try and convert as many people to your following, though.
Another aspect is the avatar that you control. These are in the form of an ape, tiger, or some other creature. He/she/it represents your will. You will raise this creature and he will learn from you. For example, if you cast a fire spell a few times, it will eventually learn it and can cast the spell on its own. The attitude and look of your avatar changes depending on your goodness/evilness. If you're an angry god, your avatar will take on an evil disposition. If you are a peaceful god, your avatar will be angelic. Likewise for the environment. Dark clouds if you're bad. Sunlight if you're good.
There is another aspect of the game that deals with multiplayer. I think it is called "The Gathering" and you can bring your avatar/creature online and converse with other player's creatures. They can do battle with each other or just talk. The singleplayer/multiplayer creatures may be interchangeable (e.g. a spell you learn online can then be used offline).
The Gathering??
"So, it's here at last. The Gathering. Time is catching up with us my friend."
"There can be only one!"
Sorry, someone had to say it.
www.matthewmiller.net"Live Free or Die." Don't like it? Then keep out of the USA
The graphics ARE nice. Sure, they are not all totally amazingly awesome (some are though), but if you put them together with the amazing AI and the massive scope of the game you have a winning formula. Dont judge the game simply by the excellent graphics and then say it is shit, go out and read about it! See what it is that you are so quick to bag.
Email
"1) b&w will be open-sourced. "
I didn't get that from the article. Do you have a reference?
"2) a. The weather in the game is equal to the weather of where you live. "
Crap. Three Hundred Days of Sunshine a Year.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
The screenshots DO NOT do the game justice. Go download some of the gameplay movies... those rock. The game really isn't about the graphics anyway... there's a lot more to it.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
Its a pity the original poster didn't actual give a brief overview on what the real boundaries the game is trying to push... It's quite understandable that a lot of people will simply check out the screenshots and think they're pretty much in line with todays games. Shrug and move elsewhere...
The boundaries that the game is pushing are mainly on the AI side and user interface side as well - its definitely worth checking out the articles, comments, interviews and particularly some of the later movies if you have the bandwidth.
One other point to make about the graphics is that they're dynamically morphing over time into a representation of whether your actions are evil or good (hence the name black and white). The landscape will blacken and people will wander around moaning if your evil, and the place
Your creature is also the same - there's an oldish animation of a lion morphing from good to evil out there as well.
Other interesting features which weren't mentioned by others at the time of writing:
- The graphics engine maintains a constant frame rate. In order to do this it may lose detail, but it basically allows you to zoom in and out of the game very smoothly from the above the clouds right down to close ups of your followers.
- Depending on the software on your machine, your followers may end up with the names of people in your address book (annoyed at Joe Bloggs at the moment? Relieve your stress by finding him in the game and throwing him off a cliff..)
- Your creature will at some stage start building its own homepage which can be published on the web with what it thinks the major happenings were in its life etc. etc.
- Your creature can also 'interface' to the 'outside world' and check and read your email to you and do other weird and wonderful things...
- You can 'train' your creature to like (and dance to) or hate certain music. (Peter mentions one of his creature liked Moby and hated the Spice Girls....)
- The Gesture recognition stuff - to cast spells you have to 'draw' a symbol with your mouse (eg. a star), with your drawing ability possibly affecting how successful the spell will be...
- On the multiplayer side the creature / creature interaction is potentially even more interesting where they can trade, teach each other stuff as well as the usual beat each other up approach...
The game is basically interaction and exploration with a loose RPG'ish storyline to follow when and if you wish... You're god - you do what you want.
As mentioned by Kevin Kelly in Out of Control - playing 'god' can be very addictive.
The (key) bit that went missing
One other point to make about the graphics is that they're dynamically morphing over time into a representation of whether your actions are preceived as being evil or good (hence the name black and white).
If you're evil the landscape will blacken, trees will die, people will wander around moaning etc. etc, and if you're good, there'll be lush green grass, flowers, bunnies etc.
The key thing is as mentioned above its all gradual - so you might currently be perceived by the game as slightly evil, so there'll just be the occasional dead tree and patch of bare earth, or in the opposite case a flower here and there..
The AI and the adaptablilty are truly unprecedented.
So you've actually played the game? I hope so, if you're making comments like that. People never seem to learn that you can't take game hype at face value, even after being burned dozens of times.
... open-source. Then anybody can download and use that stuff. To use it in a commercial product, you have to pay us a royalty ...
Interesting definition of open-source. And they said Free software was too confusing...
3) it will not only be released for Windows, but also BeOS, Linux, and Windows, Dreamcast, PlayStation and Gameboy Color (although, with some sytems there will obviously be a loss of features)
;)
Now that's not a very nice thing to say about Windows.
Steven
-- I have marked myself unwilling to moderate-- I don't have other accounts to artificially inflate the karma of
Yes, it's a game. In fact, it looks like it's going to be a great game - the graphics aren't all that (to me anyway) but, the game is somewhere along the lines of Populous in some ways. However, I don't know for sure if it's going to be a great game - I haven't played it personally But looking at who's behind the game...
Davis Ray Sickmon, Jr - looking for something to read? Check out my three free novels at MidnightRyder.org
The top five anticipated add-ons to B&W are as follows...
:)
5. Quake 1 Pack - As with every other game, now Quake I levels and weapons are available!
4. Satin - Actually a virus, this will go to the altar of all gods (where they hang out when the game is not being played) and kill everyone else's player. Expected to spread like wildfire or Melissa/ILoveYou.
3. Command & Conquer-like add-on - Now you can have two more buildings and six new textures on the main menu for only $40.00 more!
2. Atheist Mission Pak - Hey, the US schools wanted this game! Complete with no god, you can roam around the beautiful landscape if you have nothing to do.
Drum roll please... 1. The Nudity Patch - As featured in the Sims, the Quake series, and just about every other game with a character, you can see the god and their worshippers walk around completely naked! Includes an option to turn the blurring near innapropiate parts off!
If anyone doesn't think that these add-ons are going to come out, please e-mail me. I'll teach ya
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Tonight on Fox: Deadliest Executions Part XVII
try here
By the way, SP!
In 1999, marijuana killed 0 Americans...
Ewige Blumenkraft!
A direct link to the LionGames.com gallery page: Liongames.com - Media: Screenshots.
Likewise, the Lionhead Studios website.
I've been following this game for a while now. It seems real interesting, as the player apparently has the choice to do anything he wants to approach the problem, which is a sharp departure from the open door, push button games that are standard fare today. Even Half-Life was structured with a certain path through the level.
However, B&W allows you to solve a certain problem by using good powers (such as whisking a lost villager back home) or bad powers (just heaving a large tree at the villager would put an end to the problem as well).
I don't see any god damn rocket launchers or lightning guns.. Throwing a tree (as mentioned before) at a person to end the level just isn't as much fun as frying his brain w/the LG. I would rather not walk around either, being a half-grapple-monkey ;-)
1) b&w will be open-sourced. I remeber reading about this a few months ago, and the developer said it'd be free for other open-sourced games...interesting nonetheless
2) a. The weather in the game is equal to the weather of where you live.
b. Creatures dancing to random music.
c. Realtime Weather-effects.
d. Day and night cycles.
3) it will not only be released for Windows, but also BeOS, Linux, and Windows, Dreamcast, PlayStation and Gameboy Color (although, with some sytems there will obviously be a loss of features)
wonder if this will be the next Doom?
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As a god you, over time, become either good or evil. You are presented with quests to help you define yourself. One example is that of a missing boy, his father asks you to help him find the boy, you could either bring the boy to the father, or do something evil like kill the boy, drop him in front of the father, and then kill the father for asking.
The interface is especially interesting, as spells will be cast with mouse movements. By shaking the mouse over the screen you can create a fireball to hurl at your opponents and there are many variations on every movement to make the spell weaker/stronger or have a diffrent effect. This game will support multiplayer, but your character will be perserved from single player; You can play SP till you feel comfortable with your character/famaliar, then jump into the swarming masses and show your hand.
The AI is what is most impressive about this game, Lionhead has taken games to a new level by having you teach a famaliar who takes the shape of an animal in the game ranging from a cow to possibly a dragon (there are secrect titans hidden throughout the game) and the animal, infused with a bit of your power, becomes a titan. The way you treat your Titan and what you teach him to do, and how you do it, will help form what kind of titan it becomes. If you teach it to eat your villagers when it gets hungry, then your villagers will learn to run away when they see it coming, and your Titan will become evil in the process. The teaching system isn't a matter of making a few simple decisions and then your Titan becomes exactly what you want him to be, it is a test of your patience, and endurance, and of your personality, putting a little bit of you into the game.
Unfortunatly, Neutraliaty isn't really an option in the game, as the really powerfull spells/abilities come from being truly as good or evil as possible. Also, you have no direct control over the units in the game, you have to persuade them to do things for you, like make the villagers worship you by showing them a bit of your power and encouraging them, or encouraging them in a diffrent way by making an example of someone who doesn't worship.
As for the graphics, it looks quite a bit like the recently released game Sacrifice which is a third person role playing real time strategy game, which doesn't look bad at all (and plays nice). As long as the game doesn't look like something I might play on an Atari, who cares? While Black & White might be a good topic for a thread, why use the screenshots to bring it up?
More info on B&W can be found at BWVault, one of the oldest BW Fansites that didn't bottom out.
The IM thing is nothing outlandishly special. NetHack has a mailer daemon which comes up to you and delivers scrolls on which are written new emails which arrive while you play.
-J
Karma: T-rexcellent.
It has 300-foot cows, for Christ's sake, what more could you want?!
--The Kid
So it goes.
At Tux Games we had some conversations with people at lionhead. We have been told that there WILL be a Linux port of the game.
This is not just rumour.
Tux Games. Your complete source for native Linux games.
There is no interface to speak of, you do everything through the "Hand of God".
Do you mean Maradona the "Hand of God" ?
Well someone had to say it...
about this game is not really the graphics (which are outstanding). The AI and the adaptablilty are truly unprecedented. The movie titled Black and White - The E3 Movie located here really tells the whole story. This is a most ambitious game. It will do things like tie in with you IM client and your creature will read your messages to you if you're playing when you're messaged. The creatures dance to your MP3s, and learn to enjoy songs you play over and over. I'm very excited about this game, and am really hopinng they are doing a Mac version. There's a lot more to this game than any sim/rpg/god game we've seen.
The buildings in particular don't appear to have any depth. The first image on the main page shows buildings that appear to be made up of some fairly chunky bitmaps.
Ok, so the butterflies in one of the images look pretty cool, and the snow is nice too, but it's a well known fact: Pretty graphics do not necessarily make a great game. The concepts behind this one make it sound like it should be pretty cool, but I'd rather judge a game on the gameplay than the graphics any day.
So, sorry.. it just doesn't look all that revolutionary to me..
Either way, to me the graphics simply indicate that the popularity of the game will rest on the actual storyline and interaction, not the pretty pictures. Good luck on that.
Godzilla vs. Rodan
Tamagoochi