Großartiger erster Teil einer geplanten Serie über die Geschichte der Gothic-Spiele.
Für Teil 1 hat der polnische Editor Kontakt mit Dieter Hildebrandt aufgenommen, der ihm viele Infos aus dem Nähkästchen erzählt hat, die so bisher den Fans noch völlig unbekannt waren.
Der war zusammen mit Bert Speckels und Ulf Wohlers einer der drei "Mad Scientists", die die Engine für Gothic entwickelt haben. Sie sind damit bei Greenwod Entertainment aufgetaucht und als Greenwood pleite ging und vier Leute dort die neue Firma Piranha Bytes gegründet haben, haben sie die Engine der drei Programmierer benutzt, um damit zusammen mit den dreien Gothic zu erschaffen.
[…]
Hier gehts zur News und zum Video: http://www.worldofgothic.de/news_2379.htm
Bisher nur mit englischen Untertiteln, aber wenn sich jemand für die Übersetzung findet, würden auch gerne deutsche Untertitel eingebaut werden.
Mittels Google2SRT (ein Java-Programm) hab’ ich mir die Untertitel einmal als *.SRT (das ist einfach nur eine Textdatei: hier in UTF-8 Kodierung vorliegend) runtergeholt.
(Gothic_in_a_Nutshell_en.srt – leider darf die Datei beim Upload nur auf *.txt enden)
Ich fürchte, ich werde nicht die Zeit finden alles zu übersetzen, habe aber schon einmal angefangen – siehe Gothic_in_a_Nutshell.srt (Ver.1, 2015_09_09__00:43GMT).
Bei den meisten Playern muß die Untertiteldatei, falls das Video z.B. Hugo.mp4 heißt, Hugo.srt heißen, damit sie automatisch erkannt wird.
Vielleicht werde ich noch weiter machen, dann werde ich neuere Versionen hier verlinken, und jeweils dazuschreiben, von wann sie sind.
Und noch der derzeitige Text (ohne Zeitmarkierungen):
Spoiler:(zum lesen bitte Text markieren)
Gothic ... eine Zusammenfassung:
Im Jahre 1992 kam ein neuer Titel der beliebten RPG-Reihe
- Ultima Underworld - heraus.
Für jene Zeit unüblich benutze dieses Spiel 3D-Rendering.
Zwei deutsche Geeks vom Gymnasium Westermünde
in Bremerhaven waren fasziniert.
Die Beiden - Dieter Hildebrandt und Ulf Wohlers -
verbrachten den Großteil ihrer Zeit mit Programmieren
und dem Studium verschiedener Technologieen.
Sie programmierten in Pascal, Basic und sogar Assembler
auf einem Commodore 64. Sie hatten alles ausprobiert,
was ihnen unter die Finger kam. Als sie die fesselnde Welt
von Ultima Underworld erlebten, wollten sie etwas
derartiges selbst erschaffen.
(The ins and outs of increasing 3D graphics)
?
(popularity were explained in)
?
(the technical press, which came forward)
?
(to our young programmers.)
? Ein Artikel im
Magazin DOS International
stellte eine vereinfachte Form des
Texture-Mappings, ähnlich der von Wolfenstein 3D, vor.
Dieser inspirierte Dieter und Ulf.
Er war der Anstoß. Mit all dem Wissen ausgestattet,
begannen die beiden Abituranten (school leavers) eine 3D-Engine zu entwickeln,
die ihr eigenes Action-RPG antreiben sollte.
Inzwischen war es an der Zeit, sich für eine Universität zu entscheiden.
Natürlich hatten sich beide für das Informatikstudium entschieden.
Ulf blieb in Bremerhaven, wohingegen Dieter an
die Universität in Oldenburg ging. Während die beiden Studenten
ihr Wissen über die Theorie sowie ihre Entwicklerfähigkeiten verbesserten,
konnten sie in aller Ruhe in ihrer Freizeit an
ihrem Projekt arbeiten.
Ihre in Pascal und Assembler geschriebene Engine
tauften sie “Space & Time”.
Sie lief unter DOS.
Sie teilten die Aufgabengebiete schon bald untereinander auf:
Ulf arbeitete am Interface und der NPC-Programmierung,
während Dieter an allem was mit der Engine zu tun hatte arbeitete, also
Rendern, Sound-Unterstützung
und einem Level-Editor. Die Technik der zeitgemäßen Engine
ähnelte der Engine von Ultima bzw. Tom Raider.
Die Levels bestanden aus einem zweidimensionalen Gitter
mit quadratischen Feldern. Später stieß Bert Speckels,
ein Schulfreund von Dieter, zum Team
und kümmerte sich um Level-Design und
das Schreiben der Story. In dieser Zeit wurde das Konzept des Spiels,
welches auf der "Space & Time"-Engin aufbauen sollte, entwickelt.
Ihr Action-RPG sollte zwar düster,
rauh und für Erwachsene sein, aber dennoch packend sein und den
Spieler leicht eintauchen lassen. Es sollte in First-Person Ansicht
ohne unnötige Interfac-Elemente,
in einer mittelalterlichen Fantasiewelt,
voller glaubwürdiger NPCs geboten werden.
Die Studenten arbeiteten zwar an ihrem eigenen Spiel,
nahmen sich aber dennoch die Zeit Inspiration beim spielen
anderer Titel zu holen. 1995 stolperte Dieter
über ein RPG namens "Albion".
In his opinion, its colorful world, fancy, anthropomorphic
animals encountered at every step and
fancy turn-based combat system,
were attributes of the game that he
did not want to create. His
production had to be the completely opposed to Albion.
The work went surprisingly well to such an extent
that the first demo came to existence. The gentlemen got along
well and had decided to finally
name their team. They saw themselves as pioneers,
because in neighbourhood there weren’t any other game development studios.
“Mad Scientists”, because that’s what they called their little studio,
referred to the pop cultural stereotype and fact that
they were all computer scientists, who wanted to do something unconventional.
The demo was named Finster, which in German
means “dark”. Although they managed to come that far without any experienced
graphic designers, Mad Scientists understood that
without any help there's no chance to finish Finster.
And even if they did, without
capital and connections it would be very hard for them to find a publisher.
They had made the only right decision
to send out demos to the most popular
developers in Germany. Among the developers’ offers,
the biggest were Attic Entertainment Software,
creators of the Realms of Arkania
series, Sunflowers Interactive Entertainment Software,
publisher of the Anno series and
Greenwood Entertainment - the authors of
several popular tycoons. After considering all the proposals,
three students had decided to choose the
last company located in Bochum, Germany.
Greenwood Entertainment had no plans to create an
RPG game at that time, but they responded very
enthusiastically after familiarizing with Finster.
In August 1996, Mad Scientist signed an agreement with Greenwood
to create a computer game based on the engine,
gameplay, and design that three young Germans had created so far.
Scientists were supposed to be in charge of programming, and
Greenwood handled the rest, including publishing
of the title. It was year 1997, the engine based on a
five-year technology was no longer sufficient
for its own creators. As freshly qualified
engineers, they gained more time to work and
decided to replace the old engine with a new one,
programmed in C++, 32-bit,
without tiles limitation.
The new engine was called zEngine because of two
trivial reasons - firstly, according to the programmers'
draft convention, all related
files’ names began with the letter “z”,
and secondly, they wanted to overstep
Bethesda Softworks’ XnGine starting
with the letter “x”. Over time, the size
of the letters in the name had changed, there was no “zed”
Engine, was Zengine. When Greenwood Entertainment
finished up work on D.O.G. Fight for Your Life,
a crazy three-dimensional racing game, and were slowly
finishing Metalizer, their new strategy, they were finally
able to send some of their people
to help with Finster. Graphic designers Alex Brüggemann, who worked
in Greenwood longest of all, Michael Hoge and Tom Putzki,
as well as screenwriter - Stefan Nyul,
joined the project. It was Stefan who,
inspired by John Carpenter’s "Escape from New York",
suggested that game’s action should take place in a
cut off prison, thus solving
the world limitation problem. The works
were progressing rapidly, and the project evolved
month after month. Seeing how well
Tomb Raider was received, Mad Scientists had decided
to abandon the first-person perspective for
the camera from behind the hero and borrow the
control scheme from Lara Croft. Niestety o wiele
Unfortunately, a lot worse than Finster prospered Greenwood Entertainment.
In the summer of 1997, due to financial
problems, the studio had begun to break up into smaller companies.
As a result of these breakups
a translation agency, Effective Media had come into being.
Greenwood’s Finster team got a carte blanche
when it came to creating their own studio.
Already in August, they took over the contract signed a year
earlier by Mad Scientists and Greenwood,
and from the 12th of October 1997,
they officially represented the new company - Piranha Bytes.
For Mad Scientists, nothing had changed
- they decided to keep their
independence, and not participate in setting
up the new business. This is how the team working on
Finster looked like around the creation of Piranha
Bytes: 4 men from Greenwood, three Mad Scientists
and 3 new employees. 10 people.
In February 1998, Bert Speckels came up with the idea
to change the game’s name to Gothic.
It was inspired by “Gothic” as pop cultural and musical genre.
It matched the dark atmosphere and sounded
enough internationally to be accepted.
The time has come for precising the design
of the world, previously invented by Stefan Nyul.
This honor fell to Mike Hoge. He sat down to the
drawing board and started creating a map.
In the middle he drew a circle, which soon turned into
the outer ring of the castle. In the east,
on swampy ground a village on stilts was
quickly established. Mike hadn’t wondered how to
even justify these locations in plot, he primarily cared on
the variety of architecture in the game.
But something was missing, something told him that he should
design three human settlements, to get
the perfect balance. And so it happened, in the
west he created something that eventually developed into the New Camp.
Without much hesitation, finally,
ike also painted a demon tower in the southeast,
because it looked cool and reminded him of
Saruman’s Tower from Lord of the Rings. But what would an
RPG be without dungeons? It could not run out of dark
undergrounds to explore. The idea of a mine came
quickly because if prisoners were supposed to be
in the penal colony, they must have something to do.
Additionaly some caves inhabited by an
underground civilization. Something like Morloks
from the Time Machine movie. They should threaten diggers,
and from time to time also come out to the surface.
That's how Orcs have been created. But Mike still aspired to have
possibly the biggest variety. He thought that usual
caves are boring, he needed something more
ambitious. He came up with the idea of underground
architecture, like a tomb. And that was an ideal opportunity
to implement the undead opponents. That way,
together with the development of the world concept, script
of Gothic was born. Because if there is an underground
tomb, you cannot just accept the fact that
it was there accidentally. It must have been
destined. Why would you have to fight the
undead? Probably because they protect something important, a temple.
Whose? Orc, of course, now it makes
sense. Underground population worshipping the underground god.
But whom, exactly? Certainly not a dragon,
it’s too well-worn, we need something scarier, uglier,
bony, out of this world. But
why would such a big creature just sit under the
ground rather than wreak havoc? Well, because it's sleeping.
It was something that they could work with, just needed
to create a hero. From the very beginning,
developers knew that protagonist would be a person chosen by them,
did not want to give players the ability to create their own character.
They had also decided that
they didn’t want to follow the footsteps of the movie
that inspired the creation of the world
and didn't make the protagonist a
trained killer such as Plissken. They put on a skinny guy with
a low voice, with unknown past.
It was enough to add a story in the
style of "from zero to hero". Years of
human prosperity end when
Orcs invade their lands. Army of King Rhobar II
needs the most resistant weapons in the kingdom,
and the major sources of suitable material
- the magic ore - are located in the Valley
of Mines on a small island Khorinis.
This is the place where prisoners from all over
the kingdom work in mining of ore for the army.
In the face of war, the King makes a difficult
decision about setting up a magic barrier in
the small area around the mine, so the prisoners had no chance to escape.
Twelve magicians are meeting to begin a
difficult ritual. But a Demon living underground,
Orc god, disrupts the structure
of spell increasing the area of effect, thus trapping
sorcerers inside of it. As a result of the
disruption, prisoners rebel and take control
underneath the barrier. The King is forced to begin negotiations
with the self-proclaimed magnates
of the colony, because he needs the magic ore.
He exchanges goods from the outside world for a steady supply of
the ore. In the only camp under the barrier,
the strongest prisoners wallow in luxury, while
the weakest need to work hard for them. With time,
some of them, including half of magicians,
have enough of this situation, so with their followers
they go west, where they build a dam,
establish a rice plantation, as well as open their own,
smaller mine. They have no intent to give away
the ore to the King. In hope its accumulated
magical energy will in the future help
get rid of the barrier surrounding them, they are collecting
it in a mound. That is how the New Camp is created.
Shortly thereafter, one of the prisoners in the Old Camp,
Y'Berion, as a result of the vision received
from an unknown deity - The Sleeper - sets out
with those who share his religious aspirations to the swamp
in the east. In the slope of the mountain,
they find a temple and around it they build a camp on stilts.
They do not realize that they are worshipping a demon,
and doping swamp weed they don’t reach the state
in which they can talk to their god,
but simply weaken their minds,
making themselves more vulnerable to the filthy creature’s magic.
To maintain economic stability, the Brotherhood
sells excess drugs to the rest of the settlements.
So now, the history of our protagonist begins,
a man convicted for unknown crime, sent for a lifelong slaving in the mines.
But before being thrown down, he receives a letter from grand master
of fire wizards on the island Khorinis, which has
to be delivered to the counterpart wizard under the barrier.
Players’ task will be to join one of the three camps,
fulfill the mission, and then set off
for another, more dangerous quest
- to beat the Sleeper. The works on the script,
world design and technology kept going.
When developers saw an interesting gameplay
element in another game,
they had been trying to implement it in their creation.
For example, they had wanted to borrow stealth elements
from the first Thief. But enthusiasm was not
always enough to finish such features.
Except from the usual sneaking, Gothic at one point
had something more to offer for stealth fan,
the evidence of that we can find in the Old Camp.
There’s a barrel standing at the entrance where you can clumsily hide.
1999 was quite important year for the studio.
Because the money ended up, the four founders of
Piranha Bytes were wondering how to obtain necessary amount
for the further development of Gothic. The connections of
the Piranhas came forward. From Greenwood,
they knew Michael Bohne from the advertising agency
Art Department, who was one of the creators of
the chicken Moorhuhn, and casual games pioneer.
Michael had money, Piranhas - company and a promising
game. So they set up a new company
- phenomedia AG and then sold the
Piranha Bytes studio for 50,000 German mark (about 30 000 USD).
In November of the same year, new company
entered the local stock exchange.
Thus the money for further production of
Gothic had been found. Piranhas paid the price of independence,
because now the whole company was controlled
by the parent partnership. The winning streak kept going.
In March Piranha Bytes managed an agreement with
Egmont Interactive and dtp entertainment, which had created
a new special label - Shoebox -
that became publisher of Gothic in Europe.
At around this time a longtime friend of the studio
founders, Björn Pankranz joined the crew.
He was only a graphic designer, but his great
role in Piranha Bytes had yet to come.
The first realase date of Gothic was announced for
the first quarter of 1999. Then, it was moved
to the midyear, when indeed the game
appeared at E3 with the trailer,
and finally, it was moved to
the end of 1999. In the end, Gothic was far from
finished at the verge of the centuries.
However, this did not prevent the team to make plans
for the future. Editor of the German
Game Zone magazine visited the studio in December,
and in the report of Gothic’s works he
mentioned a mysterious game characterized by advanced
graphics and a completely destructive environment,
in which with a little self-denial
it was possible to dig even to the very core of
the planet. In its report for 1999 Phenomedia AG
also announced that after finishing Gothic,
all of the works will be focused on
the project called Zerberus. The takeover and not meeting the deadlines
did not influence the team’s spirits.
The project was huge and the inexperienced
developer couldn’t have known how long it
would take to complete it. The seeming delay was not
a result of problems but too great optimism.
The work continued ceaselessly. It was obvious that more
employees were needed in order to make progress on
the project. A more financially stable company
could afford to hire more staff,
some of which was delegated to deal with the
development of the game engine, others to improve
the camera, artificial intelligence, and…
start works on the multiplayer mode. At the best of times
the team consisted of 40 people, including freelancers. Let’s stop and focus for a
minute on the multiplayer aspect of the game.
Gothic was meant to not only support LAN network
play but also allow a cooperative
playthrough of the entire game
to five people at the same time. The multiplayer mode of
Gothic is described by the following publisher’s
press release from the 7th of July 1999.
The multiplayer mode,
even though the network code performed well during tests,
was very difficult to anchor in the game. The creators
wanted to make an RPG based strongly on the story
and having to make it work for five people at the
same time was very limiting. The multiplayer was eventually
ditched a year later, in June 2000,
nine months before the game’s release. On the contrary,
the development of other features was in full swing.
System walki z imponującymi efektami
The combat system with impressive magic effects, physics and AI were
being slowly improved. The animations were partially
based on the data from mocap sessions with
professional fencers. The outside world was also
taking shape, gradually starting to resemble the one
that we all know from the final game. A special, uncommon in RPG games
of the time learning system was created for Gothic.
After a level up, instead of manually increasing
statistics in a menu, players had to actually find
an NPC teacher in the game, convince him to teach them
and then spend the learning points. The creators
paid attention to realism as much as they could.
Another feature worth mentioning is the original mechanism
of taking actions. To do something, two buttons have
to be pressed - control and one of the arrows.
The idea is simple and intuitive, it works
especially well in battle, where each directional key
determines the direction of the attack. A few weeks before
the game’s release it was decided that ranged
combat would be based on auto-aim and
the range of fire completely dependent on the hero’s
skills. Therefore the game rewarded exploring,
as a player with a bow shooting from a
hard-to-reach ledge was virtually untouchable.
Even though the steering seemed great to
its authors, a reality check proved them wrong,
labeling Gothic “that game with bad controls”.
Its review scores were saved
at the last minute by Dieter Hildebrandt who,
seeing complaints about the lack of mouse support
in the previews, implemented simple mouse controls
not long before the release.
A talented yet inexperienced, very passionate
about the Medieval period musician Kai Rosenkranz
was invited to compose the game’s soundtrack.
He created a very solid set of tracks and stayed
in the company, sporadically taking the role of
a graphic designer or taking care of the PR.
The works kept going, January of 2000 had passed,
a new release date was set to the summer of 2000,
though this deadline was not met either.
It was postponed to six months later - the holiday
season of 2000 seemed perfect for a release of a game
like Gothic. But the Piranha Bytes still
weren’t satisfied with their work,
they still saw many flaws and bugs.
In addition to that, the sidequests in the second half
of the game were not ready yet.
Taking everything into consideration,
they decided there was no point dragging it out,
as it would only worsen the situation,
and they set the final German release date
of Gothic to the 15th of March 2001. On the 19th of February 2001, at 4:00 AM,
the team completed Gothic and delivered the gold master.
Only an estimated ⅓ of the originally planned scope
had actually been implemented.
Among the cut content are features like
the multiplayer mode, in-game cutscenes,
destroying objects, throwing objects,
realistic physics, special monster AI features
such as the Troll-Gobbo-toss or
zombie decapitation and more dungeon levels.
As it turned out, when the pieces that actually made it
into the final build came together to form the game,
they were very playable. That is how a hobby project
of two high school students turned into a game that
made a mark in European gamers’ minds.
Even though the technology, personnel and the project’s character
changed drastically since those carefree days,
the essence of the game that Dieter, Ulf and Bert
wanted to create from the beginning stayed in Gothic.
Gothic was released on the 15th of March 2001
in German-speaking countries and 6 months later,
thanks to Xicat Interactive, in the North America.
The Piranhas strongly believed in crossmarketing.
They had tried to get attention wherever they could.
Egmont, the game’s co-publisher, is a famous for publishing comic books
so the creation of a Gothic tie-in comic was
just a formality.
It tells the story of the hero’s four friends
- Diego, Lester, Gorn and Milten
in the times before Gothic’s main plot.
It came out in the summer of 2000
and was an introduction to the series.
A popular German band In Extremo was invited to collaboration
and on their single, titled “This Corrosion”, a bunch of game
info, screenshots and a video could
be found. In exchange, during the second chapter
of the game (however, due to licensing, only in its German version)
players can attend the band’s concert and listen
to an acoustic version of the song “Herr Mannelig”
- the NPCs on the scene
actually look like the band members.
Film was also there.
On the German Gothic CD the official trailer for the
movie “The 13th Warrior” starring Antonio Banderas
could be found. In the game’s box there was a
flyer advertising the film and the film’s DVD
featured a trailer for Gothic. The game gathered decent scores from
the reviewers. It was critically acclaimed for the interesting
world and fact that every playthrough looked a bit different
because the players had a choice of three different fractions.
Poland had to wait for Gothic’s release until
the 28th of March 2002,
but it was worth it.
The Polish translation to this day is considered
a perfect example of a video game localisation,
even though the number of voice actors wasn’t that great
and some of the main characters were played
by the same people.
The selling point of the dubbing is mister
Jacek Mikołajczak, the voice of the protagonist.
His low vocal tone is to this day mainly associated
with this role. In addition, Gothic was translated
to Korean, Cantonese, Italian, French,
Greek, Portugal and Russian.
After Gothic, each of the Mad Scientists,
its fathers, decidedly and deliberately did not stay
in the games business.
They were satisfied with their child, they felt
that developing more games would just mean repetition.
They experienced something amazing, created a game
that sold hundreds of thousands copies that
is to this day loved by its many fans.
The Mad Scientists wanted to complete their studies
in order to secure future career options.
Today, each of them does something completely
different.
Dieter Hildebrandt researches 3D geovisualization,
while Bert Speckels and Ulf Wohlers
work as IT engineers. From the three,
only Ulf made a further mark in the video game history
as the co-author of the famous DosBox and later,
working on Emergency 3.
Even though the Mad Scientists came to an end,
it was just the beginning of the more and more popular franchise.
You will learn what events lead
to the creation of Gothic 2
in the next episode of Gothic …in a nutshell!
Hi, I'm the author of the video. Excuse the English, I feel more comfortable using it
Vielen Dank for both the news and the kind response I'm glad you liked it.
Kalten666 did a great job exporting the subtitles. If it helps, here is a link to the plain text version. It is possible that we will create a dubbed version of the video in the future but for now, the subtitles will have to suffice.
I will monitor this thread and see if someone manages to translate the whole thing. I would do it myself, but as I said, my German is not that great.
If you have any questions about the series - feel free to ask in any language you wish, I will do my best to understand the questions and answer them.
Stay tuned for the second part of the Gothic in a nutshell video series
Saugute Auswahl an Mitschnitten aus alten Spieleklassikern!
Und man kann mal wieder sehr gut nachvollziehen, wie sich bei Gothic das genial einfache Storykonzept schrittweise aus dem grundlegenden Gamedesign ergeben hat, und wie sich dieser Ansatz beispielsweise von der Risen-Story(bei allem Respekt für das erste Risen) unterscheidet.
Echt gutes Stück Arbeit!
Zitat von ARHNJohnny
If you have any questions about the series - feel free to ask in any language you wish, I will do my best to understand the questions and answer them.
Stay tuned for the second part of the Gothic in a nutshell video series
Mit freundlichen Grüßen,
Johnny
You know shit is about to get real when a video about Gothic starts off with an Ultima Underworld montage.
What a great, interesting, comprehensive piece. Much respect!
I'm curious, did you talk to Mike Hoge as well, on how the concept for the setting and the basic game design was created?
At some point, he mentioned that he personally was inspired by Ultima 7, and while you can easily see how the interactive game world etc in U7 might have influenced Gothic, I somehow always felt Gothic is so much closer to the Underworlds, gameplay-wise and in spirit...
No, Cethiu, I didn't reach out to Mike Hoge for the first part. I felt the interviews with Piranhas from back in the day were sufficient.
But now that I have a video with 200 000 views, I hope someone from PB might get interested so I will try to contact them soon. I've already gotten some info from a few guys from JoWood, just to see their view on the cooperation. Gothic 2 is much more difficult to describe because the team was so small and it was created in just 11 months. But I will do my best
If you have any suggestions, shoot. Even though I did a lot of research, I can't possibly know everything
Sieht so aus, als war Gothic zufällig gut, mehr Glück als Verstand. Das würde jedenfalls erklären, warum die neueren Spiele nicht so gut sind wie Gothic damals war.
Ohne das Video gesehen zu haben (hole ich nach der Arbeit nach), möchte ich doch nicht auf eine Spitzfindigkeit verzichten:
Sollte es angesichts der geschilderten Prämisse statt "in a nutshell" nicht viel eher "from the egg" heißen?
Tolles Video!
Es kribbelt mich zwar extrem in den Fingern, bei der Übersetzung der Untertitel zu helfen (ich musste bestimmt 100 Mal zurückspulen, weil ich teilweise mehr auf die Formulierungen als auf den Inhalt geachtet habe), aber, natürlich: Keine Zeit.
Es war einmal...
Das Video ist super klasse gemacht!
Man versteht es auch ohne Untertitel, wenn man etwas genauer zuschaut.
Der Anfang erinnert irgendwie an C64- also vor vielen, vielen Jahren und dann wurde daraus G1- einfach genial.
Ich hab jetzt auch endlich mal die Zeit gefunden, mir das Video anzusehen und finde es großartig.
Super dass sich jemand die Zeit nimmt, soviele Hintergrundinformationen zusammenzutragen bzw. preiszugeben.
Ich bin schon auf den zweiten Teil gespannt.
Spitze Video! Grüße an die polnischen Kollegen. Czesc Kolegas
Warte schon sehnsüchtig auf den zweiten Teil.
Die ganz frühen Aufnahmen der Zengine kannte ich noch nicht. Witzig, dass die "Hochziehen"-Animation gleich geblieben ist haha. Auch interessant, dass sie trotz vieler offenen Tasks und finanziellen Problemen ein Motion Captering durchgeführt haben lassen. Da merkt man einfach, wie verliebt sie in das Projekt waren. Quality war wichtiger als ein überfrühter Release. Das ist heute so gut wie nicht mehr der Fall in der Branche.
Wenn man das ganze so betrachtet hatten wir echt Glück mit dem entgültigen Ergebnis von Gothic 1. Muss drunter und drüber gegangen sein im Bochumer Entwicklungsstudio. Schlussendlich haben sie Geschichte geschrieben mit einem Spiel, dass bei weitem nicht die Beachtung bekam, die es verdient hätte (Stichwort Morrorwind).