Iranian Game Developer Prepares to Launch Title

[Minos]

Pretty cool stuff. A bunch of Iranian dudes making such a high-quality game using only open source software and google brings happiness to my heart =)

Iran posses absolutely no copyright laws, meaning that games, music and movies can be freely distributed, leading Arash Jafari to state that, “People thought we had lost our minds” for choosing to make games as a profession.

Additionally, the developers had to work around trade sanctions against Iran, forcing their hand into using freely available open-source software to power their game. The group also leveraged the Internet to learn more about development. Jafari said that, “Google was our university.”

The developers also recently received a grant from Iran’s Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance, which will help it promote the game abroad, leading Chief Executive Amir Hossein Fassihi to proclaim, “We are now in control of our own future.” Indeed the game has already secured distribution in Germany.

Sauce: http://www.gamepolitics.com/2010/03/22/ ... unch-title

Trailer:

All of this reminds of John Carmack's famous quote:

"In the information age, the barriers just aren't there. The barriers are self-imposed. If you want to set off and go develop some grand new thing, you don't need millions of dollars of capitalization. You need enough pizza and Diet Coke to stick in your refrigerator, a cheap PC to work on, and the dedication to go through with it. I slept on floors. I waded across rivers."

[FrieChamp]

The technology and asset quality is absolutely remarkable considering they have only used open source software, but the game looks 1:1 like God of War! Different setting, characters and so forth - sure, but everything else I see in that trailer, from combat moves to the wall climbing, the rotating levers and bridges, everything looks like copied directly from GoW. :-| On second thought considering id Software started by copying Super Mario 1:1 to the PC, maybe that is not such a bad start...

[Jetsetlemming]

Yeah, same reaction as Frie: Kinda disappointing that the end result of such an inspirational dev tale is a God of War clone. Also, kinda surprised this doesn't in some way get them in trouble for the violence or something, but in fact got them a grant from "Iran’s Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance". One thing's for sure, they probably didn't copy the more raunchy elements of GOW

Also, I laughed at the 360 sound they played at the end of the trailer, on the "Coming Soon" screen.

[Warby]

the influences here are obviously crystal clear but i strangely LIKE how readable everything is i cant tell EXACTLY what is going on in each and every shot unlike lets say vanquish or bayonetta !

so this gets my fullest approval

also <3 carmeck quote !

[Jetsetlemming]

I wanna know what John Carmack needed, game development-wise, that required wading across rivers.

[Serenius]

The world needs more (high quality) God of War clones. Bring on the Iranians!

[Mazy]

Wow, looks surprisingly good. Hope it does well for em.

Some iffy animation tho. Also, Garshasp is an awful title D:

[Minos]

I wanna know what John Carmack needed, game development-wise, that required wading across rivers.

Carmack lived in a swampy area in Louisiana and one day during a heavy rainstorm he and romero had to literally swim through a flooded area infested with crocodiles to get to the house. Work on Commander Keen could not stop!

Of course that may be exaggerated but they indeed lived in a swampy area. You can see photos of it on Romero's site

[-HP-]

eh eh, yeah I remember reading that on Masters of Doom! Man, those guys went through some really cool times.

[AlexM]

I just read Masters of Doom (on your guys advice) and loved it! Definitely going to read it more than once.

Game looks great, especially considering the barriers they had. Definitely shows how true Carmacks quote is.

[Sindwiller]

The technology and asset quality is absolutely remarkable considering they have only used open source software...

Actually, they used Max and ZBrush and MS Visual C++. The only thing FOSS they used seems to be OGRE, which is nothing but a high quality library.

[Bunglo]

Reminded me of the original Turok for some reason...

[e-freak]

-snip-

Edited August 8, 2021 by e-freak

[Serenius]

looks kinda cool, though I'm worried this is "sponsored" by some kind of islam(istic?) ministry (though that might just be the usual term in iran) and we don't know anthing about the story (moral) yet... looks great in the video, so maybe just stop worrying for a second

My keen sense of intuition tells me it will be a literal or loose following of this story:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garshasp

[Sindwiller]

Ah, a Zoroastrian myth! That's bound to be interesting as long as they preserved the story in the game more or less in its original ambiance.