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We had the possiblity to get a sneak peak at the new changes and improvements of the Gothic 4 engine at the Games Convention. First of: Gothic 4 is renamed. The new title will be "Arcania: A Gothic Tale" instead of "Gothic 4: Arcania". One of the reasons is that nearly all of the Gothic games didn't sell really good in the US. It would lead to curiosity about the 4 in the name of the game. And the few who know the predecessor because of the bad marks it got in the american press. No good premises to launch a successor and maybe this will be a chance to continue the Gothic Series with the name Arcania, if Jowood sells the rights on Gothic.

We don't deny that Arcania is still in the middle of development, so everything we got to see is Pre Alpha. Furthermore JoWood and Spellbound didn't lose a word about the story or some general informations about the game. Their focus is on developing the engine to get a Gothic-flair in the game. So Jochen Hamma from Spellbound and Michael Kairat from JoWood showed us the newest version of Arcania. Unlike to Gothic 3, JoWood is showing only stuff that is really finished and will be in the final game. This is at the moment the graphic design of the game, the weather-system and Ranged Combat Fight System. We also got a Peak at the Interface, but this one is still in development and is changing from build to build, but it is already looking very gothic-ish.

Spellbound is working - like in their earlier projects - with engines and middleware they bought. There will be no selfmade engine. But they are improving the engines they bought until Spellbound (and JoWood) are satisfied with the result. For example they bought SpeedTree, a well known engine for the trees and vegetation. But they made some new shaders to improve the look, because there is no simulation of shadows on the bark of a tree in the original SpeedTree. Another shader is making blurred reflections at edges, where the sun is shining with a reflex angle - bringing the real world effects to the mind of the player. Another impressive effect is the Stream Space Ambient Occlusion (SSAO) - developed by Crytek and modified by Spellbound - which is used to get realistic shadows below objects.

To let the player dive into the game more, they imitated some special properties of the real life visual cognition. If you enter a house or a shadow of an object, every area that is brighter, like the outside of a window or if you splay outside a house is getting a little bit brighter to simulate the natural effect of the eye getting used to the new, brighter environment. Another natural effect is having various coloured shadows at different times. For example right before the sunset the shadows are becoming more and more blue like in reality, meanwhile the colour of the sun is getting deep red. Another effort of the developers is to get realistic weather into the game. And as far as we could see, they succeeded. Fog is like you would expect it in every other game. White or grey and limiting your view. Highlight of the presentation was the rain simulation. Water is gathering at several spots building puddles. Stones and wooden buildings have a shimmering surface the more it rains in which the light from the house is retracted while lamps are getting a diffused glimmering light. Water is dropping as a runlet from the rooftops and you can search for a dry and safe place below the rooftop projection because you see your character getting more and more wet. As soon as the rain is over the surfaces are drying slowly and everything is getting as it was.

The only thing from the battle system shown to us was the Ranged combat fight with bows. The other styles like melee and magic fight are still in development so we couldn’t get a grasp of the whole battle system. In the game every contact with the enemy and every puzzle can be solved with every style you chose to play with. So you can skill a full-time mage and you don’t need to skill your archer skills because there will never be a situation that only can be mastered with a bow and vice versa. Back to the Range Combat: Aiming with the bow is using stamina. The lighter the weapon the less stamina is used. The longer you are aiming the more you start to tremble and might miss the target. You can minimize this effect by levelling up this skill or using your bow often. When you hit the target there are several “impact zones”. Depending on where you hit, the blow will have a varied intensity of impact and damage on the enemy and he will react different. Like limping or if you hit a human enemy into the head, he cannot aim right anymore (if he stands up again), but it’s harder to hit the head than it is to hit the body. And if you hit you'll see a realistic falling animation. The common Ragdoll Physic is used so you’ll see where you hit the target.

If Arcania: A Gothic Tale will be a good game – we don’t know – because a role play game is depending on the story, the dungeons, the world and how you can dive into it, and we didn’t even get a glimpse on that. Altough you will get a first view into the world, with its gossip, history and actual events from stories, that will be released and summarised under the name "The Cleaved Maiden" wich is the name of a tavern in the world of Arcania. The author of this series is Hans Jörg Knabel. At the same time he is the story chef for Arcania. What we can say is that the weather, the physics, the combat system, the effects and more are getting back the Gothic feeling. And JoWood and Spellbound are taking this task of making a lively and realistic world very serious. They have a look at the quality of the game and they work on every part until they are satisfied with the result. They analyzed the predecessors getting the strong and weak points out of it so they can get the Gothic feeling back in their game to build a game that the critics and customers will be satisfied with.

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