Tron 2.0 - Hands-On With Master Control

Thanks to an anonymous reader for pointing to a new Gamespot hands-on preview of the forthcoming PC title Tron 2.0. This FPS, which we featured a preview of last month, now has a fully playable early version, and the writer says that "..from what we've seen, Tron 2.0 seems to do a great job of capturing the essence of the original film, thanks to its distinctive art design." The preview also draws attention to the unique weaponry, which, yes, has you controlling Discs Of Tron, but there's a possible dealbreaker caveat: "..the game seems to offer a few more jump puzzles than we'd prefer for a first-person action game." However, this Monolith-developed title, which also includes a lightcycle racing section, "..still shows promise" - watch for it later in 2003.

Comments

Version numbers

[CableModemSniper]

Sheesh, Jet 3.0.0? Talk about version number inflation.

GLTron

[simnick]

My friends and I have been obsessively playing GLTron for a couple of weeks now, that game rocks!

The graphics are great and the gameplay is addictive. Somehow having a cockpit or chase view of the lightcycle makes the whole thing more fun than just the 2-d version

http://www.gltron.org/

Re:GLTron

[krisguy]

Of course. I've now found another way to obcess over my childhood and still waste time with a cool game.

GLTron is cool.

So..

[dr ttol]

Does the lightcycles go faster than the space shuttle Columbia?

A game made of a movie of a game?

[AtariAmarok]

Over the past few months, I've seen a few articles referring to TRON 2.0 as a game made of a movie that was made from a game.

This is not how it happened. TRON 2.0 is another game made from a movie that has previously had games made from it.

While the movie was about games, the origin of TRON lies in a advertising character created by Steven Lisberger's studio. This character eventually had the film story built around it. Interestingly enough, the original TRON character had more of the Samurai-type helmet worn by Sark and the bad guys later in the film: he was not wearing a the hockey helmet that Bruce Boxleitner would later have.

------------

I'm looking forward to this game, especially if it uses Wendy Carlos' standout soundtrack themes.

Re:A game made of a movie of a game?

[engineerdude]

AHHH Bruce Boxleitner.....Hard at work filming Babylon 5: The Reunion.....

But more importantly

[Coyote67]

But as everyone knows, the big stinker that year was Disney's it came from the....oh forget it, I'm gonna go make a sandwich.

Did you notice...

[suricatta]

Check out the screen shots. The game almost has better special effects than the film itself :)

Re:Did you notice...

[Bagels]

Almost? It's got far better special effects. We know a lot more about rendering things properly now; things like pixel and vertex shaders didn't even exist back then. Heck, they weren't even really used in Toy Story, which came out long after Tron.

Not only that....

[AtariAmarok]

"Check out the screen shots. The game almost has better special effects than the film itself :)"

I would go as far as to say that they are at least as good. Not only that, these effects on the game are rendered in real time. When the movie was made, each frame of the CGI took a very long time to render.

Re:Not only that....

[Dachannien]

Not to mention that the vast majority of Tron the Movie was actually backlit photography and not CG.

Re:Not only that....

[Hot Soup LD]

Not necessarily true. Pick up the new version of the Tron DVD, it's got a pretty good 'making of' segment that actually put my own skepticism in place. A lot more of it is CG than I origionally thought, and even scenes where it looks like backlighting or trick photography is actually CG post production (like all the bright suits with black and white faces).

They mention that one of the gripes is how people didn't believe how much computer effort they put into a lot of shots. Many people wrote it up as drafters sketching onto film paper or other copout alternatives. They actually had two studios running at the same time, one that was devoted to the CG effects.

Yeah, check out the special features. It's insightful. I respect Tron even more knowing it's really CG in most places.

Re:Not only that....

[Dachannien]

I think you have it backwards. The black and white faces were generated through using black and white film. All of the glowing lines on the costumes were done with backlit photography. And most of the background art was backlit photography as well.

The scenes that were CG were things like the real-world to computer-world transition, the MCP, the lightcycles, and the tank game (but not the inside of the tank!). All told, there were about 20-ish minutes of CG.

But what about the movie?

[ZorMonkey]

There were plans to make a Tron 2.0 move also. Unfortunately, there hasnt been any news about it in over a year. So, either it got scrapped, or theyre really keeping it quiet somehow.

Re:But what about the movie?

[shamino0]

Tell me about it. The Tron Collector's edition DVD mentions a sequel movie in some of the interview tracks. It also mentions a "Tron 2.0: Killer App", but the website appears to be dedicated to the game, not any future movie.

Re:But what about the movie?

[ZorMonkey]

Yeah, the www.tronkillerapp.com website used to be completely different, but now it just redirects you to tron20.net. Even archive.org isnt much help.

Great link, Mod parent up!!!!

[BoomerSooner]

Thanks man, you rule!!!

Jumping puzzles...

[AtariEric]

"..the game seems to offer a few more jump puzzles than we'd prefer for a first-person action game..."
...also includes a lightcycle racing section, "..still shows promise"

If the jumping puzzles invlove jumping the light cycles, maybe we can forgive them... ;)