Lucas Arts is back, and just in time for the next generation video game war. Back in the hay day the 1990s Lucas Arts had its sheer of IPs with great technology. But as time past Lucas Arts decided to stick with their aging IPs. But a new light has began to shine, and with the sheer brightest of that light comes new and amazing technology.
One of those games that will be shining its light bright is STAR WARs: The Force Unleashed. And with this new IP comes a waterfall of technology that will be changing the way we play games from this point on.
Star Wars: The Force Unleashed
The Star Wars saga will continue in Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, a video game developed by LucasArts, which casts players as Darth Vader's "Secret Apprentice" and promises to unveil new revelations about the Star Wars galaxy. The expansive story, created under direction from George Lucas, is set during the largely unexplored era between Star Wars: Episode III Revenge of the Sith and Star Wars: Episode IV A New Hope. In it, players will assist the iconic villain in his quest to rid the universe of Jedi - and face decisions that could change the course of their destiny.
As its name implies, The Force Unleashed completely re-imagines the scope and scale of the Force by taking full advantage of newly developed technologies that will be seen and experienced for the first time: Digital Molecular Matter (DMM), by Pixelux Entertainment, and euphoria by NaturalMotion Ltd. Paired with the powerful Havok Physics™ system, these new technologies create gameplay only possible on the new generation of consoles. DMM incorporates the physical properties of anything in the environment so that everything reacts exactly like it should - wood breaks like wood, glass shatters like glass, plants on the planet Felucia bend like plants on the planet Felucia would, and more. Meanwhile, as a revolutionary behavioral-simulation engine, euphoria enables interactive characters to move, act and even think like actual human beings, adapting their behavior on the fly and resulting in a different payoff every single time.
Features
-During the period between Episodes III and IV, players hunt Jedi in the role of Darth Vader's Secret Apprentice.
-Unleash and upgrade the Secret Apprentice's four core Force powers
- Force push, grip, repulse and lightning - throughout the course of the game, and combine them for ultra-destructive, never-before-seen combos.
-Examples of unleashing the Force in ways never thought possible:
-The Secret Apprentice won't just Force push enemies into walls - he'll Force push enemies through walls.
-The Secret Apprentice won't just Force grip foes to throw them aside - he'll Force grip them in midair, zap them with lightning, then drop them to the ground to explode like a bomb.
-In addition to new adversaries created just for the game, such as fugitive Jedi and Force-sensitive Felucians, players will also confront and associate with familiar faces from the Star Wars films, including Darth Vader.
-Visit locations such as Episode III's Wookiee homeworld Kashyyyk and the floral Felucia, the junk planet Raxus Prime, plus an Imperial TIE fighter construction facility.
-Decisions made by players throughout the game will determine the path of the story, including multiple endings that will rock Star Wars continuity as they know it.
-The Force Unleashed is LucasArts' first internally developed title for next-generation consoles, and it represents the first in-game collaboration of talents and technology between LucasArts and Industrial Light & Magic, two companies now finally under one roof at the new Letterman Digital Arts Center in San Francisco's Presidio district.
-The Force Unleashed debuts Digital Molecular Matter from Pixelux and euphoria behavioral simulation from NaturalMotion Ltd.
-LucasArts is preparing an unprecedented promotional effort around the launch of The Force Unleashed, encompassing a full line of toys and game-based action figures from Hasbro, as well as a full publishing program from Dark Horse, Del Rey and Palace Press.
Now lets get to the meat and potatoes, the two most interesting things that will make this game absolutely amazing is the Digital Molecular Matter from Pixelux and the Euphria Behavioral simulation from NaturalMotion.
Digital Molecular Matter from Pixelux:
Digital Molecular Matter (DMM), automatically generates art assets for a broad range of animation sequences: objects breaking, objects bending, flesh moving, cloth and rope motion, etc. Using DMM does not force artists to change their tools. The output of tools such as Maya and LightWave can be imported and converted to DMM objects. Instead of using a surface description of a video game objects, DMM uses a volumetric representation. A surface mesh is extracted from the volumetric representation at the desired level of detail for display. True 3D procedural textures can be used to add detail for display and as part of the material strength evaluation process. Data structures are also extracted to make collision detection and contact evaluation very fast. Even special effects sounds are synthesized automatically from fracture, contact, and collisions of DMM objects
Real-Time
The CPU, vector units and GPU are all used to accelerate the DMM extractions, texture processing, and simulation. DMM technology has been designed to take advantage of the latest advances in computing technology, including multiprocessing and physics acceleration hardware. Our goal is to make this technology real-time for the sake of both interactivity as well as in-game use.
Destructibility
Digital Molecular Matter technology can handle more than just realistic motion. DMM can simulate the fracture of objects. The physical stress throughout objects is calculated and is used along with the strength of its materials to decide when and how objects will break. Complete fracture is simulated including the creation of separate pieces, which become additional bodies in the environment.
Flexible Bodies
DMM can also handle much more than rigid bodies; it can simulate the action of flexible bodies as well. DMM objects can bend, like a metal pole bending or a branch of a tree. The movement of flesh of people and animals can also be simulated. This allows an animation sequence to be applied to a rigid body skeleton and then have DMM flesh attached to the skeleton to create a video game character that moves realistically. Cloth and rope motion can also be simulated with DMM, making it possible to have a realistic sailboat simulation with wind filling the sails realistically.
Automatic Level Of Detail (LOD)
Because we store a volumetric archetype format of the object, DMM objects are not limited by mesh control point limitations when attempting to decimate meshes for different levels of detail. Each LOD version is built by traversing the DMM data structure to whatever level of detail is desired. This yields a natural tessellation of the final surface mesh that is just as accurate or much so than a hand-drawn one.
Physics
While DMM is designed to be modular, we cannot ignore that there may be some environments lacking in a physics engine. To this end, we have designed our own physics engine with state-of-the-art algorithms. This engine is based in part on some of the principals utilized in our fracture system.
Hardware Shaders
Modern graphics hardware has some interesting features that are not always utilized to their best effect. One of these is the concept of a 3D shader. A 3D shader defines a volume that is shaded rather than just a surface. DMM technology can take advantage of this 3D nature by utilizing shaders in situations where objects are broken to show internal structure.
Here we see a chair. One made of marble and the other made of wood:
Here we see a chair. One made of marble and the other made of wood:
Video of what all that tech talk translates to:
Euphoria
euphoria:core is NaturalMotion's lightweight DMS engine. euphoria:core runs parallel to the game's animation engine and is called by the game's AI whenever synthesised motion is required instead of canned animation. This enables a non-disruptive integration and scalable use.
euphoria:core consist of a small kernel, AI controller modules (for adaptive behaviours) and a rigid dynamics module (for physics). euphoria is physics-engine independent and works with all commercially available engines (as well as proprietary ones).
Just watch the video it is a lot easier to understand:
Euphoria & DMM in action. Star Wars: Force Unleashed
game play.
They will be a few a games out there that will utilize Euphoria technology, such as GTAIV and 2K sports AllSports All Pro Football. Where this type of Technology will shine would be in sports where there is full contact, Football, Basketball, and even Soccer. Fighting games can be greatly enhance with the absence of canned animations. I am truly looking forward to see who picks up this technology and how it is used in future games. Lucas Arts I really do not have to worry about making poor IPs, its everyone else that scares me.
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