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At the GDC, I had a chance to meet with François Dujardin of the NeMo team, who gave me an informative preview of the product. Because the conversation we had included a lot of demonstration, it does not lend itself well to interview format, so I'll just sum up what NeMo is and why you should take a look at it.

Going into the meeting, I only had a vague idea of what NeMo was, and most of my impressions about it turned out to be wrong. So what is NeMo? Simply put, NeMo is a behavior and prototyping engine that allows you to put together a game demo in a very short amount of time. Even though it was primarily presented as a prototyping tool, it can also be used to create a complete game. Although it is primarily 3D, it can also be used to create isometric games.

NeMo in action

To give you a better idea of how NeMo is used, I'll sum up the demonstration we were given. First, a scene was imported from 3D Studio MAX. The scene was a simple laboratory, complete with scientist. Next, a behavior was defined for the scientists. Behaviors were designed through a simple graphical interface, and are set up as a flow chart. Behaviors can become extremely complex, but are easy to use because they can be packaged as components and reused or used as part of a larger behavior. Behaviors can also be created programmatically for a deeper level of control.

This particular behavior activated Character Studio-defined animations when the directional keys were pressed. After this, behaviors were added to several objects to make them impassable, and to a door so that it would slide open and shut smoothly. Within about 10 minutes, we had a nice-looking interactive demo ready to go.

The Spacerace demo

To give you an idea of the prototyping power of NeMo, we were shown several game demos, including the one at the left. The demos looked great, and the truly impressive thing is that each took one person 3 weeks or less to create.

NeMo comes in two versions. NeMo Create is the base product, and doesn't require programming knowledge to use. For people who want more low-level control, there's NeMo Dev. The packages come at the very reasonable rates of $1000 and $3500, respectively, and there is a 90 day trial version available.

A sample entry in the Arena contest

At the show, NeMo also announced a new contest, the Arena Game Design Competition. The contest is to see who can make the best game using their provided models and the Ipion Virtual Physics behavior library. Entries are due by April 23rd, and prizes include NeMo and Voodoo5 cards.

We were very impressed with the options available in NeMo, and encourage our readers to give the evaluation version a try. We'd like to thank François for taking the time to meet with us and show us their product.

To learn more about NeMo, visit their website at www.nemo.com or their enthusiast site The Swap Meet.