
Postmortem: DreamWorks Interactive's Trespasser (1999) - Hooke
https://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/131746/postmortem_dreamworks_.php
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RodgerTheGreat
For those who would like to dig deeper, a fellow who goes by ResearchIndicates
produced a fantastic documentary-style Let's Play of Trespasser several years
ago: [https://lparchive.org/Jurassic-Park-
Trespasser/](https://lparchive.org/Jurassic-Park-Trespasser/)

~~~
jml7c5
Over the years I've wasted a lot of time watching Let's Plays. I consider the
one you've linked to be one of the few upon which I have spent my time wisely.

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overgard
I remember so many of the games of that time made the exact same mistake: they
would focus so heavily on a piece of technology that often just wasn't-quite-
there-yet, and yet since that was the game's "thing" (especially since games
were hyped so early in magazines), they could never really let it go. With
Tresspasser, if they had gone with the initial vision of it being a survival-
horror dinosaur game, but they had designed it more like a contemporary like
say Half-Life, it's an idea that totally could have worked. Remember how
scripted Half-Life was, especially some of those early levels that were almost
like standing in a movie? (A new experience back then). I could totally
imagine a dinosaur game working with that kind of model and tech. You can
imagine showing a JP-style scene where the dinosaurs do something very clever
in a controlled environment, and maybe having player's project more into the
AI based on that; which would have been a much better investment than a state
machine they ended up just having to mostly disable. (I remember people were
very complementary of Half Life's AI, but I think it really boiled down to
clever level design more than anything). The problem was that while the
physics were really interesting, there just wasn't enough there to actually
build a game on, and a lot of things that were interesting were awful gameplay
wise (the weird floppy arm for instance).

I do have a lot of nostalgia for it though. I remember playing it when I was
13 or 14 on something like a K6-2 300mhz, and as disappointing as it was it
was also really interesting.

~~~
nmfisher
I've never actually heard of this game until now, even though it was released
during my "prime" teenage gaming years.

Reading the retrospective, though, I get the distinct impression that
"gameplay" was left as an afterthought. The person being interviewed
practically says as much at one point.

A lot of developers make the same cardinal mistake - assuming that some
technical point of differentiation is enough to succeed.

The game, first and foremost, has to be enjoyable. It doesn't matter how
realistic your physics engine is, how many sound blends your Foley system can
create, or even how good your artwork is. There has to be some core,
accessible gameplay mechanic that drives the whole game. It's not something
you can just throw into the "we'll figure that out later" basket.

~~~
badsectoracula
There is gameplay actually, but it is more of an adventure game where you are
trying to solve environmental puzzles than an action shooter. Action shooters
were incredibly popular at the time and anything remotely first person with
realtime 3D graphics had the expectation to be one, so that also played a role
(remember that even System Shock released earlier was often criticized for
essentially not being a Doom clone).

These days there are more games that have similar gameplay where you are
trying to solve puzzles with physics and i'm certain a remake of Trespasser
that was mostly the same but with more robust subsystems would play great.

The main issue was really that the subsystems that the gameplay relied on were
very janky - physics kinda worked (though they worked much better than what
the article seems to imply), player control was wonky, IK/animations often
spazzed out, etc.

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karatestomp
> And finally, from a movie aesthete’s view, the Jurassic Park movies are
> among Spielberg’s (and original novelist Crichton’s) worst work

Disagree, in the case of Crichton. He wrote a lot of fairly bad books. I doubt
I’d find much to agree with in a ranking of them that didn’t place Jurassic
Park somewhere in the top half, at least. True that it’s not among Spielberg’s
best work but Spielberg’s “mediocre” is still pretty damn good.

~~~
catalogia
In the case of Jurassic Park, I think Crichton's book was a lot better than
the movie. One major difference between the two was the John Hammond
character. In the movie he's a lovable naive dinosaur-loving manchild who
meant well, and survives the movie. In the book, he's a cynical profiteer who
brings children to the island in an attempt to emotionally manipulate his
critics, and gets devoured by the most petty scavenger dinosaurs at the end.
Relating to this, the book puts a lot more emphasis on the disaster occurring
due to corporate greed, not science-run-amok.

I think a lot of modern critics of the movie might conclude that Crichton's
novel was meant to be anti-science _(this viewpoint presumably being
reinforced by Crichton 's later statements concerning climate science...)_
however I don't think that's an accurate characterization of the book. In the
book the disaster is caused by greedy businessmen who cut corners, while the
heroes are scientists who use their knowledge of science to salvage the
situation the best they can.

~~~
friendlybus
Hammond wasn’t a cynical profiteer. He didn’t care about the money, it was a
pleasant after effect. The only thing he cared about was creation. Like a
blind god he wanted genesis at all costs.

He ends up terrified of his own creation, startled by a tyrannosaurus roar
over a loud speaker. Had he kept his nerve he would have died of old age
chasing creation on his secondary projects. That roar pushes him down a hill
that puts him in danger of an eternal sleep from compy venom as he tries to
climb a hill with a broken ankle. The book ends well killing Hammond and
implying the death of Malcolm. It wraps up with nature and science above human
control and mathematical chaos, which makes way more sense as a closing piece
than letting it go on forever like the films.

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LeonM
I remember reading about trespasser in a game magazine as a kid. The promises
were high, an open world sandbox game with realistic physics was unheard of at
the time.

Then the reviews came and I remember that they were quite disappointing. I
never played the game in the end.

I do remember that the game had one novelty: you could see your own body as a
player when you looked down. And since the main character in the game was
female, you had some boobs to look at. On one of the breasts there was a heart
shaped tattoo that was your health indicator.

~~~
jaynetics
Too bad the reviews put you off.

Despite major flaws, it was a fun game, and incredibly impressive back then.
Way ahead of its time in certain regards.

You could shoot stuff out from under things and make them collapse
realistically. If you shot a dinosaur on a hillside, his corpse would roll
down. If you picked up a heavy object and swung it hard enough at the right
moment, you could use it to fend off smaller dinosaurs. The bugs on the other
hand were hilarious. E.g. if a wooden board got stuck in a door, closing that
door might make the board turn at such speed that it slapped you to death on
the spot.

~~~
kungtotte
It also had a very different take on inventory management for the time:

You could carry two weapons, and there were no reloads. So you had a
submachine gun with most of a magazine left and a shotgun with two shells when
you ran across a big ol' revolver with five rounds.

The SMG had a lot of ammo but only really worked against small dinos, the
shotgun didn't have much ammo but it takes down most things with only a few
hits.

Do you ditch either for the revolver (powerful, low ammo) or do you chance it
with what you've got?

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bdefore
Trespasser was raw unadulterated ambition. As a teenager when it landed over
twenty years ago, I eagerly anticipated its release only to let down by the
tedium of the end result. But you could sense the future in it.

At the time, I couldn't help but dream of a day when virtual reality headsets
would arrive to make such a game feasible and fun. In took a while, but I'd
vouch that the recent game Boneworks
([https://store.steampowered.com/app/823500/BONEWORKS/](https://store.steampowered.com/app/823500/BONEWORKS/))
is a contemporary reincarnation of Trespasser.

My take on this sort of physics-based game design now? it's feasible, if not
quite fun. Yet.

Side note: Seamus Blackley, the producer of Trespasser, went on to become a
key player in the creation of the XBox gaming console.

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neuronexmachina
This audio technique sounds interesting, has it been used in other games
since, or are higher-fidelity techniques now used?

> Another major system for Trespasser was its audio system, which we described
> as "real time Foley" because of its ability to generate collision and
> scraping effects between differing sound materials in real time. Although
> the system could have used more sound material data, even with what it had
> it resulted in some wonderfully immersive sound effects which most other
> games do not duplicate - things like scraping a board down a concrete
> surface or hitting an oil barrel with a metal bat sound just about perfect.
> Since the system doesn’t simply play two sound effects but actually chooses
> from a group of samples and sets volumes based on the underlying physics
> collision, it sounds much more natural than most other audio systems
> currently used.

~~~
mntmoss
Foley mixing is still the state of the art in the majority of cases, but there
is a lot more DSP power to throw at spatial positioning and acoustics, which
makes the resulting mix a lot smoother.

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georgeecollins
That's really interesting that the biped physics were originally intended for
Terranova. I played that game a lot in 1996, and stole some ideas for levels
from it for another game. Looking Glass was a great studio.

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yuchi
AVGN (Angry Video Game Nerd) has a fantastic episode on this video game.
[https://youtu.be/15pi8vrUx9c](https://youtu.be/15pi8vrUx9c)

