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Anachronox Movie Finished 104

Sim9 writes "Recently, Anachronox: The Movie released its final episode. The movie is based on the PC game, and is actually rendered using the Quake II engine! (Note that the official mirror is usually full, so also try: Fileplanet, The Archive, AusGamers, and Fileshack. Enjoy!" Update: 04/12 04:58 GMT by T : You can also find BitTorrent files at f.scarywater.net.
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Anachronox Movie Finished

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  • BitTorrent (Score:5, Insightful)

    by gordyf ( 23004 ) on Friday April 11, 2003 @09:41PM (#5714708)
    I emailed the webmaster of the site requesting a BitTorrent link, hopefully they provide one. Anyone else able to put one up? The servers are going to be totally swamped.
    • The BitTorrent files pointed to by the torrent file at f.scarywater.net are slightly corrupted; parts 5 and 6 are 'short'.

      I've create a new torrent at http://onca.catsden.net/~chris/anachronx.torrent that people are welcome to point to. The guy at scarywater is going to replace the torrent there with mine, but you can get in early :)
  • yeah (Score:1, Funny)

    by quantaman ( 517394 )
    13 parts, over a gig total and about to be ./ed?

    "Enjoy" indeed!

    • Whew! Just finished downloading the full set via BitTorrent. The kb/s wasn't too impressive. Strangely, now that I'm done, my upload rate is only 2-3 kb/s.

      Knowing that the Quake II engine was used to render this movie, it makes wish I could just run into the Anachronox virtual world and kick some butt! Thought I wonder what frame rate you would get running the movie in real time through the engine..?
      • Whew! Just finished downloading the full set via BitTorrent. The kb/s wasn't too impressive.

        (Damn, this thing is almost a whole freaking gigabyte?!) You should've sprung for the good pipe, then. Right now I'm getting around 400KBytes/sec. Love that full speed DSL, baby! (I have 6Mb/384Kb.) It also helps when your upload side doesn't choke, because dropped ACKs are a leading cause of sucky bandwidth. (Right now the upload is a little less than half of my max.)

        Strangely, now that I'm done, my upload

  • by Travoltus ( 110240 ) on Friday April 11, 2003 @09:54PM (#5714744) Journal
    You have to stinking register just to get access to their files.

    If everyone avoided that server, they'd go away and perhaps everyone else would take the hint and stop this BS... otherwise, very soon, you'll have to register AND pay in order to download these free files.

    Stay AWAY from Fileplanet!
    • by deadsaijinx* ( 637410 ) <animemeken@hotmail.com> on Friday April 11, 2003 @10:30PM (#5714843) Homepage
      That's kinda a difficult situation to address. After all, Fileplanet and Fileshack have their place and provide an important service. They have ALWAYS up access to files. To get these files, you have to sign up (bleh), but sign up is free. No hard feelings there, just give them a hotmail address and wam!, you have access. They also host a wide variety of files from most popular games, even older ones like tribes. However, the real pain in the ass is waiting in line, a necessary, yet extremely aggrivating affair. So, if you can spare a hotmail address (you can), and don't mind waiting inline (have patience young one ^^), then fileplanet isn't so bad.
      Granted, i HATE waiting inline, but if it bugged me that bad i could PAY for their premium service (i know you don't want to pay, but it's only optional, not mandatory), and have instant access to the game related files I want.
      Course, it's your choice
    • I agree also. The Internet is for sharing information freely with _everyone_. Adding any other requirements is just plain lame. Power to the P2P'ple!

    • from Fileshack.com :
      "Unfortunately for us, bandwidth does not grow on trees. Because of this we require people to have a Shack account to prevent our bandwidth being chewed up by people who dont even visit our website to help support it."

      Is it that hard to understand ?
    • No one ever said to you had to give them correct information, nor your real name. The only accurate information I ever give is that I live in a particular area code.
  • wow. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Satai ( 111172 ) on Friday April 11, 2003 @09:58PM (#5714760)
    I loved this game... In fact, I think it's the last game I've played to completion, and the first one I had in several years. It was funny, the engine didn't overshadow the game, the characters were likable, it had a really cool premise, and even good voice acting.

    Too bad they never made the sequel that it set up at the ending...

    Then again, this movie looks promising. :-)
    • Re:wow. (Score:3, Insightful)

      by TheDanish ( 576008 )
      When they fire the team that works on the project, it's kind of hard to work on a sequel, let alone patches for the game they're supposed to be supporting in the first place. That is one buggy game.

      Don't get me wrong, I LOVE that game, but it needs to crash less.
      • AFIAK the lead developer has been building patch on his on in spare time.
        I saw a link in the massage area of planetanachronox about a mod/patch that improves stability till the real patch is done.
    • Sure wish I could have finished it. I played about 3/4 of the way through, and got stuck with a mis-set game flag in the plot. I was trapped in the spaceport of the first city you start in (don't remember the name) behind the police cordon with the on-fire guy.

      I got to see the on-fire guy this time, though. That was fun.

      Paying $60 for a game I couldn't finish, and couldn't get support on...well, that's what I get for buying Ion Storm products.
    • Re:wow. (Score:2, Informative)

      by rpillala ( 583965 )

      It's also too bad that the whole team was fired as soon as the game shipped [planetanachronox.com]. Who gets the money when we buy Anachronox now? Eidos? Screw that. One of the fired devs recommended on some forum somewhere that people pirate the game, since he wasn't going to get any money even if they did buy it. If I hadn't bought it the day it shipped, I would have done that instead. I hope at least some of my money went to the devs. These are, after all, the people who released a patch after they were fired to allow m

      • Re:wow. (Score:5, Informative)

        by Schnapple ( 262314 ) <tomkidd&gmail,com> on Saturday April 12, 2003 @10:58AM (#5716172) Homepage
        It's true that the people who made Anachronox were all fired once the game came out but your post makes it sound like they were singled out.

        To recap, Ion Storm at this point in time (circa 2001) was two different houses, Ion Storm Dallas and Ion Storm Austin. Ion Storm Dallas gave us Anachronox and Daikatana. Daikatana's story has been chronicled [gamespot.com] as a textbook case of what can go wrong with game development, but the game itself took some five years and $30 million to make. Obviously it didn't move enough boxes to justify that, and with Eidos losing money on that and the deteriorating Tomb Raider franchise, someone had to get the boot, so Ion Storm Dallas was disbanded.

        Ergo, it wasn't so much the Anachronox team that got fired as it was entire developer getting the boot for an unrelated game.

        Ion Storm Austin is still around though - they made Deus Ex and are working on the sequel as well as a new Thief game. They attempted to change their name to something else without a stigma, but almost every name they thought of was copyrighted, so they ditched the "Austin" and became Ion Storm.

        Ergo, if you buy an Ion Storm game you're buying a game from a company with little to do with the Daikatana legacy.

        • You're right my post does make it sound like that. I don't blame ION so much as Eidos for letting Daikatana drag things down the way they did. In their mind. I mean, couldn't they have pulled the plug? If the "internal memos" I read during the Daikatana debacle were anything close to true, Eidos should have pulled the plug. Games have been cancelled for less.

          And I blame them generally for just being Eidos :D

          Ravi

  • From Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within to the Quake II engine... Won't those crazy animators ever decide enough is enough?

    But seriously, I loved Anachronox, and I'd download the movies if I were actually finished the game.
  • Plumful (Score:5, Interesting)

    by OldMiner ( 589872 ) on Friday April 11, 2003 @10:13PM (#5714812) Journal

    I don't need to mention that those of us who subscribe to Slashdot saw this thing about a half hour early but I can say honestly that I don't feel like I gained terribly much in this case. The server was still happily yielding files at the time I connected and I downloaded part 13 of 13 to determine if it would be worthwhile to check parts 1-12 once the inevitable Slashdotting finished, shortly after I downloaded that one piece.

    Now, I'm a critical sort, but the graphics on this video were about the quality of the cut scenes on the N64 with similar levels of subtelty in the expressions. The characters had faces textured on that simply did not move. So when one of the characters yelled "No!" when the apparent villain did some evil thing, he looked just as passive and stoic as ever, and it seemed dramatically out of place. He could have at least temporarily had his texture switched to one of a slightly shocked look -- something akin to the sudden face changes you saw from the female villain in Reboot.

    The effects animation weren't terrible, but, let's face it, a glowing white fountain of energy shooting into the sky is (1) relatively easy to produce and (2) somewhat cliche.

    This is all terribly critical, and I realize that these people don't have the resource of a studio like Mainframe let alone Pixar, but I would recommend those of you currently saturating this link:

    • Don't waste your bandwith. It's not all that good.
    • Don't waste their bandwidth. They need the money to hire artists.
    • Re:Plumful (Score:5, Informative)

      by BadmanX ( 30579 ) on Friday April 11, 2003 @10:22PM (#5714835) Homepage
      Um...excuse me while I completely disagree. While the movies you're getting have been reduced down to about 320x240 and therefore aren't going to look as sharp as the in-game graphics, the main reason to watch this movie is for the excellent plot, the interesting situations and plain ol' funny dialog. I think you did yourself a grave disservice by downloading the last movie first.

      I watched the first nine or so movies and then stopped and ran out and bought the game, so I could both see all these cutscenes in their full 1280x960 glory and also so I could get the WHOLE story (the movie naturally has tons of stuff cut out). I certainly did not regret the purchase. The movie is worth the download.
    • The movie is rendered in-game, and Anachronox was based on the Quake 2 engine (as mentioned in the story) with some Ion Storm modifications (like a better particle system, thus the gratuitous energy fountain). I should say at this point that I haven't watched the movie, but I did play the game. Of course the graphics aren't state of the art. The engine is going on six years old now. The game was fun, though, and the story was pretty good (well, as far as I got into it), and so I would expect the movies

  • FileShack link (Score:5, Informative)

    by Steve Gibson ( 30331 ) on Friday April 11, 2003 @10:15PM (#5714819) Homepage
    The link on the frontpage isnt quite right, here's a link to all the movies [fileshack.com] that makes a bit more sense.

    Although we're a bit full tonight with the release of a couple of big demos.
    • by StupidKatz ( 467476 ) on Friday April 11, 2003 @10:52PM (#5714890)
      My firewall's IP is 192.168.0.1! C'mon, probe my ports! You know you want to... *sultry wink*
  • Great (Score:1, Flamebait)

    by GiMP ( 10923 )
    Like anyone has ever heard of that game? It isn't even ported to Linux.
    • Anachronox had one hell of a story, lovable characters, a suck-ass combat system, a very cool universe, and some great plot twists.

      It also was the most unstable game I ever had the misfortune to play. Even with all the fixes/patches, I crashed several times an hour, on average. I grew to dread quitting because it would mean I would have to try to load my saved game again, which was where most of the problems occurred. The only problem was: I was drawn too far into the game to even think of quitting.

      So, th
      • Holy mind-blowing, Batman! Now I remember why I still have the thing on my drive. :D I'd love to get OGGs of the soundtrack...
        • Maybe you already know, but the soundtrack and the dialog is in the game directory as mp3 files, look under Anachranox\anoxdata\MUSIC\MP3 and Anachranox\anoxdata\SOUND\DIALOG. At least that's where it is on my computer. And yeah, the soundtrack is probably the best I've ever heard in any game. Especially the Sender "Cold Sweat Sex Machine" theme ;)
    • It runs just fine under Wine. I even fixed a problem with the OpenGL in wine to get it to work perfectly.
  • BitTorrent Link (Score:5, Informative)

    by mxs ( 42717 ) on Friday April 11, 2003 @11:29PM (#5714966)
    is here [207.44.142.96], along with all the others [207.44.142.96] ...
  • by ramzak2k ( 596734 ) on Friday April 11, 2003 @11:38PM (#5714986)
    So are some servers..
  • ...is _Anachronix_The_Movie_ just the cutscenes from the game, or is this entirely new? The /. doesn't mention, and the server, of course, no longer exists... anyway, is this movie of any interest to someone who's completed the game? That's all, great show, Laslo.
  • by Chokma ( 610031 ) on Saturday April 12, 2003 @06:30AM (#5715667) Homepage
    The idea to use the Q2-Engine to create an animation reminds me of The Seal of Nehara, done completely with Quake1 :)

    http://www.planetquake.com/nehahra/download.html
  • Sorry to say but the movie is in pretty bad quality. It's too dark. Also some segments diffir in dimensions so it's not easy to combine all 13 segments to one big file. Hint: XViD and Ogg For the rest, pretty nice they made a movie from the game I loved. I don't agree on some parts that they cut out, but I guess it's just way to much to fit into a single movie. If you like the movie you must buy the game, it's much better.
  • Is it possible for things like this to be distributed as 'source' format, i.e. runnable in Quake 2, rendered in real-time? Kinda like the demo format; I remember seeing some Quake 1 demos a while ago that were edited together and then rendered on the user's machine. This would make the file hugely smaller...
  • Huh? Why? The Quake2 engine is so outdated...if you were making a film, why not use the Quake3 engine, which has better dynamic lighting support, and true curved surfaces?

    Sounds like another "cool project, it would have been cooler five years ago," sort of thing to me.
  • For people's information, parts 5 and 6 from the BitTorrent link on ScaryWater are 'short'. Ie, they cut off way too soon.

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