Neal Stepenson, author of many a fantastic novel (including possibly my favorite book: Snow Crash), thinks the world would be a better place if we had as much effort put into sword fighting simulation as we do gun fighting.
He aims to fix this by creating PC game Clang, a motion-controlled arena dueling title set in a medieval world.
Control will be handles by the Razer Hydra PC motion sensor controller, which is a lot like a PlayStation Move.
Stephenson is attempting to remain as faithful to various sword fighting styles as him and his dev team can. The first style that’s going to be supported by Clang is that of the two-handed longsword.
Stephenson has done what all the mad inventors do in 2012: gone to Kickstarter to help fund his project. So far, after just two days, he’s managed to raise $150,000 out of his target of $500,000. Pretty good going we’d say, and should hopefully mean he’ll hit the target.
Plans for Clang aren’t too big or hard-to-reach, and the community will be receiving mod tools in order to develop the game further once it’s been released.
Long term plans look to explore turning the game into an open world title with a story or linking it to Stephenson’s online interactive fiction project Mongoliad.
“If Kickstarter had been around a few years ago, we wouldn’t have ready to take advantage of it,” explained Stephenson in one of the two rather well produced introductory videos.
“It’s taken us a few years of sparring and experimenting and scratching our heads about this thing where it’s ready to hire the talent we need to release a simple, playable game.
“There’s not going to be a big, open world where you can wander around killing badgers and harvesting magic weeds, because those things are expensive. So, by process of elimination, it’s going to be an arena game. Lots of fighting, not a whole lot in the way of plot or character development. But, that’s kind of what we do as a living, so we can always add that stuff in later once this thing is up on its feet.
“We’re ready,” he said. “We’ve got geeks in suits of armour, we’ve got geeks in front of computer work stations, we’ve got a lot of people out there who like play games with sword fighting in them who might be ready to step it up to something more interesting.”
Published: Jun 11, 2012 07:50 am