What if Game Graphics Never Aged? 398
An anonymous reader writes "If you've heard of Procedural Synthesis, you already think it's amazing. It's been used to create some extraordinary visuals in tiny packages, like .kkrieger, which is less than 96 Kilobytes big but still has graphics that look like like a modern PC title. Beyond that, there's even more that Procedural Synthesis might be able to do; what if your old video games never aged, never looked out-of-date? Imagine putting Halo 2 into your Xbox 360 only to have it automatically upgraded to look like Halo 3 in graphical quality. This article examines the unexpected way that Procedural Synthesis might impact gaming in the generation after the Xbox 360, PS3, and Nintendo Wii."
Disposable Games Vs Design Patterns (Score:5, Informative)
When I read this article, it sounded like a classic example of someone going nuts with the design patterns [wikipedia.org] that encourage encapsulation and separation of layers to improve modularity. Like someone had actually put in a lot of effort to the game to reduce the amount of effort that will be required later when new platforms and libraries come out for the game. On top of that, the imagery doesn't come from a data file but instead is derived on the fly from a library of procedures--something easily achieved by the strategy pattern [wikipedia.org]. The funny thing is that if other games have abstracted their graphics packages sufficiently, they should be able to rework the libraries to be procedures instead or maybe even build adapters to
Why don't we see this more often in all games? Because I think most games today are disposable. They're built for one console or platform with the intent of only running on the current version of Windows or Mac and with no interest in coming out with new releases that support new hardware or software. They do this because games are construed as novelty software that expire as the user tires of them. Games like WoW or other MMOs might bring about a shift in the way game designers spend their efforts. Maybe games will start to take a longer time to develop but last a hell of a lot longer than they traditionally have?
Re:Disposable Games Vs Design Patterns (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Disposable Games Vs Design Patterns (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Disposable Games Vs Design Patterns (Score:5, Funny)
From the article summary:
Congratulations - you've taken the
Re:Disposable Games Vs Design Patterns (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Disposable Games Vs Design Patterns (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Disposable Games Vs Design Patterns (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Disposable Games Vs Design Patterns (Score:2)
To be fair, I had a friend who actually played artificial life games with a pencil and graph paper because he was too poor to buy a computer. He'd also play space games, drawing vectors for the space ships, etc. It was a matter of extremely smart + extremely creative + extremely too much time on his hands.
Re:Disposable Games Vs Design Patterns (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Disposable Games Vs Design Patterns (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Disposable Games Vs Design Patterns (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm not really sure that there's a problem to be fixed. The modern console RPG is a totally ligitimate form of entertainment, IMO, that some of us enjoy even more than tabletop games. Though, I will agree that they are far removed from their origins, they've become something else, entirely. And yes, they p
Re:Disposable Games Vs Design Patterns (Score:5, Insightful)
By your same argument, graphics have nothing to do with games, and thus shouldn't be worked on either. Pong was 2 lines and a box. When books were first written, I wonder if anyone said "paper isn't for writing on, if you want a story, listen to your father's." When film first came out, I know many people said "it will never take off, no one wants to watch pictures on a screen," but here we are today, with people on the Internet telling others to turn to film for storyline because it doesn't belong anywhere else than the two established mediums.
It's more than possible for a game to have good graphics, good storyline and plot, and innovative gameplay. Unfortunately, the past few years have been fueled by video card manufacturer's pumping out graphics technology faster than most software producers have been able to keep up with, and so audiences became captivated with "oooh shiny water"...gameplay and storyline dropped by the wayside while pushing eye candy to the limit flourished. Like all things, though, people got tired of all glitz and no substance, and we're seeing that curve level out.
With mobile devices becoming more and more popular, we're beginning to see gameplay-based games gain some popularity again, and focus will probably shift there for the next few years as portable technology gets smaller and faster. At that point, computers will be what PCs are today, we'll see a shift back to storyline for a few years as RPGs gain popularity on the Nokia Futura in the Japanese market (and some may make it Westward), just in time for the next big graphics push, this time cell phones (if they're still called cell phones at this point) will be included.
Yes, I play the occassional game on my cell phone while waiting for class to start, or when the power goes out (as it tends to do often this time of year in Tampa, FL).
My point is, some people play games as digital puzzles, brain-teasers if you will. Some play them for the graphics. Some play them for story. Yeah, you can find brain-teasers in the back of the Sunday paper, you'll never beat the graphics of the real world, and story can be found in books and movies. That doesn't mean those are the only mediums "allowed" to do such things. Games, in the end, are about having fun, and what's fun to you isn't always going to be fun to me. Diversity is king. No, games are not storytelling, they are not graphics, and their not gameplay. They're any of them, and a smart publisher will offer all three, and then some.
Re:Disposable Games Vs Design Patterns (Score:4, Interesting)
Some game companies (including my employer) seem to think that their games are poor quality (oops...better not reveal my employer's name) because the storytelling isn't good enough. These people look to the movie business and see that many big effects movies suck because they have a weak story and assume that the same criticism carries over. It doesn't. Games and movies have a whole lot of different ways in which they can suck that don't relate to each other.
The game business seems to look to the movie business as a kind of more respectable big brother. So many game developers have now got it into their heads that they must try to develop things like movies. And hence they feel pressured into developing a story even though they may end up wasting resources that might better have been used for gameplay.
A nice example of the latter is the old adventure game business. Because these game developers felt that somehow what they were doing was lowbrow they renamed the genre to "interactive fiction" denying their games heritage.
Make games and be proud to make them, whether they have great graphics, great stories or great gameplay. Don't feel that somehow you have to compete with other art forms like literature and cinema on their own turf.
Re:Disposable Games Vs Design Patterns (Score:5, Insightful)
Story games always have finite possibility. The great games are those that combine fully independant elements so that game possibility is the exponential sum of its parts. Tieing all elements to a linear (or at best, a few linear) stories vastly reduces the number of gameplay possibilities.
The most extreme example of this is the cutscene. Cutscenes are dead gametime, the equivalent of having static on the radio. Personally I blame anime (which also has long pointless exposition between the parts one generally cares about) If it takes more than 1 minute to get from powering up the game to get from powering on to playing a real (not training) level, then the designers are doing something very wrong. These are games, not movies, or something we should have to *train* for.
I think geeks are killing gaming. In the early 90s PC gaming was full of countless genres of odd, off-the-wall games. Most dads I knew (I live in a University town) had Civilization, Lemmings, Kings Quest, etc. on their office computers. These days games are increasingly fast paced, increasingly involved, increasingly require dozens or even hundreds of hours of play to uncover content (locking content is a very cheap way of artificially creating interest in otherwise dull aspects of the game), increasingly require the simultaneous use of 12 buttons. Games are increasingly only for hard-core gamers, and as a working adult with very few video game playing friends it pisses me off. I don't want to play a game for ten hours before I get to the meat. I'm not going to slog through 100 hours of repetitive menu based battles to watch some cutscenes. I want simulations, things that are fun to play with the first 15 minutes you're in the game, and won't lose interest once the game runs out of script. Or if it's a scripted game, I want something more like the old adventures and american computer RPGs, where the story was revealed along the sides as a fun *game* progressed, and the reward for getting further was getting to a cool level, not getting some non-interactive cgi cartoon of 13-22 year old's idea of "hot."
And get the hell offa my lawn ya damn hooligans.
if (storytelling == good) replay_value++; (Score:3, Insightful)
For example, I'm going to buy Escape Velocity Nova [ambrosiasw.com], not because I'm such a big fan of Elite clones but because in the demo I played halfway through the Vell-os storyline and I want to get that mind-control device out of my pilot's spine and then get back at the Federation. I
Re:Disposable Games Vs Design Patterns (Score:4, Insightful)
And so on. Now perhaps your complaint is 'but then I can't do anything I want to at all'. Thing is, you never could in any game. Each game is a finite universe. Clever designers have figured out how to make it look large, but they can't simulate everything you'd want to do any more than storytellers can create branches for everything you'd want to do. The problems that the gameplay designers face and the problems that the storytellers face are rather similar beneath it all in that way.
Re:Disposable Games Vs Design Patterns (Score:4, Insightful)
Gameplay, THEN story and plot.
Re:Disposable Games Vs Design Patterns (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Disposable Games Vs Design Patterns (Score:3, Funny)
C'mon, EVERYBODY know that one.
Re:Disposable Games Vs Design Patterns (Score:3, Funny)
And green dragons mean you need to adjust your monitor.
Re:Disposable Games Vs Design Patterns (Score:3, Funny)
OBPennyArcade (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Disposable Games Vs Design Patterns (Score:5, Insightful)
An adventure game (FPSs and RPGs, the likes of GTA games) that does not have a plot may be fun and may satisfy the visceral need to shoot at stuff, but the lack of a soul, a central concept, a dramatic tension will mean that the game's design and construction will suffer as a result; there's no motive for anything. Plot done properly is an essential part of a really satisfying game experience.
That's not to say that games that lack plot can't be good, or fun, or interesting. It just means that if you're lobbing bullets at someone, it's nice to know why. Makes you aim for the head/crotch a bit more.
Re:Disposable Games Vs Design Patterns (Score:3, Interesting)
Speed (Score:5, Insightful)
Speed. Running algorithms to generate every damn thing takes a lot more processor time than loading a pre-rendered object file. Disk space is dirt cheap compared to processor cycles, so the appropriate trade study is made....
Re:Speed (Score:2)
Load times can seriously affect the playability of a game. If it takes too long to transition between levels (or areas or whatever) the game might not go over well. Many games load content on demand, constantly to prevent such transition delays. Rendering all the media from procedures would most likely put a serious dent in game performance compared to loading the media from DMA disk.
-matthew
Re:Speed (Score:3, Interesting)
Things like texture synthesis can be done on the fly for simple cases, and procedurally generated models are being used today to some extent,
Re:Disposable Games Vs Design Patterns (Score:5, Insightful)
Bingo. Game developers aren't interested in technology that will extend the life of games (unless people are paying a subscription). This technology is very cool and we'll certainly be seeing more of it in select areas (notably open-source games), but it doesn't really make business sense on a wide scale.
Re:Disposable Games Vs Design Patterns (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Disposable Games Vs Design Patterns (Score:4, Insightful)
But I can think of several reasons to do this, none of which is about doing the consumer a favor in the future at your own expense.
The first is to cut down on marginal development expenses. I don't know much about game development, but IIRC artwork is a large expense. Perhaps by having the artists work at a more abstract level, setting ranges of values for scenery and character generation, you could reduce the amount of hand detail they deal with. So, if you have the resources to create a world a thousand hectares in area, perhaps you could machine generate a million hectares.
The second reason I can think for doing this is to have the game automatically expand and adapt to the player. If you liked dungeon crawls, it could make more dungeons for you. If you preferred outdoor play, it would create more terrain for you. You would never finish exploring the world of the game because it would expand as you explored it.
The third reason I can think of for doing this is that you might want to deliver the game on line.
In any case, the result would not be, artistically speaking, as good as if a team of talented artists was given the time to do things by hand. The screenshots confirm this: they are cliched and uninteresting. But even Miyazaki uses some computer generated effects these days, although he strictly limits the amount.
Re:Disposable Games Vs Design Patterns (Score:2)
You would never finish exploring the world of the game because it would expand as you explored it.
Yeah, they could be retro-reference cool and paradoxical at the same time and call it "Ender's Game".
Re:Disposable Games Vs Design Patterns (Score:2)
"Why don't we see this more often in all games? Because I think most games today are disposable. They're built for one console or platform with the intent of only running on the current version of Windows or Mac and with no interest in coming out with new releases that support new hardware or software. They do this because games are construed as novelty software that expire as the user tires of them. Games like WoW or other MMOs might bring about a shift in the way game designers spend their efforts.
Re:Disposable Games Vs Design Patterns (Score:2)
I don't think so, in fact, I think the opposite is the case. Old books and movies continue to be revenue generators for their respective publishers years after they have been released. Furthermore they don't seem to affect the sales of new books and movies. Considering that the primary cost of games (like other forms of IP), is in the creation, with the duplicatio
Re:Disposable Games Vs Design Patterns (Score:2)
Re:Disposable Games Vs Design Patterns (Score:2)
People will get bored of the storyline and same characters over and over."
That's not what it's about. It isn't about you playing the game over and over, it is about new audiences, way down the road, being able to experience the game.
Re:Disposable Games Vs Design Patterns (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Disposable Games Vs Design Patterns (Score:2)
It's kind of sad when you think about it-- this idea of games "expiring". Other art forms, including movies
Re:Disposable Games Vs Design Patterns (Score:5, Funny)
This is ludicrous - cloud cuckoo land. My texture mapping code is intimately bound up in the AI of the enemies.
It's simply not possible to separate these two deeply entwined concepts.
Never (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Never (Score:2)
When somebody comes up with a way to generate good dialog, story and gameplay via procedural algorithms, then maybe, but I wouldn't hold my breath. For today I am very happy with good old hand crafted storylines, dialogs and well designed gameplay, graphics, while important, really are secondary to the rest of the game. That said, there is a lot of benefit in these algorithms, Elite was a perfect example of this in offering a whole universe
My graphics haven't aged... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:My graphics haven't aged... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:My graphics haven't aged... (Score:3, Funny)
http://www.thatvideosite.com/view/2855.html [thatvideosite.com]
Duke Nukem Forever (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Duke Nukem Forever (Score:2)
You mean screenshots?
Re:Duke Nukem Forever (Score:2)
Re:Duke Nukem Forever (Score:2)
I dunno, black screen sounds more like Doom 3 graphics to me...
What about gameplay quality? (Score:3, Interesting)
There's all this hype on graphics and technology, but the heart of any game is still (and always will be) gameplay. Sure the games of old look "crappy", but in many cases they provided a great gaming experience. I for one hope that we just get to the point where graphics are real-life quality and we can focus on gameplay. Just my $.02
http://religousfreaks.com/ [religousfreaks.com]Krondor (Score:2)
Some of the best RPG fun that can be had on a computer. Graphics are good enough, gameplay is just well... AWESOME!
Where did I put that spider... I want to poison my blade again!
Re:Krondor (Score:2)
Re:What about gameplay quality? (Score:2)
Exactly my point. Gameplay has slipped in priority behind graphics. I would like to see gameplay accelerate at the same pace as graphics quality.
http://religiousfreaks.com/ [religiousfreaks.com]Nintendo Wii (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Nintendo Wii (Score:2)
scalable? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:scalable? (Score:2)
The part this misses is the randomness, such as stains or scratches. Procedural textures are pretty bad at generating non random features. Blending between two textures, say a shiny metal surface with rusty bits, is also hard to convincingly create.
In theory it's possible to pr
Re:scalable? (Score:2)
The Good? (Score:5, Interesting)
Some games are still played for years after they've fallen behind the curve on graphics; this might mitigate the future ugliness, adding longevity to a popular title. Keeping gamers interested in (and talking about) your game makes sense, whether you'll be producing different titles in the future or will be focusing on sequels.
Ultimately, though, my hope is that algorithmic content generation will bring game development costs down for indies. Maybe I'm dreaming.
_______________________
Indie Superstar - A video webcast for gamers who play indie games [indiesuperstar.com]
Dejobaan Games - Indie games for people who watch video webcasts [dejobaan.com]
Re:The Good? (Score:2, Interesting)
Will Happen for Select Games (Score:2, Insightful)
Oblivion is a bad example (Score:5, Informative)
The grass, on the other hand, is randomly placed and might qualify. About all that could happen on better hardware in the future is "more grass," though.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Oblivion is a bad example (Score:2)
Of course, I've been wrong before. Anybody know for sure?
Call it (Score:3, Funny)
One major reason (Score:5, Informative)
Re:One major reason (Score:3, Insightful)
Since we're on the subject... Exult 3D! (Score:5, Interesting)
Exult [sourceforge.net] was a good example of "procedural" "growth" of a game.
Ultima VII was a 2D RPG. Yet, all objects in the game world have height. One guy at Exult hacked up a version of Exult that runs Ultima VII in 3D mode - basically, mapping all 2D tiles around cubes as described by their dimensions and height data.
The results were quite interesting [sammatthews.com] (buildings looked kind of good, creatures and many plants and natural formations not so good, so they are being replaced by 3D models).
But it is a good example and exercise in extracting more detail from the game than the original developers intended or envisioned.
A bit OT (Score:5, Insightful)
So you'd call that... (Score:3, Funny)
.kkrieger download (Score:5, Informative)
Download here (beta version)
What if Game Graphics Never Aged? (Score:2)
Re:What if Game Graphics Never Aged? (Score:2)
Don't they already ? (Score:5, Funny)
Procedural Paradigm (Score:2, Informative)
Allow me to translate.... (Score:5, Insightful)
At least half the design time of a console these days is making sure it's HARD to port games to another console, so that it will be an exclusive title, and they can make more money.
I fyou think Microsoft hates things like OpenGL, you've never seen the fires of hell hatered that people like Sony, Nintendo etc have for anything that makes game development easier.
Re:Allow me to translate.... (Score:3, Insightful)
If you want an exclusive title then you have your lawers draw up a contact with their lawers. The fact that two APIs are different might just be due to the fact that they were *gasp* designed by two different design teams.
If someone wants to port a game then they will figure out how to port the API. Figuring out how to get around a legal contract is another story.
Re: (Score:2)
Total Annihilation (Score:3, Informative)
Likewise, the AI engine and other aspects were forward thinking- table based, programmable and over the years the AI for the game and units and maps have all only improved with age.
It is the *only* game that I purchased back then that I still play and enjoy.
What would happen? (Score:2)
Makes sense, depending on your point of view. (Score:2, Insightful)
The gaming industry is like medicine
I'm not convinced that this will work that well... (Score:2)
So, in short, don't expect this to happen. As long as graphics continue to improve, game companies will use that to sell you new games, not improve the old ones for free (or ev
Re:I'm not convinced that this will work that well (Score:3, Insightful)
Grand Theft Auto III graphically looks the same as Vice City graphically looks the same as San Andreas. Those games sell incredibly well when new "versions" come out regardless of the fact that there arn't any graphical improvements.
Why?
Demoscene, anyone? (Score:2, Informative)
Check out FR-08, circa 2000, by Farbrausch...this demo goes on for nearly 15 minutes at 1024x768 graphics that certainly blew away anything of that time, and its 64KB.....64KB!!
Download Here [pouet.net][pouet.net]
Also, see FR-025, circa 2003, this "popular" demo absolutely blew my mind when I first watched it.
Download He [pouet.net]
That will NEVER fly (Score:2)
Re:That will NEVER fly (Score:2)
My zillion dollar idea - for free! (Score:2)
3D games look great as-is, but they look even better with antialiasing, right? But AA is a huge tax on the GPU, slowing frame rate considerably.
So why have the GPU do AA at all? Why not put a dedicated antialiasing CPU into monitors? GPUs would push polygons and shaders which is what they do best, and the monitor could use some kind of algorithm to pretty-up textures, reduce jaggy edges, and sm
Diablo? (Score:2)
A couple of points (Score:3, Interesting)
Wil wright talks about this is a recent lecture (Score:3, Informative)
Procedural generation is still crap. (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem with the idea is instead of creating larger high quality unique images, or large quanity of images, the idea is to generate your images on the fly through code.
Ok that would work. And it does. However it doesn't work in large scale games. First off if you look at Procedural generation you have to code the way the system works very carefully. It's like explaining to an alien what my DDR pad is. "it's a large pad with four buttons on it, It has lights." oops forgot it's metal, forgot this and that. And what's worse, every single time you use it you'll have to create a new way to describe the texture, or you'll get the same texture for everything.
But do you realize how long it would take to design the ENTIRE world of Halo with that tool? How about Prey? how about GTA? It wouldn't take 3 years between games, it'd take 10 years, or it would cost vastly more.
Xbox 360 fanboys (not that I hate the system) tout this as the reason they don't need blu-ray. The theory is sound. (It does work, it will work, it will always work) But at the same time, the developed a small game for it. Did they have trees, multiple people with tons of different clothes, flowing textures. Did their game sell a couple million copies?
Some companies do use procedural generation, for stuff that's inconsiquencial. Trees is the big one currently, Speed tree save tons of time, but that's the only widespread use of the technology so far.
It boils down to this. If procedural generation is the solution to all our problems why haven't we used it in everything? Why wasn't it discovered earlier? It's not because of the power of computers, it's because it's not going to save the world. We arn't going to see well made games using procedural generation for graphics because it just bogs down the processor, and it doesn't give any noticable improvement in graphic quality. If we had 10 processors, then yeah we can waste 4-5 working on generating the world, but even with 6 processors, 1 is for graphics, 1 or 2 is for physics (a must have in most games now), and the rest is for your gameplay components, we don't have the extra power no matter what ivory tower scientists want use to believe.
This is all "what if" the answer though is "it can't"
Re:Procedural generation is still crap. (Score:3, Insightful)
If I create armor in one game, I could use that same armor in each game, or use it as a template for the next set of armor.
This doesn't work to well today because of the very issues this would solve.
"If procedural generation is the solution to all our problems why haven't we sed it in everything? Why wasn't it discovered earlier?"
Thats y
I can't see this working for too long... (Score:5, Insightful)
Eventually when memory (RAM & HD) are nearly free and nearly infinite, visuals in games may come close to paralelling reality (i.e. a tree in a game may look more like a real tree than it does today). A game that is developed today even with the most advanced mathematical algorythms applied in a graphics platform to be expandable to future, will not be imediately upgradable (from an end-users's perspective) to benefit from an instant graphics upgrade. I.e. you can't just shove the game in the latest new console and expect it to have graphics magically upgraded to the latest high standards. Somebody will still have to go through the entire game and add granularity to each wall, floor, and animated characters in the game which mathematics can not auto-magically generate with accuracy enough to come close to paralleling the randomness & beautify of reality. So the only alternative, I can see is to have the games of today allow future artists to ADD new graphic content into the old game with some newer gaming technology... but somebody still has to put in the effort to create & import all the new graphics.
So I think perhaps the article is misleading. Again, from an end-users's perspective, the game can't just magically upgrade all its graphics and have it equal in looks to whatever the latest high benchmark of impressiveness might be. At best, the end-user plugs in the CD/DVD into the new console (assuming it even accepts older formats) and over the internet, for a fee, newer graphics are downloadable... will users pay a small fee for this service? And more importantly, will gaming companies bother to re-create nicer graphics for old games? Is this a sustainable business model? I would venture to guess that only the most popular addictive games of all times might justify this kind of effort in a gaming company's project list.
Having said all that, I'm all for http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Reality
Adeptus
Already Supported by the Xbox 360 (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Waste of Resources for the Company (Score:2)
Re:Waste of Resources for the Company (Score:2)
Re:Waste of Resources for the Company (Score:3, Insightful)
The onus (real word ??) to improve and change the game then falls onto the model rather than the graphics.
Re:Waste of Resources for the Company (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Waste of Resources for the Company (Score:2)
Visual design is an art form, and part of art is the way its limitations allow the imagination to flourish; that's why people still paint even though photography is more realistic, and why people still write books. The original Super Mario Bros. from 1985 is still one of the best looking g
PC emulation isn't required... (Score:2)
Re:Fear of aging... (Score:3, Funny)
; )