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Doug Mealy just sent us this press release:
SOJOURN DEVELOPMENT’S ONLINE GAME “GLYMPSE” TO USE PANDROMEDA’S MOJOWORLD TECHNOLOGY TO CREATE A REAL-TIME, SPHERICAL WORLD
SAN DIEGO, CA – FEBRUARY 19, 2003 – Sojourn Development (www.sojdev.com ), developers of a massively multiplayer online game called Glympse, scheduled for release in 2004, will use Pandromeda’s (www.pandromeda.com) MojoWorld technology to create a virtual spherical world roughly the size of Mars.
“Pandromeda’s fractal algorithms allow us to create an immense spherical world with a file weight of a couple hundred kilobytes. This is excellent news for gamers, as it creates incredible gameplay opportunities,” said Dave Cerra, CCO of Sojourn Development, LLC. “Sojourn is now free to include unlimited modes of transportation for players such as flight and water-based vehicles, as there is no ‘edge of the world’ to resolve. Players will be able to use the planet's curvature to intelligently plot trade or invasion routes. Additionally, the sheer size of the planet allows players to enter into the excitement of player-vs-player combat or to simply avoid it all together without having to impose artificial PvP zones or ‘toggle’ options. And most importantly, the incredibly small size (in kilobytes) of the planet allows us to make drastic modifications and additions to the ‘physical’ world of the game while negligibly affecting our players’ download rates.”
“Glympse marks the first-ever integration of MojoWorld technology into a real-time environment, and we’re excited about helping to provide gamers with a new way of transporting themselves from planet Earth to the one Sojourn is bringing to life,” said Dr. Ken Musgrave, CEO of Pandromeda. “This marks the beginning of something really big for the future of gaming: the next generation of massively multiplayer online games will need really big worlds to play in—and we’ve got ‘em!”
Pandromeda's procedural terrain technology is unique. Rather than loading large, preexisting terrain models into the client machine's memory, terrain is modeled on the fly in real-time, freeing up storage and bandwidth on both the client and servers for other uses. Including Pandromeda directly in the development process ensures that their proprietary technologies are integrated seamlessly. As future versions of MojoWorld promise a growth from a single-planet model to a solar system model, the Glympse franchise is well positioned to continue to push the edge of the massively multiplayer genre, potentially offering seamless interplanetary travel in future releases of the virtual universe. Size of Mars? Now THAT sounds big :-) |
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