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Long read: The beauty and drama of video games and their clouds

"It's a little bit hard to work out without knowing the altitude of that dragon..."

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Bam brings you .. Fire!

You're gonna burn

What do you get when you mix fire breathing dragons and modern military hardware? Reign Of Fire apparently, and now Bam! have released a new batch of screenshots from their PlayStation 2 game-of-the-movie showing off its all-important reactive fire effects. According to developers Kuju, everything in the game from livestock and crops to people and jeeps is now flammable, each with its own unique flash point and burn rate, allowing fire to spread and burn out as it moves from one object to another. The resulting firestorms can contain literally thousands of particles, but it's not just there for aesthetic reasons. As in the forthcoming movie, food is in short supply, so defending your farms against marauding dragons is an important part of the game. Players are even given an armoured fire engine with water cannon and grenades (a grown up version of water balloons, perhaps?) to douse fires and dampen nearby crops and buildings to make it harder for the fire to take hold. It's certainly a novel idea, and with the game due for release within the next few months we should know soon whether it looks and feels as good in practice as it does on the drawing board. Related Feature - Reign of Fire screenshots

Fire fighting, post apocalyptic style

Source - press release

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