The State of Video Game Physics 170
The Guardian's games blog convened a panel of engineers and other experts to talk about the current state of video game physics. A great deal of research is currently going on to make better use of multiple cores so that advanced physics tools and engines can take advantage of all the processing power available in modern computers. Many of those tools are being put to work these days to find more realistic ways of breaking things, and game developers are trying to wrap their heads around destructible environments. Mike Enoch, lead coder at Ruffian Games, said, "This idea of simulating interactions and constructing the game world similar to how you would construct the real world generates more emergent gameplay, where the game plays out in a unique way for each player, and the player can come up with solutions to problems that the designer might not have thought of." Another area that still sees a lot of attention is making game characters more human, in terms of moving and looking as realistic as possible, as well as how a game's AI perceives what's happening. "The problem is not necessarily in having the most advanced path-finding technique with large-scale awareness; we need to have more micro behaviors, with a proper physics awareness of the environment," said software engineer George Torres.
Re:Two acronyms (Score:3, Informative)
Ever hear of All Points Bulletin [apb.com]?
Way to be behind the curve, AC.
Re:Two acronyms (Score:3, Informative)
Kids! This is the only real game called APB! [wikipedia.org]
Re:Nice Way to Teach Actual Physics (Score:4, Informative)
Re:No more (Score:2, Informative)
Oh, physics can add fun. While Crazy Machines didn't benefit from improving the physics over The Incredible Machine games like Red Faction Guerilla turn the physics into a major gameplay element, letting you disintegrate the ground under an enemy's feet or enter a building through a wall with your sledgehammer (or vaporize an enemy in cover along with what he's hiding behind). I also really liked NyxQuest: Kindred Spirits (formerly Icarian) with its puzzles about moving blocks around your character.
Re:Am I the only one (Score:2, Informative)
I think AI's are gong through a transition period where before they were almost entirely scripted so in an fps they wander around a set route until you spot them and then they perform the attack action. Now they are trying to make the AI think more for itself so that you can get more interesting game play that adapts to what you do. The problem is that the new stuff is pretty difficult so you get quite a few issues like you say because the testers cannot pick out and fix all of the little problems because the system is complicated and hard to understand. If you ever look at a system like that you will realise how hard it is to fix issues because you get a lot of chaos so reproducing an issue is difficult let alone fixing it.
Re:Character animation vs. physics (Score:2, Informative)
Have you heard of Euphoria? So far, it's the most realistic system I've seen for "ragdoll" - it's actually more ragdoll + AI.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qi5adyccoKI [youtube.com]
It works to great effect in GTA4. What do you think of it?