From Dust
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There's no doubt From Dust lifts a ton of inspiration from Peter Molyneux's classics Populous and Magic Carpet. There's also no doubt that From Dust is one of the most impressive games I've seen at Gamescom. Regardless of its inspiration, a game where you have the power to terraform an entire world with an impressively simple userface and with incredibly realistic physics engine is right up my alley – I'll probably just skip all the missions and spend all my time in the game just creating awesome land formations and river networks.
From Dust was introduced at the Electronic Entertainment Expo as Project Dust, but at Gamescom it's gotten a new, final name. The game – an Xbox Live Arcade and PSN title as well as a downloadable design on PC – is a "? " game where you're given the power to transform the land and sea, transplanting life – plants, animals, and intelligent humanoids – across the landforms you create.
The game was shown in early form behind closed doors in Ubisoft's booth -- it has a full mission progression, but the demo at the show was focused more on the tech behind From Dust. Eric Chahi, the man best known for the platform puzzle game Out of This World, is the creative director on From Dust and the one driving the Gamescom demo.
Using an incredibly simple point and click interface, the player can grab a handful of whatever from one location in the world and transport it to another place. That means you can scoop up a fistful of dirt and drop the entire mound of earth right into the middle of the ocean to create an island, or plop it down on a plain and raise a mountain. Just as you can transport dirt, you can do the same for water: grab a sphere of water from the sea and drop it down into a basin to create a lake.
The different types of landmass have different behaviors: grab some lava oozing up from the ground and you can cool it off into hard rock by dropping it into water. Dig the land around the ocean coast and you can see the liquid physics in action as the water cascades in through the trench you create. If you scoop up some dirt with foliage in it, spreading around that earth in other parts of the world will transport the plants and trees. It's also how you'll scatter animals and villagers across your world.
What's more, this is a full simulation, so water will steadily erode the land as it rushes through the rivers and laps at the coast. The game runs on an artificially accelerated clock so you can watch the world change simply by the water rushing around, the lava oozing over the land formations, and the plantlife growing across the world simply through the game's life algorithms.
I did get a chance to see one mission in action: a tsunami is headed towards one of your villages, and you have to protect a tribe member as he runs across the land to acquire the power of water by touching an idol up in the mountains. You'll have to make sure he has safe passage by raising land to create land bridges across rivers, and make sure he doesn't fall off high cliffs and plunge to his death. After delivering this newfound power to his villagers, the tsunami arrives in all its destructive force…but the villagers stand strong at the coastline and hold back the water. The wave is diverted around the the village, really showing off the fluid dynamics of From Dust's physics engine.
Currently From Dust is a single player experience, but the developers expressed an interest in adding multiplayer features post-release. The game is scheduled for release in early 2011.
http://ps3.ign.com/articles/111/1114518p1.html
From Dust was introduced at the Electronic Entertainment Expo as Project Dust, but at Gamescom it's gotten a new, final name. The game – an Xbox Live Arcade and PSN title as well as a downloadable design on PC – is a "? " game where you're given the power to transform the land and sea, transplanting life – plants, animals, and intelligent humanoids – across the landforms you create.
The game was shown in early form behind closed doors in Ubisoft's booth -- it has a full mission progression, but the demo at the show was focused more on the tech behind From Dust. Eric Chahi, the man best known for the platform puzzle game Out of This World, is the creative director on From Dust and the one driving the Gamescom demo.
Using an incredibly simple point and click interface, the player can grab a handful of whatever from one location in the world and transport it to another place. That means you can scoop up a fistful of dirt and drop the entire mound of earth right into the middle of the ocean to create an island, or plop it down on a plain and raise a mountain. Just as you can transport dirt, you can do the same for water: grab a sphere of water from the sea and drop it down into a basin to create a lake.
The different types of landmass have different behaviors: grab some lava oozing up from the ground and you can cool it off into hard rock by dropping it into water. Dig the land around the ocean coast and you can see the liquid physics in action as the water cascades in through the trench you create. If you scoop up some dirt with foliage in it, spreading around that earth in other parts of the world will transport the plants and trees. It's also how you'll scatter animals and villagers across your world.
What's more, this is a full simulation, so water will steadily erode the land as it rushes through the rivers and laps at the coast. The game runs on an artificially accelerated clock so you can watch the world change simply by the water rushing around, the lava oozing over the land formations, and the plantlife growing across the world simply through the game's life algorithms.
I did get a chance to see one mission in action: a tsunami is headed towards one of your villages, and you have to protect a tribe member as he runs across the land to acquire the power of water by touching an idol up in the mountains. You'll have to make sure he has safe passage by raising land to create land bridges across rivers, and make sure he doesn't fall off high cliffs and plunge to his death. After delivering this newfound power to his villagers, the tsunami arrives in all its destructive force…but the villagers stand strong at the coastline and hold back the water. The wave is diverted around the the village, really showing off the fluid dynamics of From Dust's physics engine.
Currently From Dust is a single player experience, but the developers expressed an interest in adding multiplayer features post-release. The game is scheduled for release in early 2011.
http://ps3.ign.com/articles/111/1114518p1.html