Bloodspell: Feature-Length Machinima

Submitted by costik on Tue, 10/23/2007 - 03:31.

Hugh Hancock, one of the pioneers of machinima (movies built using game engines) released his movie Bloodspell yesterday.

Segments of it have been released and available on the site over the years, but it's now been re-edited, with new audio, and stitched together into an 84 minute film that's well worth watching. (Free, after all.) It was built using the Neverwinter Nights engine, on a budget under 10,000 pounds (with I suspect man-years of free labor, however) -- according to Charles Stross, this poses a threat to the conventional method of making movies (and according to him, and oddly to my ears, for making comics). Hyperbole, I think, but you know, a real accomplishment for Hugh in any event. (Also, Hugh and Charles are fellow Edinbourgeois, so doubtless Charles wants to help get the word out, and good for him.)

Somewhat horrific, lots of action sequences, animation a little low-poly by modern standards, rough in parts--but actually pretty satisfying, for a no-budget, indie effort. Unquestionably worth looking at, if you've got an hour and a half to kill. (Download is about a gig; you'll need either DivX or Quicktime, and DivX is preferable.)

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I saw this earlier when it

Submitted by dmoonfire on Tue, 10/23/2007 - 13:38.

I saw this earlier when it was in the various parts. I thought it was pretty good, but when I showed it to my friends, they couldn't get past the whole cutting thing for magic. They thought it was stupid and basically damned the entire series after episode 1. I liked it though, despite the low graphics which I ignored anyway, it was very well written and entertaining to watch.

Race for the Galaxy

Race for the Galaxy

It used to be that card games were about rank and suit. Even in non-traditional card games, like Rook or Milles Bornes ,the cards were simple and served only one function. This, naturally, constrained what it was possible to do in a card game.

Then came Magic: The Gathering. Magic pitched fundamental assumptions about how card games work out the window. Deal out hands from a deck? Not so fast: every player gets his own deck. His own deck with whatever cards he wants to put in it. And the cards! They were crammed with icons and text, because each card broke one of the game's many intricate rules in some way, and its graphic design had to explain how.

So in addition to loosing the plague of collectible game components on the world, Magic also smashed the constraints that limited what a card game could be. And that’s how we have Race for the Galaxy.

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