MALSTORM

Atari ST - 1992
This game was a really new concept for me. I realized that the creator of a game knows everything about it - how it works, how it ticks, what awaits around each corner - and therefore can not really enjoy playing such game. Nothing can surprise him.
Randomly generated games was my next (and logical) step ...



A pure randomly generated game has, I felt, the following problem: all the events have to be stored in memory at some point, just in case if the player wants to return to a location and find everything the way it was when he first got there. I was looking for something more flexible...
So, I created algorithms allowing me to create infinite worlds, with n dimensions, where the player could go back to any location and find the same thing, and this without taking any memory in the computer ( I later realized that I had created algorithms and ideas already used in the 3D industry, like the Perlin Noise for instance...)




This is what Malstorm is all about. I was an space/exploration game (inspired by Elite) where the player could visit an infinite universe and, this time, even me could visit solar systems, planets, and be surprised by what I would find there.
It was also my first attempt in creating a game in 3D.
I've never finished this game, but it was the step in which I realized that such kind of algorithms could be much more useful and interesting... Beagle followed directly after this game.
You can also look at WORLD'ED which I developed at the same time and was supposed to later be part of Malstorm.

ORIGINAL ARTWORK (1992)


MALSTORM is ©1992 - Laurent KERMEL