Following the culmination of Nick Ebenhoch's Art Direction Dev Diary series, we now have Black Prophecy's Technical Director Cyrus Preuss to kick off the next Dev Diary series, which, of course, is focused on the technical aspects of the game.
)
The series' debut entry shines some light on the game physics of Black Prophecy:
Hi, my name is Cyrus Preuss and I am the Technical Director at Reakktor Media. Before taking that position, I was responsible for the integration of game physics into the game engine. Basically I am still responsible for this area as physics programmer although the main part of the work is already done.
In my developer diary I would like to outline the „mechanical side” of our game and give you a rough overview about how the single areas work hand in hand in order to create a whole picture. Some of the used terms will sound very technical but I will try to explain them as best as possible.
But one thing at a time. Where does everything begin?
Game Physics
A well known game producer once said “Hey, what’s so difficult at integrating physics into a game? It’s completely easy. For example: I clap my hands – collision – and it works…”. As far as I know he raised some uncomprehending and puzzled glances from the present programmers. If it would be that easy then some programmers would be redundant. Actually physics do work very simple at the first glance, but to deduce how easy or difficult it is to integrate physics into a game from that is of course simply wrong.
Read the full Dev Diary here.
