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vovan
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Yeah, that's some amazing stuff. The thing that impresses me most is the claim that everything, from the meshes, to the textures, to the animations, is procedurally generated. That's really some impressive stuff. Actually, that's the topic of one of the speeches Wright will be giving Thursday - procedurally generated content. (Incidentally, the man that pops up in one's mind at the phrase "procedural content" - Chris Crawford - will also apparently be there to say a few words. So that's shaping up to be quite an exciting talk.)
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nostromo
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Montréal, Québec
Mar 2002
time: 00:36
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Yeah, these procedural programming methods are pretty intriguing. From the gamespy article:
quote:
For inspiration, Wright looked to the "demo scene," a group of (mostly European) coders who specialized in doing a whole lot with a little bit of code. Their procedural programming methods were able to, for example, fit an entire 3D game in 64K, using mathematics to generate textures and music, etc. |
64K? Wow!
Last edited by nostromo on 15-03-2005 at 12:12
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Adrian Hon
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Living in Perplex City
Nov 2001
time: 05:36
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Pictures look great, very intriguing. I wonder what kind of freedom you'll get at the various levels.
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vovan
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Well...
So I was trying to pry some info out of Wright today, but he was very much reluctant to say anything not vague about the game, but later on today, he actually demoed spore.... All I can say is...
WOAH
Honestly, I'm speechless. It is quite amazing.
You can read the link nostromo provided. The demo I saw today ran by the very same script essentially. The scale of the game is totally breathtaking and unprecedentally astounding...
Well, I am very much impressed. So much so, I don't think I can even gather enough thoughts to express why this game is cool right now.  I'll write something up later maybe if people are interested, but honestly, it is all in the gamespy overview.
I will say this though. The gameplay is very much open-ended, in the sense that there are no explicitly stated goals. So, if you didn't like SimCity, you might not like this thing either. It is worth noting, however, that by the same token Civ games also have no explicit goals.
Also, as far as cancellation is concerned... I sort of doubt that the game will be cancelled. In fact, DC, I'll bet you a month of Poly+ subscription that the game will be released in foreseeable future, say before christmas 2006.  For one thing, it looks very good already, although there are noticable chunks missing. Secondly, from the demo, and some of the other talks given by Wright himself, as well as Bing Gordon, the creative director at EA, I sort of got the impression (and as a disclaimer, this is my impression only, not something that was explicitly said, so I might be wrong) that EA is treating Maxis now as a company that has proven itself, and in that sense is sort of giving them the creative freedom, and also not breathing down their neck for results. So I think this game has a very good ponteital of being released to the public. Whether it will actually be fun to play or not, I don't know yet, but it looks like it will be. But then again, that's what such demos are specifically tailored to convey, so I might be just another victim of good marketing.
Also, to address DC's question... What graphics can he use... That was actually the topic of a lot of speeches I heard today and yesterday, and the concise answer is he won't use any graphics. All visuals in the game - including meshes, textures and animations (well, excluding the UI, I'm gussing ) is generated on the fly. Actually, one of the talks today was by a finnish dude from Demoscene, as linked by ADG above, and these guys are really working closely with Maxis on this. The idea here is that procedural generation of content reduces the amount of storage needed for it by a factor of about 100. That is, basically, with 50 megs of binary code, you can generate 5 gigs of content, which is roughly equivalent to 5 full-length movies.
Any way, yeah, this is incredibly exciting stuff.
Vovan
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Urban Ranger
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Apolyton Duke of Off-Topic
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quote:
Originally posted by vovan
Also, as far as cancellation is concerned... I sort of doubt that the game will be cancelled. In fact, DC, I'll bet you a month of Poly+ subscription that the game will be released in foreseeable future, say before christmas 2006. For one thing, it looks very good already, although there are noticable chunks missing. |
I see very strong parallels between Spore and MoO 3 right now. Lots of hype, a lot of hyped-up followers, good stuff at the beginning...
All is missing is the death spiral at the end.
quote:
Originally posted by vovan
All visuals in the game - including meshes, textures and animations (well, excluding the UI, I'm gussing ) is generated on the fly. |
That's still graphics...
quote:
Originally posted by vovan
The idea here is that procedural generation of content reduces the amount of storage needed for it by a factor of about 100. |
With a corresponding demand on processing power.
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14-03-2005 05:01
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