However, Virtual Theatre allowed non-player characters to traverse the world in seemingly random patterns, interacting with their environment. Traditionally in adventure game engines, non-player characters were static awaiting the player to interact with them to trigger an event. For Broken Sword: The Serpent's Curse a brand-new engine ( VT7) was developed in order to deal with multiple platforms and, in particular, with screen resolution (the system is built on C++ and OpenGL, and a custom scripting-language to implement the game itself). The engine subsequently underwent various updates. Broken Sword: The Shadow of the Templars, released in 1996 for PC, Mac and PlayStation, and its sequel, Broken Sword II: The Smoking Mirror, released in 1997 for PC and PlayStation, also used modified versions of the Virtual Theatre engine. However, because the game was six times the size of Lure of the Temptress, non-player characters had to perform much simpler tasks than in its predecessor. įor Beneath a Steel Sky, released in 1994 for Amiga, and PC, Revolution used an updated version of Virtual Theatre, Virtual Theatre 2.0, written by Warriner and Sykes. For their debut adventure game, Lure of the Temptress, released in 1992 for Amiga, Atari ST and PC, Cecil, Warriner, Sykes and Dan Marchant created the concept of the game engine titled "Virtual Theatre", which Warriner wrote. In 1990 they decided to set up their own video-game development company, together with David Sykes and Noirin Carmody. In 2012, it was confirmed that the engine would be revived as "Virtual Theatre 7" for the fifth Broken Sword titled Broken Sword: The Serpent's Curse (2013).Ĭharles Cecil and Tony Warriner had worked together at Artic Computing, an English video game development company. Two games ( Broken Sword: The Shadow of the Templars and Broken Sword II: The Smoking Mirror) that use a Virtual Theatre variant engine can now be played on modern hardware using ScummVM, which as a result allows the engine to run on platforms where the titles were not officially released. Non-player characters performed much simpler tasks with each release due to size constraints. It allowed in-game characters to wander around the gameworld independently of each other, performing "everyday life" actions, which was not previously possible, and all characters and objects occupied space consequently, non-player characters had to side-step the player's protagonist and any other object they came across, as well as the player having to side-step them, achieving a more realistic game world that previous engines were unable to provide, though non-player characters could unwittingly block a path as the player was traversing the game scene. The engine was first proposed in 1989, while the first game to use it, Lure of the Temptress, was released in 1992, followed by Beneath a Steel Sky (1994), Broken Sword: The Shadow of the Templars (1996) and Broken Sword II: The Smoking Mirror (1997). Upon its first release, it rivaled competing engines like LucasArts' SCUMM and Sierra's Creative Interpreter, due to its then high level of artificial intelligence. The engine allowed their team to script events, and move animated sprites against a drawn background with moving elements using a point-and-click style interface. ![]() The Virtual Theatre is a computer game engine designed by Revolution Software to produce adventure games for computer platforms. Game engine by Revolution Software Virtual TheatreĪmiga, Atari ST, PC ( MS-DOS and Windows), PlayStation, Macintosh, Linux
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