In November, Dr. Li shared with you the article "R Star III influenced many subsequent games, and even contributed to the birth of Resident Evil 7", telling that on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the release of R Star III, SIE Sony Interactive Entertainment invited many industry leaders to chat about this classic game. The open-world gameplay of R Star III and the incredible immersion have influenced game developers in the industry!
I believe that everyone is very interested in the secret behind the classic game series, the doctor noticed: the art designer "Stewart Waterson" who worked in DMA Design, the predecessor of Rockstar North, in the 1990s also revealed some behind-the-scenes gossip about the R star series of games, but he was not talking about the third generation of R stars, but the first generation of R stars.
The first installment of this classic game series, R Star First Was Released on Windows on November 21, 1997. In the game, players play the role of gangsters, through firefights, drag racing and other ways to improve their "prestige". Similar to other games of that era, the graphics style was pixelated, and the perspective was from top to bottom.
Waterson said: "The game started out as a racing product, Race'n'Chase, and then it became the first generation of R stars in a sandbox nature, and the key to the transformation was the tank in the game! Waterson and Johnson, the programmer at the time, designed a tank of somewhat efficient nature, and although it wasn't planned at the beginning, both of them thought it was interesting and made it.
The development of the tank is actually based on the original vehicles in the game, plus the code that the pedestrian NPC can fire bullets in eight directions, which becomes the prototype of the tank. They stuffed an NPC into a car, slowed down the vehicle's movement, and at the same time maximized the damage of npc bullets, and the so-called tank was born!
Looking at the above design now, it is a bit crude, but in the 1990s, it was very interesting! The development team loved both Waterson and Johnson's designs, and eventually the tank became a well-known vehicle for the first generation of R Stars, until later we could almost see the tank in the 3D works of the subsequent series!
Similar ideas have appeared in "Fallout 3", when the Bethesda development team directly used ordinary NPCs when designing mobile trains, as long as the NPCs were put on the shape of the train, they could run directly, and there was no need to design another vehicle. From here, we can see that game developers are still full of wisdom and don't spend their days studying how kryptonite mechanics work.