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Richard Garriott on Richard Garriott

Posted by Zonk on from the we-meet-again-lord-british dept.

bippy writes "I had a chance to shoot Richard "Lord British" Garriott a short list of questions for Kotaku. In the five question Q&A Garriott talks about his house, his favorite games and what he thinks the next big thing will be in MMOG."

2 of 49 comments (clear)

  1. Re:doh! by MMaestro · · Score: 5, Interesting
    I think physics simulation could go even further than that when you consider what types of video games are made and played. What about how a bullet would affect and/or pierce a wall? TRUELY destroyable environments? Rag-doll physics where a dead human doesn't twist his back into a 90 degree angle with his feet bent backwards so far the dead guy could kiss his feet if he wanted to? Or how about gibs where a 300 pound human being doesn't turn into neat meat chunks the size of cinder blocks?

    Theres a lot of gameplay advantages to have physics simulation over graphics IMO. Some people are going to say its really memory limitations, but considering a lot of games have glass that can be shot through or can have grenades tossed through and not completely be destroyed, a few texture changes and some tweaking you got yourself a destroyable 'wall', albeit not a very thick one (yet).

  2. Re:doh! by Quarters · · Score: 5, Interesting
    There's no special type of physics called "Havok physics". Havok is just a company that makes a middle-ware product. Many many games used Havok before HL2 did. HL2 isn't even using Havok 2 (which is 2 years old now). HL2 is using the quite old Havok 1 libraries.

    There are myriad physics libraries, both commercial and free-ware out there. Havok is but one of them. Novadex, by Aegia, is, imho, much more interesting and easier to use than Havok. It's free too, which is a big plus over having to spend tens of thousands of dollars on a middle-ware package.