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Mike Oldfield's Online Game Makes Like A Maestro
Thanks to Terra Nova for pointing to information about Maestro, a game billed as 'Mike Oldfield's Virtual Reality Online Quest'. The title, created by the composer of the multi-million selling '70s album Tubular Bells, goes on to promise "a free form world offering a refreshing alternative to the typical, task-orientated 'in-your-face' computer game", although the gameplay seems somewhat less 'free form': "Your job is to find the Gravitars, bring them home to the mothership and put them in their pen." The demo is available from Mike Oldfield's website, and the full game is available next month for around UKP15 (USD28).
We needa nice little tubular bells icon just for these!
Oldfield's been dabbling in "virtual worlds" for a few years now with his MVR (Music Virtual Reality) project. For the most part, it has been empty flat landscapes with a few objects scattered around.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Well I understand that Music Makes the game..
But the game has to be good!
*keeps waiting*
...and I will add that Oldfield's web site has been among the very worst to use at times. At one time, the hyperlink buttons to go to parts of the site actually scudded at random vectors across the screen. You had to chase them down with the mouse and hit them at the right moment.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
I've played the demo. It's...interesting, to say the least.
I suppose it's kind of a new way of looking at gaming, in that it can be simply a sensory experience, and not necessary something with set goals in mind.
Still, this game has nothing on Rez, the game with the Trance Vibrator.
Also relevant here is 1994's The Songs of Distant Earth (by Mike Oldfield, of course), thematically inspired by the Arthur C. Clarke book of the same name, and musically inspired by the "monk music" craze (Enigma, etc.). Clarke even has an intro on the liner notes.
This was an enhanced CD that contained a similar "game of exploration" which ran only on the Mac.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
To quote HR Giger when talking about the alien baby in Alien Resurrection:
'It is shit; they have made shit.'
I'm sorry, but am I missing the point here? You travel down badly modelled and attrociously textured drainpipes picking up tube bells. Each time you pick one up another 'tubular bell' icon dissapears off screen. Once they have all dissapeared, miraculously, NOTHING HAPPENS!
THIS GAME ROCKS: if you are into drainpipe exploration. If this had been my first project when I got AMOS basic for the Amiga I would have been disappointed with myself.
The best bit though is knowing how Mike Oldfield has been completelty ripped off by some programmer, as even if he was charged $10 for the work he was taken to the cleaners.
After fiddling with it a bit, it seems like Welcome to the Future: 2004.
THIS GAME ROCKS: if you are into drainpipe exploration
:)
Don't knock drainpipe-exploration games. Nintendo made a mint on the Mario Bros franchise
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Take the world's most boring composer, apply his thought processes to video game creation, and, voila, you have the world's most boring video game! Thanks, Mike.
Oddly enough, I popped this into my CD player here at work about two minutes before reading some /. Man's a genius IMNSHO...
Corruptissima re publica plurimae leges.
The MusicVR experience has the feel of a dream or an abstract music video, where you wander through the space of the composer's imagination led by a vaguely game-like "find all of the keys" approach. This is a good idea, especially if the composer's imagination is both wild and executed with good music and matching visuals.
The reason Maestro sucks is that rendering looks like something a student hacked up for their very first graphics class.
The textures are hideous and have blatant seams. The control scheme leads you to face-plant against walls, completely disoriented. The reflections don't reflect the room around you-- or anything remotely like it (and boy, are there a lot of reflections). The lighting is crappy, with wierd per-vertex specular highlights stretched across giant polygons and not enough shading to be able to discern the shape of the giant caverns. Moving underwater is like walking down a corridor wall-papered by a 2-year old using stock photographs of fish. Finally, you can't really interact with anything in the demo.
I'd love to experience something that felt like Rendevouz with Rama-- exploration of a wierd, desolate, and alien space. Integral music and limited interaction would really enhance the experience. Maestro is not this program; it is a junk demo with a big name attached to the project.
-m
In other words: "1993 called. They want their Rend386 demos back"
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Make that "world's best composer", and you might be onto something.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
how does this compare with the mac game "Tranquility" .. where you basically just float around collecting things, very nice game.
One reason for Slashdotters to love Oldfield's Music VR Projects: they use Ogg Vorbis for the audio compression.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Now if John Carmack can come up with an album of electronic music...