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[IbizaPocholo]

We talk to Peter Molyneux & Mark Webley about the development of Black & White and investigate who is responsible for abandoning this PC Gaming classic.

0:00 - Intro
1:57 - Founding Lionhead
4:22 - Building the Team
7:22 - Artificial Intelligence
9:51 - No Interface
11:24 - Singing Sailors
13:36 - Hype
16:45 - Crunch
18:55 - Legacy
21:00 - Who Owns Black & White?
23:48 - Conclusions
26:58 - Credits

 

[Ghost of Caelid]

We have like 0 good god games and that a travesty. The concept of the genre is one of my favorites

 

[poppabk]

We have like 0 good god games and that a travesty. The concept of the genre is one of my favorites

I desperately want a good God game for VR. The sense of scale is so much more dramatic in VR - you don't have the Father Ted small versus far away effect.

 

[pqueue]

i wanted to play as the monkey, poop in my hands, and launch it at mine enemies.

 

[Doom85]

Legit saw the title and thought some deluded Pokémon fan felt Gamefreak should have made a Pokémon Black 3 and White 3.

 

[bender]

Kind of stretching the meaning of the word classic.

 

[dave_d]

We have like 0 good god games and that a travesty. The concept of the genre is one of my favorites

I thought Populous was fun.

 

[TheDreadBaron]

Kind of stretching the meaning of the word classic.

Disagree. To my limited knowledge no one has done it better since.

 

[bender]

Disagree. To my limited knowledge no one has done it better since.

Surprised no one has cleared that low bar.

 

[TheDreadBaron]

Surprised no one has cleared that low bar.

To be fair I'm not sure how well it actually holds up, I remember you could pet a cow and that was novel and fun.

 

[IbizaPocholo]

Black & White (2001) open source game engine sees a first release

Black & White from Lionhead Studios released originally back in 2001 went on to great reviews, and won various awards. Sadly, it's one game that has also been lost to time but the openblack project plans to revive it with open source.

www.gamingonlinux.com

Black & White from Lionhead Studios released originally back in 2001 went on to great reviews, and won various awards. Sadly, it's one game that has also been lost to time but the openblack project plans to revive it with open source.

I originally covered this project way back in 2019, and it seems it's come a long way since then, although still heavily under development. Yesterday, September 4th, the openblack project had a first actual release.

Features implemented:

• Camera movement system which matches Black & White.
• Landscape with higher resolution thanks to intermediate rendering of the landscape texture.
• Model rendering and animation.
• Morphable mesh rendering.
• Audio support.
• Dynamic sky controls.
• Pathfinding for villagers.
• Physics using bullet physics.
• Early AI state machine.
• The LHVM virtual machine is integrated and reverse engineered.
• Runs on modern Windows, MacOS and Linux.
• Experimental Android, iOS, web assembly support.

 

[Nikodemos]

There have been more modest attempts, like the Reus series (unfortunately, the second one kinda bombed, IIRC). But none with such overarching scope as B&W or Populous.

 

[Hookshot]

Maybe my pc then was too rubbish for it but I found the mouse controlled hand to be janky and impede my enjoyment back then.

 

[Cyberpunkd]

I still remember to this day this game was like 3-4 hours tops of doing the same thing. Nostalgia is a drug, don't do drgus.

 

[nemiroff]

Already look fine pretty good for what it is, don't need much remastering so-to-speak. B&W was kind of demanding back in the days, so a re-release would be nice.

 

[CuteFaceJay]

Prolly best it doesn't show up it'll only end up getting DEI treatment.

 

[Kiya's Guard]

It hasn't. Molyneux tried several times again under different names /s