MALSTORM
Atari ST - 1992
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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.
MALSTORM is ©1992 - Laurent KERMEL
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