E3 2001: Asheron's Call 2 Engine In Action
We got an up close look at Turbine's new proprietary game engine, plus some new info on the sequel to Asheron's Call.
We visited Turbine's booth in Kentia Hall at E3 and got a close-up look at its proprietary next-generation game engine. The session itself was mainly "an engine demo using assets from Asheron's Call 2," but no matter what name might be exactly appropriate to the demo, it was thoroughly impressive.
The demo featured a rudimentary character-creation screen, followed by a lengthy adventuring session. Though none of what we saw was final, we were assured that the simplified character-creation menu we were shown was indicative of the more user-friendly interfaces and general pacing that Turbine plans to use in Asheron's Call 2. Specifically, the sequel won't immediately present an overwhelming number of character skills and options and a densely populated interface at the outset of the game, as in the original Asheron's Call. Instead, Asheron's Call 2 will feature a more logical progression of character development and skills so that new players won't have to worry about making lots of different long-term decisions on skills and character abilities before they're even familiar with them.
The demo's actual adventuring session showed the remarkable power of Turbine's engine. Every single one of the areas we were shown--a grassy plain, a riverbank, and a dense forest--was colorful and extremely detailed with high-resolution textures. What's more, each blade of grass in the demo's grassy areas was polygonal; the new engine has a special provision that lets it not only render millions of small polygonal objects in real time, but it also lets it animate them: Every single blade of grass and every leaf of each tree swayed in the wind individually. The demo also featured a far more detailed and realistic-looking sky than the original Asheron's Call, complete with procedurally animated clouds that are rendered, deformed, and moved across the sky in real-time.
As we traveled through the game's areas, we happened upon several new monsters and characters, as well as sleek, highly detailed, updated versions of familiar Asheron's Call monsters, such as drudges, phyntos wasps, shreths, and mosswarts. The reedshark monster of the original Asheron's Call was supposed to plow through thick patches of vegetation with its dorsal fin sticking up out of the grass; the new engine will finally allow for it. Both the game's monsters and characters will be animated far, far better than they were in the original game, and most will feature detailed motion-captured animation. And every single character, monster, and object in the world will be illuminated by the engine's powerful real-time lighting and shadows engine, which looks excellent on a first-generation GeForce graphics card and looks outstanding on a high-end GeForce3 card. We were also shown a complex character model tentatively known as the "Gear Knight," an imposing mechanical suit of armor studded with moving gears. The new engine already supports per-pixel shading, high-definition texture and environment mapping, as well as a complex "layered" animation system that will let the engine seamlessly combine different sorts of expressive character animation, like walking, laughing, and talking.
Turbine has otherwise released very, very little information on the upcoming sequel to Asheron's Call, but there's no doubt that the engine that will power the game will help it look fantastic.
Asheron's Call 2: Fallen Kings Quick Links
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- Microsoft Game Studios
- Turbine Inc.
- Fantasy Online...
- Release: Nov 20, 2002
- ESRB: Mature
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