Outcast (game)
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- For other uses, see Outcast.
| Outcast | |
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| Developer(s) | Appeal |
| Publisher(s) | Infogrames |
| Release date(s) | July 31, 1999 |
| Genre(s) | Action-adventure |
| Mode(s) | Single player |
| Rating(s) | ESRB: T (Teen) USK: 16+ OFLC: M15+ |
| Platform(s) | Microsoft Windows |
| Media | 2 CD-ROMs, 1 DVD |
| System requirements | 200 MHz CPU, 32 MB RAM, 2 MB video card RAM, 4X CD-ROM drive, 600 MB available hard disk space, Windows 95 |
| Input | Keyboard, mouse |
Outcast is an action-adventure computer game by Belgian developer Appeal, released in 1999 by publisher Infogrames.
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[edit] Plot
In 2007 the U.S. government successfully sends a probe to an alien world in a parallel universe. The probe starts transmitting video images of the world back to Earth. Then, just minutes into the mission, an alien life form discovers the probe and damages it, causing an unforeseen backlash of energy to create a black hole threatening Earth. Cutter Slade, a former U.S. Navy SEAL, is given the job of escorting three scientists on a mission to this alien world to recover the probe and close the black hole.
Arriving in this alien world, Cutter is separated from the other scientists and is hailed by the natives as their messiah, the Ulukai.
[edit] Technology
The game uses a voxel engine to render its objects and textures. This unique method is purely software-based; it does not rely on any hardware-acceleration via a graphics card. A voxel engine was chosen because there is no performance hit when rendering round or curved surfaces, thus allowing for a much more detailed Landscape. Had the same level of detail seen in Outcast been attempted on a hardware-accelerated polygon engine, there would have been a significant drop in performance.
Voxels offered good picture quality without requiring advanced graphics hardware, a happy medium between software rendering and hardware-acceleration. As a result, the graphics were considered beautiful and well ahead of their time upon Outcasts release, thanks to effects such as depth of field, bump-mapping and anti-aliasing, all of which would have crippled even the most advanced graphics card of the era.
The Artificial Intelligence (AI) used in Outcast is considered revolutionary at the time when it was released.[1] The AI is based on a propriety engine codenamed GAIA or Game Artificial Intelligence with Agents. It is a set of C++ library that provides sophisticated control of game characters based on research in Distributed Artificial Intelligence. Intelligence is represented as a distributed activity over a set of autonomous routines called agents. An agent uses skills, such as hearing, sight, acrobatic, to complete assigned tasks. These agents can interact and even compete with each other to realize a complex task.
The disadvantage of this type of CPU-intensive software-rendering was that Outcast required an extremely powerful CPU (nothing but the most powerful Intel Pentium III processors of the time, in the 500-600 MHz range) and massive amounts of RAM (128 megabytes was recommended) to run at full speed and maximum resolution (512x384). However, these considerations can now be safely ignored, as even low-budget PCs of today fulfill those requirements.
[edit] Sequel
A sequel, Outcast II[2] was originally being developed for Sony's PlayStation 2 console. During development, the company Appeal went bankrupt and development ceased. Appeal had been requesting funds from their publisher to help finish the game for release but this plea fell on deaf ears.
The Eternal Outcasts [3] are developing a free sequel called Open Outcast using the Crystal Space 3D engine.
A Dreamcast port of the original was also planned[4], but was shelved when the PC version failed in the marketplace.
[edit] Playing Outcast today
Today's fast computers may cause unexpected glitches in the game, such as rendering the player character unable to run on certain surfaces, or loading errors such as "Bad audio tracks" that stop the soundtrack from playing. To prevent these, one can use a program such as CPU Grabber to artificially prevent Outcast from using all the processing power. For reference, on an AMD Athlon 64 3000+ processor, setting CPU Grabber to grab 55 % of the processor is generally enough to prevent these kinds of glitches. If using such a program to prevent glitches that occur when the game is loading, you can Alt+Tab out of the running game and disable the program, or leave just enough processing power restriction to overcome in-game glitches.
Several patches are available to solve certain bugs relating to modern hardware. Patch 1 solves a problem installing the game with a modern DirectX version present, patch 3 solves ingame bugs and should be applied after installation. Also an unofficial resolution patch is available to play the game at 640x480. The resolution patch/loader was created for Windows 98 and requires gamers on Windows XP or later to run Outcast executables (oc1|2|3.exe) in Windows 98 compatibility mode, an option found in the exe files' properties window.
