Hey everyone, with Black and White 2 having gone gold, I decided to compile everything we've found about Dimitri. Lionhead's next (assuming it's not scrapped) big title, of course following FableTLC, The Movies, and BnW2.
We've heard rumors all over the place, but here's my shot at the first unofficial knowledge base on the possible upcoming title.
Some of the first news ever to be reported on this title was found here, back in 2001:
http://pc.ign.com/articles/095/095065p1.html
stating:
May 19, 2001 - When we met with Peter Molyneux today to view the incredible Xbox game coming out of Lionhead Sudios' satellite Big Blue Box Studios,[Fable i believe--Giff] he let the code name of their next internal project for the PC slip: Project Dimitri
The next news came awhile later, promising a screenshot of the title to be released sometime in the next year.
http://pc.ign.com/articles/369/369526p1.html
August 29, 2002 - At last year's E3, we learned about a little Lionhead project codenamed Dimitri... While chatting with head-Lionhead Peter Molyneux at this year's ECTS, he told us that one -- and only one -- screenshot of Project Dimitri would be released next March.
But what
is Dimitri, anyway? Even
Wikipedia doesn't know, saying
Lionhead proper is working on two games, The Movies (a sims-like game based upon the premise of running your own Movie Studio) and Dimitri, a simulation game of some sort (about which Lionhead is being unusually tight-lipped).
Perhaps some of the answers can come from the depths of Lionhead.com itself. A search for Dimitri brings up the rumors about its state of the art Artifical Intelligence, such as
Black & White has won a number of awards for the best AI in any computer game, including US PC Gamer Award 2001-2002. It has been nominated for Guinness Book of Records for best AI in any game.
And what's more, the AI in Project Dimitri will be, our analysts have estimated, approximately 8 times better.
as well as
Is this AI for Dimitri or for the Black & White series of games as well?
We are hoping to use it in future projects as well. The beauty is that it is a transportable system.
according to Planetlionhead.com
Dimitri is the code name for the newest Lionhead project. It is a top secret project and Lionhead has published very little about it. Some of the current rumors can be found here.
Dimitri is, at the moment, the largest Lionhead project. 30 people of the Lionhead team have been working on it since the end of 1999.
The name of the project originates in the name of Peter Molyneux' godchild.
Dimitri contains some sexual scenes.
In Dimitri the AI focuses on simulation of social processes and behaviors of people.
Dimitri is being developed for the PC
It was said in an interview with Lionhead AI Programmer, Richard Evans, that there would be social groups.
Dimitri will not be done for, at maximum, another five years (Aprox. 2007).
as if to back this up,
Answers.com has news from PeterM on Dimitri, as recently as 2005.
However, during an interview with Computer and Video Games, on April 6th, 2005, Peter Molyneux revealed that "[Dimitri is] a game about (pause for dramatic drum roll) ...you. It allows anyone who plays the game to relive their life, their entire individual life. That's a pretty ambitious concept." While our [C&VG's] jaw dropped to the floor, Lionhead PR hastily intervened with the effect of a virtual gagging order.
However, the best way to hear about Dimitri is from PeterM himself, in this
Video Interview from August, 04. The news on Dimitri comes about 1/3 through the video, and though Peter is very tight lipped about the game he calls it
Lionhead's flagship techknowlogy game..and also it's simplest
Interestingly, though, is this report from
BBC news reported in 2002, confirming the rumors I had heard before but not found evidence for.
Dimitri is set in a small town and the computer-controlled characters are given more realism by establishing a common set of social rules defining what is acceptable or unacceptable in given situations.
To sum up, all of this is what little is known about Dimitri. Hopefully the title has not been scrapped, and therefore this thread is not irrelevent. However, since there is obviously no Dimitri forum, i figured OT was the only forum it would fit into appropriately. Hopefully it won't immediately sink to the bottom like most threads on this forum do on a daily basis, since it took well around an hour to compile and write all this up
![Happy [:)]](/Emoticons/happy.gif)
Lastly,
the largest compellation of screenshots/concept art can be found today at
http://lionsource.planet-multiplayer.de/dimitri/pictures/artworks/index.html
-Giffdud