EliteGroup's Kasparov
(How TAD got flamed.)
Introduction
Some of us are pacing up and down the room like expectant fathers waiting for the safe delivery of the 19th addition to the Hugi family. The release date of Hugi #19 is getting ever so close that I can almost hear the sound of Adok's eyelids falling against the spacebar as he continues to tap like a demented woodpecker at Rave party. So I hope this short article will reach 'Mr. Ed' in time for Hugi 19.
After hearing lots of hype about the EliteGroup and the much praised Kasparov demo (not to mention gaining access to very cheap Net access) I decided to finally check out this multi-mega production. Here are my first impressions...
Hardware?
Like many of today's productions this demo requires hardware acceleration. In my case I recently bought a nice TNT2 32mb video card with the rather nice OpenGL happily chugging away behind the scenes (pun intended), with 64Mb of ram and a Pentium II 350Mhz connected to it.
Elite Engine?
Yes, I can honestly say that the engine was smooth, not silky smooth in a number of places, but very smooth. This could be due to my lousy sound hardware (just an old ISA SoundBlaster 16). The opening sequence was nicely done although some more colours or variation in the text/font would have been nicer IMHO. After watching two Sunflower productions the slight lack of diversity became more obvious, but to give credit to the EliteGroup the Kasparov demo's graphics (textures/objects) are as good as any commerical production. The closest style I can think of is Valve software's game: Half-Life.
The camera sweeps, turns and twists through the connected scenes smoothly in a 'drunken wasp' manner. The landscape (consisting of a train, railway track, factory/industrial structures and mountains) are well designed with a high level of detail and accuracy in both scale and texture-ing. My only criticism is the repetitive way in which the different camera path sequences are used. You often see exactly the same tracking movement repeated five or six times, used on different scenes. It would have been better to mix up these paths more throughout the entire demo. It was like a playground slide. You climb up, slid down, climb up, slid down, climb up over and over again instead of switching between the swings, roundabouts and slides. I could guess that the sequencing has some kinda repeat count next to each camera path.
Bugs, bugs and Elitebugs
One of the nice parts was the rather large collection of bugs crawlling over the landscape. It looked like some kinda benchmarking program, you know, drawing a sh*t load of polys and then examining the frame rate results. One of the most impressive facts about this part was the constant frame-rate which didn't seem to change. Nice! After a few moments of watching these creepy-crawlly things I wanted to grab some Napalm or Agent-Orange or something.. ;)
Hitchcock lives...
Towards the end of the demo was the famous Hitchcock camera travel + zoom effect, the one where the scene appears to stretch or contract along the Z axis. It was a pity that the other camera effects weren't intermixed more with this and the other visual effects. On the whole I was a little disappointed with the demo in terms of dynamic effects or variety in terms of camera angles. It was a great demonstration of a fast, solid engine, but it failed to give the 'Wow' factor. Later I watched two Sunflower demos (one in DOS with NO hardware-accel) and both gave more reasons to watch the demo again. No only was there more of the spectrum on screen, but more things moved (not just the camera).
My ears are bleeding...
IMVHO, the music was the poorest part of the demo, or perhaps it was just 'not my cuppa tea'. I apologize if the following sounds harsh, but I hope the EliteGroup will take this as feedback rather than an insult. The music track in many places seemed to be a copy of the repetitive camera path sequences. Some more diversity in both instruments and composition/style would have been more pleasing. Remember the classic Future Crew's 2nd-reality? the way the feeling of the demo shifted throughout the entire demo? Well half way through Kasparov I turned the sound way, way down (not what you expect from an 'elite-group' is it?). The 'Please the cookie thing' by Aardbei music was far better and that was a 64Kb demo!! And in some ways the visuals were more entertaining too. Sorry, but the music was a little sparse. I've heard some other music from EliteGroup so I know they can produce good quality sound.
For example, a single spider/bug could have crawlled out of the train tunnel, stopped, looked around while the music faded/slowed down. Then, BLAM! the camera pans up the see the vast army of bugs climbing over the hills or through the train tunnel. Of course the music could suddenly pick up in a more dramatic style to embellish the 4-d element of the demo.
Conclusion
Humble pie? Well, I hope this is a fair assessment of the EliteGroup's Kasparov demo. No doubt others will disagree and want to place a horse's head in my bed, or to arrange a visit by the 'boys from Brazil'... but if some group promotes themselves with "We are very good" then they should really be ill33t or something...
The future looks bright, especially with their nice, fast engine, I wish them, Sunflower, Aardbei and the rest of the scene lots of luck in all their current/future productions...
Look to the sky,
keep your feet on the ground,
and don't step on the little people ;)