Will Wright's New Game: Spore

[vovan]

Originally posted by nostromo
64K? Wow!

Yeah, it's really cool what they can do procedurally. Here:

http://www.theprodukkt.com/

is a game in 96KB, for example, which actually looks good!





EDIT: Damn you, ADG.

[Adagio]

[Adagio]

Pictures of the game:

http://www.gamingsteve.com/

[vovan]

Originally posted by Adagio
Pictures of the game:

http://www.gamingsteve.com/

Ooh, sweet, thanks for the link!

/me saves the images to his hard drive before they go down.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger


Uh, I was trying to point out that just because something makes a lot of money doesn't mean it's good.

good in a movie or game is subjective - whether you like Wright's games or not, theyre important to the industry.

[Adrian Hon]

Pictures look great, very intriguing. I wonder what kind of freedom you'll get at the various levels.

[CapTVK]

hmmmm...looks familiar

[Darkstar]

Will Wright tends to deliver on his promises. Unlike other developers. Spore has been in dev since WW got bored of Sims1.

There are millions of Sims players that would disagree with Urban Ranger. Fun is fun. If you enjoy something and no one gets hurt, what's the big deal? There isn't.

I'm looking forward to SimLife2. I mean, Spore. New game concepts should be encouraged... as should the very classics, updated and revisited. The game industry has gotten too Hollywood. Something being complained about much at the GDCs... They find it hard to make an interesting game concept, because the cost is as much as making a movie, and its hard to find capital for games that aren't clones or sequels or movie cross-overs.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Darkstar
There are millions of Sims players that would disagree with Urban Ranger. Fun is fun. If you enjoy something and no one gets hurt, what's the big deal? There isn't.

If you think watching a vaguely humanoid figure taking a 5-minute crap is fun, more power to you.

[Darkstar]

Potty humor is big. Look at Tarence and Philip's popularity.

The big deal for "The Sims" is its open ended nature. Many people are playing dolls. Others are making up stories for themselves, and occasionally sharing them. Some are just messing about. Hey, as long as it doesn't hurt anyone, then as long as its fun, have at it.

[DaShi]

I'm trying to figure out how to hurt people with it.

[DrSpike]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger


If you think watching a vaguely humanoid figure taking a 5-minute crap is fun, more power to you.

Hehe, pwned by UR. That must be painful.

[DarkCloud]

It sounds more like a text game than one that would succeed on the graphical level... I mean- what graphics can he use?

I don't think this game would sell well, based on the description... Thus I see a cancellation in the future

[vovan]

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

[Urban Ranger]

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.

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...

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.