[ekianjo]

Turns out you were right, it used compressed bitmaps. But the inspiration piece for Eric Chahi was correct:

> ERIC CHAHI: The polygon idea came from playing the Dragon's Lair port for the Amiga, which was showing incredible big animation on the screen, thanks to Randy Linden. That game's graphics weren't polygons, but were compressed bitmaps directly read from the disk. This was revolutionary for the time.

> I thought it could be done with polygons since the animation was flat. I wrote a vectorial code and programmed some speed tests. The idea was to use polygons not only for movie like animation but also for gameplay sequences. Think of the sprites as an assemblage of vector shapes. This proved to be a major advantage because you had big sprites that were scalable which took up less disk space than traditional sprites.

See this interview: http://eboredom.20m.com/features/interviews/chahi.html

Another World is also one of my favorite games. I still remember the day in 1991 when I played it for the first time.

[reedlaw]

A polygon-based game engine still sounds like a great idea. Are there any similar, modern examples?

[sounds]

While this is not exactly a game engine, check this out: http://rogeralsing.com/2008/12/07/genetic-programming-evolut...

[0x0]

Well, most 3d engines work by drawing triangles :)

[ekianjo]

I guess he referred to 2D polygon-based game engines :) Which is actually taken care by 3D game engines anyway nowadays, since it's a subset of it.

[lomnakkus]

I know your post was tongue-in-cheek, but it's not quite that simple, I think. For one thing the design aesthetic is almost completely different -- if look at the (awesome!) Another World[1] there is very little in the form of shading and such. It's much more like an old-school cartoon than an actual realistic rendering -- which is what most 3D games (and cartoons!) tend to strive towards these days.

EDIT: Btw, IIRC this is the only game that I ever played where I didn't actually realize when it had started. The intro -> gameplay transition is so seamless that I didn't even notice it. Pure genius.

[1] Just in case you haven't had the chance to experience it first-hand. Here's a play-through video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zgkf6wooDmw

[reedlaw]

Exactly. I mean an engine that's optimized to render vector polygons with 2D animation. Maybe OpenGL is all you'd need, but it seems like there could be libraries that let you focus on the animation rather than the low level details.