Republic - The Revolution Analyzed

Thanks to an anonymous reader for pointing to a Gamespot hands-on preview of the PC strategy title Republic:The Revolution. This Elixir-developed game, which has had a legendarily long development cycle and has previously drawn flak for claims of an 'infinite polygon engine', looks somewhat unorthodox, with Gamespot offering only qualified praise, and mentioning that it's "..an unusual strategy game, in that it focuses on the world of politics.. Republic transports you to the fictional former Soviet republic of Novistrana, where taking on the establishment requires.. ..extreme measures." You can even visit the official Novistrana website if you'd like to learn more about the (fictional) country featured in the game.

Comments

Careful...

[bmnc]

After Republic, ppl will look back with warm feelings on the days of counter strike causing young impressionable males to become crazed gun-maniacs. Why? Beacuse after this they'll become... POLITICIANS!!!

Re:Careful...

[Yokaze]

They've said the same about films.

Re:Careful...

[joFFeman]

if republic is honest about the belief systems and values of different political factions, it'll do a lot of good in getting people interested in the politics that police their everyday lives. hopefully.

Screenshots

[Anonymous Coward]

On gamespy those screenshots of republic look like crap, despite the claims of 'infinite polygons'

Re:Screenshots

[AllenChristopher]

Look at all this architectural detail:

http://www.gamespot.com/pc/strategy/republictherev olution/screens.html?page=11

Look at how the draw-in distance is so further out than where houses are spots:

http://www.gamespot.com/pc/strategy/republictherev olution/screens.html?page=9

I believe that's what they're talking about. The total polygon count for that city is huge, and you can just keep zooming out from where you see fence-posts, windowpanes, and doors with inset panels to where you see row-housing stretching out to the horizon. It's not about a high poly-count when you're looking at a single person, like in an FPS set in industrial tunnels, but about the entire world.

I must point out that the people have individual fingers, so the close-up poly-count doesn't stink either. It's just not a shiny colorful UT2K3 game. It's a detailed city in post-Soviet Europe, a god game where you can go and see your subjects' fingers. The SimCity people have only been dreaming about doing this.

Re:Screenshots

[Kizzle]

All gamespot screenshots look like total shit. They must use the worst machine they can find to run these games. Don't beleive me? Take a look at any other game on the site.

Infinite Polygons

[dr ttol]

This could be interesting. I mean, current engines render the polygons, and when zooming in, only magnifies the polygons, so instead of normal view, say consisting of 10,000 polygons, the zoomed in view is only 2,000 polygons on the screen, with all the textures magnified (and thus pixelated).

Sounds like this engine, when zooming in, or walking closer to, the polygons are kept at a constant rate so the models look more crisp as you get closer, instead of looking like crap in normal games.

Re:Infinite Polygons

[SuiteSisterMary]

Shiney's Messiah did something similar, where all of the models were supposedly crazy-high polygon levles, but polys were simply removed for slower machines; first ones you likely wouldn't notice, and then progressing up.

An engine that can take a large poly and break it into smaller ones, with meta-data for object curvature and the like, and tiled textures (and detail textures; don't put on a picture of a belt; model a belt) would be a great idea; plus, as you get better hardware, the game would automagically look better.

This is why FF7 for the PC looks much more amazing than FF8 for the PC; FF7 used gourard shading, which meant that the higher resolutions looked higher rez; FF8 used textures, but they didn't resample them for the higher rez, but simply stretched them, resulting in a look of CRAP.

Cyrillic

[danila]

I don't know why, but as many films and games before, Revolution continues the tradition of using gibberish for the Cyrillic language. I can understand almost everything, like using a box with "CAXAP" (sugar) written on it and claiming that it means "shells" or "explosives". But I can't understand why anyone would use cyrillic letters to compose "words" that can't even be pronounced, the equivalent of "BRJIOQZW".

Cyrillic alphabet are not that much different from latin and even if you can't learn it (the alphabet, not any of the languages) yourself, why not hire a Russian (or Eastern European) student, who would compose all Cyrillic text in the game for less than 100$.

Americans often laugh at Japanese who are so fascinated with English language that they on their T-shirts print random cool-looking words that do not make any sense at all. Well, how is that different from showing ignorance in the way Elixir Studios (are they US-based?) does.

Re:Cyrillic

[thumperward]

Maybe they *did* get some random Russian to do all the text. Much like all those Texans with Kanji tattoos, you'll know if you see any tanks zooming by with BOYS BOTTOMS printed on the turret in Cyrillic...

- Chris

Re:Cyrillic

[RadagastTheMagician]

Perhaps in order to ensure that the game's premise remains in a fictional country?

Re:Cyrillic

[danila]

There are many games set in fictional countries and even fictional universes, but somehow the signs are written in perfect English. I don't ask the developers to adopt an actual language, be it Russian (although that would be nice), Ukrainian, Serbian, Mongolian or any other, but making the signs at least readable to anyone familiar with Cyrillic would be nice. Even people whose native language is based on latin alphabet, would probably be happy to invest a little time to learn a few extra letters if they are going to spend 50+ hours playing the game.

The developers decided to use meaningless babble-speak a la The Sims, but I doubt that they made it sound like some sort of Geonosian.

In any case, I am sure that the problem is deeper than the wish of developers to create a fictional country. Here is just one example of many.

Film: The Bourne's Identity, Time: 0:17:10 (in Swiss bank)

The Russian international passport shown in this scene is issued for Foma Kinaev. Everything looks authentic enough, except that the name in Cyrillic sounds more like Lsh'f Lshtshfum. But it's written in those cryptic Cyrillic letters (note, how the filmmakers favoured the letters which aren't also in English alphabet) and so probably no viewer will understand it. For some reason, Brazilian passport is done correctly, as well as the rest of them.

Honestly, I cannot find any reason behind this other than simple ignorance or outright idiocy (if Bourne's Identity makers got a Russian passport, they must have had someone who also knows how to spell a Russian name).

Re:Cyrillic

[dogzilla]

Might I suggest you step outside for a few moments and take in the sunshine and fresh air? Because, you see, it REALLY DOESN"T FUCKING MATTER!!!

Re:Cyrillic

[Lshmael]

What! The syllable "Lsh" is unpronounceable?!

Forget Bourne (and Republic: The Revolution), I'm having an identity crisis.

Re:Cyrillic

[AllenChristopher]

No, really, I think it's deliberate. We do this in english too, with equally nonsensical text.

If you make a block of text in many word-processing applications, it's filled in with "lorem ipsum dolorum...," which is a long string of basically nonsensical text in pseudo Latin. It's actually garbled Cicero that can no longer be translated. These programs fill in these text blocks to show the user what the page layout will look like, even before the copy is available. The layout guy may not get the copy from the writer until the last minute, so he has to have somethign to work with.

In many cases, though, no copy is actually necessary. The document will just be a newspaper held up by some fella in an ad, and it's just supposed to look some way. You don't care what it says, so you leave the lorem ipsum in.

We don't do this because we don't care to learn what Roman characters signify. We know what they signify. We do it because other things matter more, because it isn't practical to always be calling up a writer before making a design change where the text content doesn't matter. It certainly isn't a cultural snub against ourselves. It's about saving money.

Fixed links

[zipwow]

detail

overview

A href is for you!

-Zipwow