Nocturne Development Update

Terminal Reality's Nocturne is getting ready to GOLD and will be on shelves by Halloween. There is a lot to know about this game, and we are going to start by giving you specifics on the Nocturne Engine and how it affects gameplay. The Nocturne engine is divided into many parts, including the Nocturne Rendering Engine, Nocturne Sound Engine, Night Moves character engine and Nocturne Cloth engine.

The Nocturne Rendering Engine incorporates many technologies proprietary to Terminal Reality. The engine itself supports either 16-bit or 32-bit color rendering, with 32-bit color rendering supporting 1 billion visible colors through a proprietary dithering technique. This means you'll see the most realistic settings and characters that have been seen on a PC. Often people
have thought we take screen shots from cinematic scenes, but in reality it is all from gameplay. Real time lights and shadows make for an eerie environment. Puzzles may be solved by manipulating lights. Shadows may hide enemies and/or secrets. Lights are attached to most of the weapons you will posses. The moving lights reveal darkened areas and cast shadows off everything in the scene. If a monster is walking towards you, his/her shadow will get longer and longer the closer he/she gets. Just as it would in real life. The cone or volume of light can be seen a lot due to the volumetric fog that rolls in and out. Imagine standing at the end of a long dusty trail up to a house you knew was infested with a zombie hoard. You can?t quite see clearly, it is foggy in the distance. So you begin a careful walk toward the house and out of the shadowy haze comes a variety of undead. Not a pleasant thought. The Nocturne Engine also has some great reflections. Walk by a mirror and see your image clearly. But wait. The image morphs into a creature that lunges out to take you down. Or perhaps seeing a reflection in the mirror is the only way to really tell if the ?person? you are talking to in the game is a vampire or human. Lights reflect off mirrors as well.

The Night Moves Character Engine is a skeletal based animation system that supports both motion capture and keyframing. The engine can override keyframing/motion capture to use kinematics. By having this technology to base all the characters around, smoother motions, more realistic behaviors and precise movements are all apparent. Picking up objects from the ground with accuracy, climbing ladders, jumping, running, aiming with each arm while using pistols, blowing the limbs off enemies and something as simple as opening a door all look and react as they would in real life. Nocturne could be called the
best horror simulation you have ever seen. Just as real time lights and shadows must be seen on a PC to be fully appreciated and enjoyed, the same goes for the Nocturne Cloth Engine. The long trench coat of The Stranger flows with his confident stride. He turns to the left, the coats sways. A wind blows from the front, the coat flows out behind. Other characters wear different types of material. Each type of material has a specific weight. The weight determines how environmental effects
and movements cause a reaction to the cloth. Other ways this technology is used could be a large tapestry on a wall that might actually be hiding a hidden doorway. Walk up to the tapestry, push around on it, if it flows then you might want to proceed. Curtains also react as they would in real life while walking through and under them. All of the cloth simulations have to be seen in game to truly get the full impact. Words cannot describe.

The sounds of the Nocturne Sound Engine are some of the best you will hear in a game. 3D positional audio attaches sounds to moving objects, full surround sound support and legacy support for stereo all make the final experience spine tingling. You will hear werewolves stalking you in the forest. Zombies footsteps will alert you that they are coming up from behind. What you can't see, but can hear, will probably hurt you. Screeching blasts of sound rock you when a window smashes and then a ghoul throws itself out at you. Nocturne is just like a great horror film that stirs suspense through sound. All in all Nocturne posses revolutionary technology that has already been called "Engine of the Year", technology at it's finest" and "the best use of next
generation technology in gameplay, ever".

The actual system requirements are as follows:

Minimum System Requirements:

· Pentium MMX, Celeron, Pentium2, Pentium3, or Athlon processor at 233MHz or higher.
· 64MB RAM (96 MB for 3D Hardware Acceleration)
· 500MB hard disk space

Recommended System:

· Celeron, Pentium2, Pentium3, or Athlon processor at 400MHz or higher.
· 128MB RAM
· AGP Video Port
· Matrox G200, Matrox G400, TnT, TnT2, or Rage 128
· 1GB+ hard disk space
· Sound Blaster Live!

For more information about Nocturne, please visit the Official Nocturne Web Site at www.nocturnegame.com

The first Nocturne demo is available at www.nocturnegame.com. This is the "Zombie Town" chapter, from the story "Tomb of the Underground God." The second demo, "Crescent Theater" from "Windy City Massacre" is available on PC Gamer's November CD, and will be available online shortly. Since the lead time to press publication is many months, these demos will be refreshed to the final versions after Nocturne is released.

More updates will follow highlighting characters and gameplay.

Headquartered in Lewisville, TX, Terminal Reality is a technology-driven independent developer of games for the PC and Mac. Founded in 1994, the company has developed several best selling games including Terminal Velocity, Microsoft Hellbender, Microsoft Monster Truck Madness 1 & 2 and the award-winning Microsoft CART Precision Racing. In addition, Terminal Reality created the first 3D game for the Windows 95 platform, Microsoft Fury3. Terminal Reality developed the realistic flight simulation game FLY!, and is developing Nocturne and two other unannounced titles. http://www.terminalreality.com