Will Wright's New Game: Spore

[vovan]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger
Hmm... does all that stuff get stored on the HDD for later use?

Well, I don't and can't know for sure, of course. But what I meant by my comment was that you really incur this generational overhead only at load time of the game. Once the game is up and running, one shouldn't really see any slowdowns associated with this, other then in the transition from the editor back to the world, when the thing potentially has to regenerate everything, but then you expect a little bit of load time any way, so it's nothing too noticable, hopefully.

[FrostyBoy]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger


3GHz P4 is a bit stiff...

I am sure you are well award of the speed vs space tradeoffs. You either do the rendering on the fly, which requires a lot of computing power, or you do the rendering beforehand and store the results, which requires a lot of storage space. I reckon game companies opt for the latter, because they wouldn't want to unnecessarily limit the potential buyers base.



Hmm... does all that stuff get stored on the HDD for later use?

I assume it does get stored, as it is only a few KB's in size.


But UR, why you are arguing that this game might fail is falling flat, because Spore is not necessarily a game; Will Wright is just trying to find new ways to make games for the future, because he knows that in 5-10 years time, it's going to take an army and 5 years to make a standard game.

Animating and making models interact with each other correctly requires a lot of work and most of the time too much work, so why not just get the computer to do the job instead?

For me, I can see that this is a huge and necessary step forward in game-making. Once this technology reaches a more advanced height, the possibilites for better games become even greater.

[vovan]

Originally posted by Sn00py
Will Wright is just trying to find new ways to make games for the future, because he knows that in 5-10 years time, it's going to take an army and 5 years to make a standard game.

Sn00py, were you at his speech then?

You hit the nail straight on the head there. That was actually one of the prominent topics that Wright covered. He was talking about how The Sims 2, when it first shipped, had about 20 000 animations alone and that they had hundreds of content creators on the team, and the number of those far outweighed the number of programmers.

Also, he was talking, on a more abstract level, how the enjoyment of the game does not really grow linearly with the amount of assets provided. That is, if you double the number of animations to 40 000, you aren't really doubling the fun. Therefore, generating content by regular means (using an artist) is really not the kind of trend that you want to follow.

Therefore, he said, one of the goals of this project is to develop a full-fledged game with a comparatively small team. They are aiming for the team at most half the size of the Sims 2 team, and actually one goal is to have actually more programmers than content creators, because that would force you to concentrate more on game logic and procedural content generation algorithms than pretty pre-rendered graphics.

[FrostyBoy]

I love how life forces progress. If you get me?


Problem 1: Too hard to create artwork by hand to meet demand.

Solution: Get computer to create artwork and animate it on the fly.

Future: Most game makers turn to new system of making games - getting computer to do a lot of the work - thus eventually leading to advanced Virtual Realities.

Which is where the future is at. Does anyone really think that if we keep going down this bitmap road, that VR will ever take off? No, VR will require the entire gaming industry to head down the mathematics path.


Bring it on


edit: It's strange, but until now, I never thought graphic designers would become outsourced. Ok, not completely outsourced, but surely a lot are going to lose their jobs. Damn, I thought me being a graphic designer would prevent me from being redundant.

[DaShi]

Originally posted by Sn00py
I love how life forces progress. If you get me?


Problem 1: Too hard to create artwork by hand to meet demand.

Solution: Get computer to create artwork and animate it on the fly.

Future: Most game makers turn to new system of making games - getting computer to do a lot of the work - thus eventually leading to advanced Virtual Realities.

Which is where the future is at. Does anyone really think that if we keep going down this bitmap road, that VR will ever take off? No, VR will require the entire gaming industry to head down the mathematics path.


Bring it on


edit: It's strange, but until now, I never thought graphic designers would become outsourced. Ok, not completely outsourced, but surely a lot are going to lose their jobs. Damn, I thought me being a graphic designer would prevent me from being redundant.

Nonsense, it'll never work. Progress requires too much processing power. Better to just not try and be happy with what we've got.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger


MoO 3 was extremely hyped in the beginning. Then the design was gutted when the development team couldn't meet the goals. Being rushed into the market also played a part, of course.

Well thats where Wrights in a different boat - "look im a star, i get as much time as i need" "we need cash flow" "ok, release another Sims2 Xpack"

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by vovan


Very much so indeed! I think I am far more interested in seeing how the game works than actually playing it.



Well, the thing that sort of bothers me about the game is the large variety of game styles Spore is trying to cover.

well i guess thats the point though - powers of ten and all that - the folks who are gonna buy this game are gonna be those who think the concept of moving between scales is cool, even if theyre not turned on by the game at each scale. I wonder how many people out there are like that? And the game has to be SOMEWHAT good at each level, i agree.

I loved Simcity, and thought Streets of Simcity would be cool, even though im not real big on driving games, cause i could get to drive through my cities. Well Streets was such a dud i didnt even pursue it to that point. Similalry for some time, IIUC, folks have been trying to do TB with RT tactical combat. Correct me, but IIUC no one really succeeded with that till TW, and they took a couple of go rounds to get the TB part right - other attempts have been flops, despite the appeal of the concept.

And wasnt Simville intended to be an intermediate step linking down to the Sims and up to Simcity? That didnt pan out? Wrights clearly been interested in the scale up - scale down things for some time - there must have been reasons it didnt work before.

[FrostyBoy]

I think we should at least show some images of the game

Amoeba Stage:


On Land:


City:


Planet:


Solar System:


Galaxy:




After looking at these images, this game DOES look big. I thought the fact that the game would be what.. 99% mathematically created, but to see it looking at least this good just wow's me over.

[FrostyBoy]

There are more screenshots here: http://www.gamingsteve.com/archives/...res_of_wil.php

(and an mp3 of Will's speech I think is also at this site)


Two shots that also caught my eye:



Vehicle editor:


The top 3 vehicles are Will's creations for his civilization.

The bottom 2 were created by the computer, an industrial type civilization.

The site also says that each civilization will develop its own culture.

[vovan]

Well, these images are kinda there illegally, because you aren't supposed to take pictures like that, so I didn't wanna post 'em, but hey, if they are already here, might as well comment on them.

One thing to note is that they look kinda ugly because they are photos of what looks like the screen, and so the quiality is much lower than what it looks like to the eye.

Ok, now some comments:

Originally posted by Sn00py
On Land:

Yeah, that thing in the middle with a funky long tail above its head, kinda like a mix of a lizard and a scorpion, that's you. And that thing in front og you, the round brown thing, that's food.

One thing that actually interests me... You can kill that thing and eat it, but I wonder if you can become a herbivorous creature. There was no such indication in the demo.

Originally posted by Sn00py
City:

Hmmm... The weird thing about this screenie is that there are no inhabitants of the city to be seen anywhere around. It looks kinda empty and dead... During the demo, you could actually see your guys running around and doing things.

Originally posted by Sn00py
Planet:

The thing to note here is that the planet's surface is all procedurally generated, so supposedly no two planets will ever look exactly the same.

Originally posted by Sn00py
Solar System:

The really cool thing here is the leftmost planet, just to the left of the ringed one. Look at its orbit, it's not perfectly circular, but actually very deformed. I think it's cool, that the solar systems are not simply hardcoded to haveplanets whipping around on circular orbits, but it looks like there is at least a little bit of physical simulation there.

Originally posted by Sn00py
Galaxy:

OK, here, if you remember just above I said how each galazy sector is a tiny bit of the whole galaxy? Well, you can just barely see the rectangle outlining your home galaxy sector. You almost can't see if you don't know it's there, so I highlighted it for you in red. See attached image. Like I said, there is a bunch of stars in each of those sectors.

[FrostyBoy]

Oh I thought it was the blue dot.

Is that a black hole or something?

I wonder how long and how much you can do in each stage? It would be a really bad game if you zoomed past each stage.

[FrostyBoy]

In the City stage, do you advance slowly like in Civilization? Can you build more than one city?

[Kassiopeia]

Umm, wow. I was pretty excited when I had read halfway through the gamespot article on this, but when I got to the part where you can seek out other life in the universe with your UFO and stuff, WOW. I can't wait for this game.

[General Ludd]

Anything else known about the design / cultural theme? I love that sort of stuff.

[Nostromo]

I'm not sure I understand procedural programming. Surely, an artist drew those objets? Procedural programming sounds like a form of compression. An artist drew the objets, designed the overall look of the game, then someone made a mathematical model of all this, so you don't need the characters models or the texture files anymore. Reminds me of a form of sound synthesis called physical modeling. Instead of trying to imitate, for example, a piano with basic soundwaves, or with piano samples, a mathematical equation models the piano sound. Spore is an intriguing concept, I don't know about the game, though. Is there an ETA?