It’s grow to be obvious that The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King was developed utilizing an engine from a starkly totally different sport: an unnamed Tiger Woods title.
That is with due to Wired and Glen Schofield, who took half in a latest interview the place the Hanging Distance Studios’ CEO responded to questions from Twitter. In response to the query, “why don’t startup studios simply make their very own sport engine?”, Schofield states that his groups have made engines earlier than, but it surely’s numerous laborious work.
“They take years and years, particularly these days,” which prompts Schofield to speak about his time with EA. “Once I received to EA, they’d numerous totally different engines. We have been beginning to construct one for Lord of the Rings.”
Two years away from launch, Schofield says that the staff “seemed round” and “received inventive”. He explains, “Lord of the Rings is about giant areas, after which a citadel or fortress on the finish. What’s like that? Tiger Woods.”
“Lengthy areas, and on the finish is the place you go get meals, and also you’re finished,” Schofield explains. And that’s how two plainly contrasting video games that almost all of us would doubtless by no means pair collectively ended up being constructed from the identical engine.
That is true, after which that code circled again into Tiger Woods. I keep in mind the code for VFX in Tiger Woods PSP was from LOTR (had references to Gandalf, and so on). All that for little wisps of smoke when hitting a golf ball! 🙂 https://t.co/odmTylBVUC
— Nick F ☁️🎮 @forensicgunk@mastodon.gamedev.place (@ForensicGunk) December 5, 2022
After the slither of knowledge did the rounds on Twitter, fellow developer Nick Ferguson adopted up on the data with extra element. It seems that the code for Lord of the Rings has additionally circled again into Tiger Woods. “I keep in mind the code for VFX in Tiger Woods PSP was from LOTR. All that for little wisps of smoke when hitting a golf ball!” And it simply so seems that, after all, Tiger Woods code then resulted in being suffering from LOTR references.
That is fairly the obscure, albeit neat, crossover in growth. The Callisto Protocol would possibly’ve launched to some quite unsavoury critiques, however it’s nice to listen to sport developer’s discuss in-depth about their work and the way it comes collectively. I extremely suggest the whole thing of the Wired video if that’s attention-grabbing to you too!