f13.net

http://www.gamespot.com/pc/rpg/matrixonlinetentativetitle/news_6104711.html

So, you figure they bought them out to secure their interest in Matrix Online, or do you think this was just a case of Jason Hall playing favorites?

Bruce

My bet, they needed a company with an established record of coming up with new three dimentional rendering engines.

The engine they used for Shogo is the only engine I can think of that made me sick to my stomach (except for a certain MMORPG).

Monolith engines have all sucked with the exception of the NOLF engines.  Prior to that they sucked in everything they ever tried.  And I am not even a huge fan of NOLF, but I recognize it looked nice and functioned.  I just didn't care for some intangable something I could never quite place.

Suck or not, they've experience making the engines.

I think it's the first, which BTW is yet another major MMORPG scheduled for release this November.

I loved that game! It's still one of the few shooters whose weapons (the on foot ones, not the mech ones) I thought all had a nice "visceral" feel to them. The DOOM 3 ones are totally wimpy in comparison (though I haven't tried the Trent Reznor sound pak yet).

I actually enjoyed the game immensely. I just couldn't play for more than 15-20 minutes at a time.

Monolith is also doing F.E.A.R., which looks fucking awesome. This had better not screw up the game's time table.

I just wonder how it's going to be released that soon. It's not even in closed beta yet, is it?

Closed beta started in June.

Anyone here playing it?

EDIT: err..nevermind. I guess I've gotten used to hearing people being allowed to at least say they're playing WoW.

ME TOO!  God, I thought there was something wrong with me.  Shogo made my ill after about 30 minutes of play.  I had to stop or I would vomit.

According to Penny Arcade, Matrix Online (plus Guild Wars and whatnot) will be playable at PAX (Penny Arcade Expo), if you go there.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't the various incarnations of Lithtech (NOLF, AvP etc) the only serious multigame engine Monolith ever did?

Yes, and I'm almost certain that Shogo was the first version of the Lithtech engine.

Neither.  I doubt 99.9% of the people that hold the purse strings at Warner Bros. have any fucking clue what a video game engine is, nor do they have any inclination to find out.

They see a market, nothing more, nothing less.  Gaming is a business and if they decided to expand their presence in the market it was not dictated by anything other than the performance of the availible companies and what kind of price/risk comes along with it.  

Owning stock in an aerospace company doesn't make you a rocket scientist.

While it's all fine, well and good that we sit around and make posts tearing down this game or that and every once in a great while give credit where credit is due, let's not kid ourselves.  While there is a chance a developer reading this board may take and use some of the input in his or her project.  The person signing his or her paycheck has other things on their mind.

-Tige

Here's some Lithtech engine background:

http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/Lithtech

I think it's a matter of both Jason Hall wanting to run Monolith again, and getting more control over Matrix Online.

Shogo was a great game, a little short, but I loved the engine, which was Lithtech v1, which later turned into Jupiter I think around NOLF2. It was always just slightly less full-featured (and cheaper) than the Unreal or Quake engines, but ran faster. The Shogo foot weapons were awesome, some of the best I've seen in FPSes. Damn shame they never made a Shogo sequel.

I still think Matrix Online will suck ass. How can it not, with the reigning king hell of sequels license as an albatross to weigh it down?

I don't know how much faith I have, but the reigning king of shit licenses is Star Wars (at least in my book). As far as my dollar goes, anything based on the Star Wars license is worth a little less than toilet paper I've already wiped my ass with. But KotoR rocked, so I am interested in seeing how MxO turns out.

If they completely ignore the 2nd and 3rd Matrix movies, then Matrix MIGHT > Star Wars. Otherwise, the SW world is far better. Except for the whole "George Lucas is a syphilitic chimp" thing.

They don't. The MMO picks the story up where the third movie left it.

Then again, apart from Matrix based storylines, it's basically COH with a different skin. IMO PVC crap that base off real world clothes might look better than spandex catsuits. But I'd like to see the game in action in fullscreen afterall before even thinking about buying it, since JPEG artifacted screenshots != live action. Considering the beta will open further up to preorders only, screw that.

If they'd at least tell when the preorder beta starts, I might plot an evil plan of preordering, followed by a cancellation, if it sucks hard.

If memory serves, Rubies of Eventide also used/uses LithTech 2/Jupiter. Well, either that or Knight Online, forget which; I played the betas quite close to each other.

Not exactly. Crafting seems to be a major part of the game.

You can download a video here:

http://thematrixonline.warnerbros.com/web/downloads.jsp

It's edited like a movie trailer so you don't see any extended gameplay sequences but it does give you some idea what it'll be like.

It looks like it's at the very least as involving as COH. Maybe even more. At least for melee (but what about ranged? Guns have never been fun in MMO's). What I've read so far on the quest and crafting systems looks interesting too. The fact that it's PvP is enough to get me to try it.

The character models look like shit, but the city looks cool (though I hope there's a lot of variety within it, because playing in the same environment all the time sounds like it could get boring quick).

That's animated screenshots. Compressed crap doesn't look as nice as the real deal.