Kevin's Watch

Last night as I lay in bed, I was thinking about how the Thomas Covenant Chronicles could be made. Although the Lord of the rings was a very good movie, I don't think that TCTC could be created without someone who loved the series as much as Peter Jackson that is in the business & I don't believe that anyone like that exists.

So I was thinking, well, how could it be made? And I eventually considered CGI graphics. I mean Final Fantasy: The Spirit Within looked incredible. It wouldn't be a cartoon, but it wouldn't be real life either, but that would be okay because then we could see a lot of things which would cost millions of dollars to recreate.

Then I started thinking, well the good folks that made Final Fantasy went bankrupt because the movie DID cost millions of dollars to make. Okay, what else.....

Then it hit me. Video games. That's right! Video games.


With the Doom3 technology, you can create the type of CGI graphics seen on Final Fantasy.

A small movie trailer is available @ www.doom3.com/ , just click on trailer.

You can get a larger video by clicking on download @ www.fileplanet.com/files/80000/88436.shtml (but this is fairly weighty at ~80mb).

These are in-game images: gallery.dailytelefrag.com/index.php?type=id&scr_id=1739#scr & www.doom3.com/getdesktop.asp?num=3&size=lg



With Half-Life 2, you can create the type of facial animation that you would want to do with ease!!!!!

There’s a screen-shot sample here: www.gamershell.com/imagefolio/show.php? ... fe2_05.jpg

Now while this might not seem so exciting, remember that these are still frames. But in the game, the motion is fluid between anger, sadness, playfulness, & happiness or anything you desire to show.

This is a layman’s course in the use of the Half-life facial animator, which is an expressions-emoter & *REAL-TIME* lip-synching choreographing program
www.viscidity.com/stuffs/hl2choreo.htm

While these are two separate games, its important to realize that games copy eachother’s technology all the time. Mod-Makers will also incorporate other technologies. Speaking of Mod-Makers, this is who would be making our movie. Well, that & artists, who would render the characters & creatures of the Land, perhaps even make items like staffs, hurtloam, gilden trees, and aliantha berries, even down to the seeds the characters would spit out. The mod-makers would “code” the game. But they wouldn’t make the game engine. That would already be created by ID Software or Valve, both of which put out SDK (software developer kits). Re-Coding a game-engine is far, far, far easier than creating one from scratch. It is also much faster & produces results more quickly, which would keep our mod-makers happy as they are mostly of the age of instant gratification.

So what would all of this take? Well, besides time, it would require complete facial polygon & mask builds for all characters & creatures (*the creatures would also require body construction). The land, surprisingly, would be easier to create except when it came to specific locations such as Revelstone etc. Waiting for the technology to come isn’t really the problem anymore. If we can take the emotion-generator from Half-life 2 & incorporate it to Doom3, we have CGI graphics with ease-of-use dialogue. I estimate that this movie could be made with a team of 40 people for under a million dollars. And it would look GOOD! I mean convincingly good!

How could we get this done? Well, the mod community would have to be engaged. That would take time & several people. Then a hiring process would begin, because a game would have to be made as well as the movie, but that’s the easy part really. The game’s ready for shooting & all that, the only thing that would need to be added would be tree-branching for decisions made by the player. Everything else would just be a part of the movie, which would probably last 12 hours for each trilogy. Each book could be made in 1 year!!!!

Visually, Covenant would be easier or at least no harder than LOTR to produce. I think it could be live-action, and the First Chronicles would be filmed over a year or two and the Second Chronicles maybe later, depending how the 1st Chrons do financially. It's all very feasible. If LOTR can be filmed, Covenant sure as heck can.

You're missing a very important element. Peter Jackson absolutely loved Lord of the Rings & was an already established director & then found creative ways to extend the couple/few hundred million dollars that New Line advanced him to create the films. There's no talk floating around about The Thomas Covenant series being developed. I am very well-informed about hollywood's plans and considerations & there hasn't been anything for years.

That's why I'm suggesting that fans create it. Because if you ever want to see it, then the fans will have to make it.

edit

Yeah, I'll get right on that. Just as soon as I pirate a copy of 3DS Max, learn how to use it, learn how to mod those games (or games based on those engines) and recruit a host of people for the voice acting. Oh, and get a crapload of time on my hands...

I posted this approx a year or so ago.

I have a friend in the computer gaming industry that has worked on movie connected games in the past including James Bond & LOTR.

He was directed to read TCoTC, where I came in as he knew I had the novels, in order to determine the best course of action for a game/movie.

He was then drafted into the team for the LOTR games and has had to put this on the back burner but tells me, as much as he is able due to confidentiality agreements w/ production companies, that TCoTC is def on the story board and will be made w/in 3-5 yrs.

wow.

what type of game? I would be very disaponted if it was an action game.

TC the FPS...that would be hilariously terrible to play. Maybe a RTS would work...if based on the Illearth War and the book that follows (don't know why I can't remember the name at the moment). Unfortunately there wasn't too much going on in the way of building bases in those books...What other kind of games could the Chronicles be made into? It's not exactly a series that lends itself to a being translated into game form very easily...

Oh I don't know about that. Max Payne seems to work pretty well.

At any rate, FPS games are the only thing I'm willing to play. Everything else seems too much like a game. I want to be immersed into the game. If you have a powerful enough computer, buy Call of Duty. It is amazing. You *EXPERIENCE* the horror of war, the futility of it, the terror of it, and the overwhelming firepower of seeing thousands of infantry over the course of the game. It proves to me that living through a war takes no skill at all and a whole world of luck.

Another great game is Thief. You creep around in the dark, picking pockets, listening to the guards carry on their conversations, put out torches, etc.

Deux Ex is a great FPS where you choose how you will play. If you don't want to kill anyone, you don't have to. If you want to kill everyone, you can.

Half-life told an interesting story & it usually takes a player around 30 hours to get through it. In fact, that's pretty much standard fare. Hard-core gamers that put their games on easy level can breeze through them, but the average player takes quite a long time to get through a game.

I just can't stand the overview of RTS games. I don't feel like I'm part of it, but rather orchestrating it like a disconnected general.

Zephalephelah wrote: Another great game is Thief. You creep around in the dark, picking pockets, listening to the guards carry on their conversations, put out torches, etc.

Deux Ex is a great FPS where you choose how you will play. If you don't want to kill anyone, you don't have to. If you want to kill everyone, you can.

Thief is great, so is Deus Ex. I agree with you there, Zeph.