Technology
Human Head Studios licensed Epic Games' "Unreal Engine" and made several enhancements to it, including a skeletal animation system, a new particle effects system, and an enhanced shadowing system. Although made using the Unreal Engine, Rune is a third-person perspective game without any shooting. The weapons used in the game include swords, axes, maces, and other mediæval/fantasy melee weapons. Despite using an engine made for shooting, the interface lends itself well to a playing style consisting of running, jumping, and hacking at opponents.
An innovative feature of the game is that anything dropped by a dead opponent can be picked up and used. This extends to include body parts. Limbs can be swung as clubs, and heads can be carried and used as weapons. Although the game includes no ranged weapons, any weapon can be thrown. The handaxe is a commonly thrown weapon because of the range and speed with which it travels through the air.
Both Rune and Rune: Halls of Valhalla (HOV) were released with their own RuneEd toolkits which the community quickly used making several popular multiplayer mods (coop, CTT—capture the torch, 'bots, etc.). Although a few single player addons have been made, it is Rune's multiplayer aspect has been the focus of several mutators, skins, and hundreds of maps that are available through many clan and resource websites.
Read more about this topic: Rune (video game)
Famous quotes containing the word technology:
“Technology is not an image of the world but a way of operating on reality. The nihilism of technology lies not only in the fact that it is the most perfect expression of the will to power ... but also in the fact that it lacks meaning.”
—Octavio Paz (b. 1914)
“The real accomplishment of modern science and technology consists in taking ordinary men, informing them narrowly and deeply and then, through appropriate organization, arranging to have their knowledge combined with that of other specialized but equally ordinary men. This dispenses with the need for genius. The resulting performance, though less inspiring, is far more predictable.”
—John Kenneth Galbraith (b. 1908)
“If we had a reliable way to label our toys good and bad, it would be easy to regulate technology wisely. But we can rarely see far enough ahead to know which road leads to damnation. Whoever concerns himself with big technology, either to push it forward or to stop it, is gambling in human lives.”
—Freeman Dyson (b. 1923)