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Galactica's Moore Keynotes GDC Track

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the keep-out-the-infiltrators dept.

Gamasutra reports that Battlestar Galactica producer Ronald Moore will be keynoting the Vision track at this year's Game Developer Conference. From the article: "'Ronald Moore was presented with the challenge of reinventing a beloved story, which is a challenge often presented to producers of games,' said Jamil Moledina, director, Game Developers Conference. 'His example of creating one of the most brilliant and successful science fiction masterpieces in recent Hollywood history is a perfect inspirational case study to capture the imaginations of the game creation leaders who attend GDC.'"

29 comments

  1. Freespace SCP by Grey+Ninja · · Score: 1

    I think any Galactica fan should check [url=http://www.game-warden.com/bsg/about.htm]this out[/url]. This is what I want a Battlestar Galactica game to stand up to. Nothing less.

    1. Re:Freespace SCP by FhnuZoag · · Score: 1

      Of course, the problem here is that Freespace does not have Newtonian physics.

    2. Re:Freespace SCP by Suddenly_Dead · · Score: 1

      Exactly. One of the best aspects of the space battles in BSG is that the ships actually have intertia. They seem to move as you'd expect space ships to move.

      From the trailer for the BSG mod, it looks like none of the vipers so much as manuever at the same rate as those in the show, let alone follow proper newtonian physics.

  2. Fixed link. by Grey+Ninja · · Score: 2, Informative

    oops

  3. staying faithful? by jafac · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I've noticed - and the effect is subtle, that over the past few newer episodes, they seem to be doing more and more "sound effects in space" as well as not putting so much effort into newtonian physics in the space combat scenes. In particular; where the one pilot's gun jams and explodes, and leaves a smoke trail as the ship comes in for a landing. The ship bobs up and down as if it's experiencing aerodynamic effects, rather than venting, and the smoke trails behind the ship as if it's in an atmosphere, instead of expanding outward, and following along with a not-accelerating vehicle.

    I'm frankly starting to get a bad feeling about this.

    --

    These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
    1. Re:staying faithful? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I agree. There's been a definite increase of "airplane" like behavior. I can buy the contrails in the Starbuck ep; they seemed to be in a cometary halo from all appearances. But the trail of smoke from the damaged fighter... if anything, the vapor cloud should have moved ahead of the fighter if the viper was decelerating for the landing bay.

    2. Re:staying faithful? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yeah.. it was actually a very strange 'conn-trail' of sorts... the physics of it really drew a lot of attention to it... It neither looked like there was a prefered reference frame, nor like there wasn't... it was kind of both at different times, so it was pretty confusing and detracting.

    3. Re:staying faithful? by wwmedia · · Score: 1

      well star trek had sound in space!

      so do stargate battles!

      and star wars!

      looks like most sci-fi try to avoid this simple law of physics to make a show more
        appealing

      i aint complaining :)

    4. Re:staying faithful? by Dacmot · · Score: 1

      I'm really sick of hearing opinions about how sci-fi shows should explain everything that happens with rational real-world physics.

      It's called science fiction for a reason. The show is good without them explaining how their FDL jump drives works, or what a jump is, why they have gravity inside ships, or why there's sound in space. The show focuses on the story, and not on nitty gritty details of reality. That's what makes it good.

    5. Re:staying faithful? by theStorminMormon · · Score: 1

      I'm tired of people saying that if something is fiction then there is no reason to make it believable.

      This isn't that complicated. Science fiction usually asks you to suspend disbelief about a few things - like the possibility of FTL travel or artificial gravity. But while you don't mind (in general) if a sci-fi show has artificial gravity it does get ridiculous when an otherwise true-to-science show (eg no sound in space, realistic physics, etc.) suddenly has damaged ships slow to a halt in a vacumm (ala "Wing Commander" - the worst movie ever made EVAR).

      If you're just going to have a fantasy movie with lasers (like Star Wars) that's one thing. But sci-fi with a grittier edge in the vein of Clarke should stay true to it's roots.

      It comes to this: it's poor form to have characters act so uncharicteristically that they violate the sense of reality in the film and it's equally poor form to have physical objects act so oddly that they violate the sense of reality in the film. If realistic physics (or character development, for that matter) aren't part of that sense of reality than it doesn't matter if you toss them to the wind. But if they are - then you should stick to it.

      -stormin

      --
      The Southern Baptist Convention has creationism. On Slashdot, we have porn.
    6. Re:staying faithful? by tgd · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Wow you totally missed his point.

      The point was, the show started off with a very specific style -- call it "dramatized realism" or something. Space scenes were nearly silent, drama came from that confined aural sensation, they focused on real-work physics that actually were significant (the ability to flip around backwards and shoot, etc).

      This season the drama has really cranked up, but they've noticably moved away from the sense of realism. Thats a slippery slope. Character development could be next, or any of a dozen other things that make the show so powerful.

    7. Re:staying faithful? by jafac · · Score: 1

      It's beautiful, on one of those very rare occasions, when someone actually gets my point. :)

      --

      These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
    8. Re:staying faithful? by jafac · · Score: 2, Interesting

      well star trek had sound in space!

      so do stargate battles!

      and star wars!

      . . . which is why I prefer BSG. If BSG becomes just another Star Wars clone, what's the point?

      I don't pay a monthly cable/sat bill. I don't get any form of broadcast TV. I pick the shows I like, I either download them from iTMS, or I wait for the DVD (as is the case for BSG). I don't watch TV so that I can fill empty, bored hours that I would otherwise spend reading or doing home improvement projects. I watch TV shows that I like. If I re-activated my satellite service, found myself bored at 9pm one night and decided to veg on the couch, and watch whatever was on, I'd pick a Star Trek rerun over say, Fox News, or Survivor. Just because comparing those two, Star Trek would be the lesser of two (or two-hundred) evils.

      But when I go out of my way to watch one show in particular, it's because the producers of that show have gone out of their way to portray their story in a particular way, that I happen to like. Other shows (the ones you mention, in particular) don't do this - and that's why I don't go out of my way (or waste my time) watching them.

      I think that if all the cable and satellite vendor networks were suddenly forced to provide a la carte pricing, a lot of other people would suddenly find that they're much more choosy about what they spend their money on watching. And 99% of the crap programming would disappear. Maybe this revenue model wouldn't support the production costs of a show like BSG. Or maybe the competing revenue model (ie. "switch on the commercial, and suck off the teat") has artificially inflated production costs beyond what they otherwise would be, which has made a more meritocracy-based model in tv programming impossible to justify to the spreadsheet jockeys who run the networks. We'll never know until consumers get a real choice.

      --

      These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
    9. Re:staying faithful? by MBraynard · · Score: 1
      Be logical for a moment re: sound in space.

      There really isn't sound in space. Yet while the camera is in space, you still hear the audio of the pilots speaking, right?

      And the pilots certainly can hear their own guns going off, right?

      So you are hearing things from inside the ships. Duh.

    10. Re:staying faithful? by jafac · · Score: 1

      that's true, in a scene where you're in the pilot's POV or space.

      But the sound effects are getting less subtle, more "global" in scope (applying in scenes or situations where there's no feeling of being in the pilot's POV).

      I'm just saying it's a trend I'm noticing. And it's been very subtle, so far. I don't know if there's someone in the production-chain saying that it needs to be snazzed up a bit for the less-geeky crowd in order to attract a wider, lowbrow audience, and therefore more ad revenue, or what. But at some point, if this trend keeps going, it's going to become less subtle, the show's going to end up being indistinguishible from the original BSG series.

      And then I'm going to have to barf.

      --

      These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
  4. The Entertainment Industry != Hollywood by Naikrovek · · Score: 2, Informative

    BSG is filmed in Toronto. Hardly Hollywood.

    1. Re:The Entertainment Industry != Hollywood by Xerxus · · Score: 3, Informative

      Your information is not correct. Battlestar Galactica is filmed in Vancouver, British Columbia in Canada along with other Sci-Fi shows like Stargate. http://www.hollywoodnorthreport.com/insidebg.php From Ronald D Moore's commentaries, he primarily does his work in the States in his home while his other executive producers handles all the other things.

    2. Re:The Entertainment Industry != Hollywood by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It is indeed filmed in Vancouver. Notice that there are no rain forests in or near Toronto, but there are near Vancouver. The skylines you see in Caprica city are not Toronto, but more closely resemble Burnaby - where the studios are. They also film Stargate there.

  5. Re:BF2 BSG by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    the freescape mod is an interesting one, there is also another mod wich seems really promising for Battlefield 2,
    Rise of Kobol <URL:http://www.riseofkobol.com/>.

  6. Sounds more like... by PhotoBoy · · Score: 1

    ... a BSG fan really wanted to meet Ron Moore so he hired him to speak at his conference. I mean, I really like Ron Moore's work and BSG is one of the best things on TV at the moment, but is he really the best person to keynote a games conference? I've never heard him discuss games before, so what makes him a good choice for this subject?

    1. Re:Sounds more like... by gstoddart · · Score: 1
      I've never heard him discuss games before, so what makes him a good choice for this subject?

      OK, we've come to accept that nobody ever R's TFA, but in the freakin' summary you can read ...
      Ronald Moore was presented with the challenge of reinventing a beloved story, which is a challenge often presented to producers of games

      You know, how to adapt/interpret a subject matter which has come before you, how to use the material, etc. Things that, hoperfully, a game producer would like to keep in mind as they make games that don't suck, or which are bad adaptations of something else.

      I mean, if you're not going to read either the article or the summary, why bother even posting?

      --
      Lost at C:>. Found at C.
    2. Re:Sounds more like... by PhotoBoy · · Score: 1

      Reimagining a TV show and designing a game are hardly comparable. Aside from the cheesy sci-fi plot many games have, the challenges of designing a good game are very unlike that of coming up with a new spin on a sci-fi show. Try thinking of a valid point in future before pulling out the tired old RTFA shit.

  7. Google Ranker by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
    Uh ohh, now you've done it.

    Pretty soon, people Googling "oops" will get to your link. Did you really mean that?

  8. Time for a great space shooter by TheSkepticalOptimist · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Watching BSG reminds me of playing Wing Commander back in the day (except with way better plots and acting). I always thought that the new BSG would be a brilliant platform for a new series of space shooters, a genre of games that have unfortunately fallen away to vapid 3rd person shooters and endless MMORPG's.

    Honestly, I think that having a game that allows you to freely explore BSG with plot driven sequences, run space missions, and then actually allow you to land on a planet or board another craft for a 3rd person shooter mission would revolutionize both of these genres.

    The problem is that most games based on a TV show or movie tend to be rushed, vapid, and simply a way for a marketing team to make a quick buck without much effort. I honestly think Chris Roberts should pair up with producers and creators of BSG, spend a few years, and create another great space shooter by utilizing the latest in graphics hardware and gaming technology.

    I simply miss dogfighting in space, there hasn't been a really good entry in this genre for over a decade. While people are starting to tire of tired sequels to Doom and Quake and even Half life and of course Star Wars themed games, offering a new twist on a lost genre may be a trend that will help sell more games, even if there are a bunch of copycat clones once a successful BSG themed space shooter game is released.

    Just, don't rush it out the door. If a BSG game is in the works, take the time to do it right and don't end up like the countless failed TV and movie franchise games that are rushed out the door weeks after (or even before) a movie is released.

    --
    I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
    1. Re:Time for a great space shooter by MBraynard · · Score: 1
      It would be a difficult game to make because the plot of the show is so ... tight. There is no 'other ship' to have adventures on like in ST or a lot of down time for interacting with the enemy that isn't reported in the TV show.

      I suppose you could play as a new pilot recruit and be dropped into some of the battles she show has already had - plus maybe a simulator (though we've never seen the simulator on the show.)

    2. Re:Time for a great space shooter by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      http://www.vendetta-online.com/
      There's no plot yet, but playing in Physics Mode is very similar to space combat in BSG.

  9. Re:FP by MBraynard · · Score: 1
    Damn stupid moderator. Likely one with unlimited points.

    Definitly not off topic. What a retard. Whoever moderated this -1 should never be allowed to moderate again.

    It's a moderatly funny, ON TOPIC post.