72 réponses à ce sujet

[dunniteowl]

Yup, it's the good old Fires of Samarach down here in Central Texas. By 10pm it's in the high 80s.

As to Minecraft and the resounding crash of silence, I think larger development houses right now have bought into (once again) the latest knelling of the bell foretelling PC gaming's demise. Everyone thinks that a solid large base game with online support and a modding community behind it is just not lucrative. Then again, they all still believe that there is no real demographic for online multiplayer gaming unless it's an MMO, so what can you do?

This attitude, in a day and age where nearly anyone with a computer is also nearly everyone with an internet connection is baffling to me. I grew up playing board games. There were no home computers, there was no internet. And when these things became available, playing computer games was considered silly. Only a few small companies were making games at all and the rest of the computing industry said, "Yer wastin' yer time, it's never going to be a big money maker."

In 1994 I think it was, computer gaming made more revenue than the movie industry. It might have been 1992, the memory cells haven't been augmented with refreshers lately. When NWN came out the components that made it such a great game for many RPG style players was that online multiplayer component, which, until that time, was relatively unheard of, and a DM client was unheard of. Yet the study that was done later indicated there wasn't sufficient interest in it to justify continuing it (from Bioware) and they totally passed on an NWN2.

The funny thing is, that when something like this comes out and it's a niche, you take a chance. It was successful, so... there was only really success as far as SP experiences count I guess. What did you expect? The heavy lifting was already done, though, why not keep up the MP component in future releases of similar, though not the same nature and see where it goes? Nope, the demographics didn't support a completely new feature. That's silly, of course not. Its not like this sort of thing is going to explode and change the market and consumer nature overnight.

I never really considered myself a visionary person in the sense of which ideas were going to take off and be really successful. That said, I can see the potential of this sort of gaming to really be a money maker and the issue so far is that it just hasn't been properly marketed and in many cases, poorly implemented or concieved. And the thing is, no matter how new people like things, they are generally risk averse and this means you have to sell them on an idea. You can't sell it if you don't believe in it.

I don't think even Bioware really believed in it. Even when their own player base was doing remarkable and unprecedented things with it, they still didn't really believe in it. The PW support was never officially sanctioned. What a shame. And while Obsidian said they were going to support MP/PW play, the words were easier than the deeds, considering the release didn't even include the DM Client.

NWO is going to be of a similar nature in my view. Lots of promises to get you to buy, to be sure. Hopefully, there will be more than just vaporware dreams and developer tastes upon release. In the meantime, even if it's fun to play, it's not the idea of Plan 9 to follow that model.

dno

[Kothoses Rothenkisal]

NWN 2's lack of multiplayer support was just so incredibly disappointing but the standard of support that got is what I have come to expect from Obsidian, who sadly tell a fantastic story (They are amazing story tellers) but can not get the tech right.

I wish regularly that they would do a partnership with Valve, a company that understands polish as much as Valve do would do wonders for Obsidian but sadly such a partnership is unlikely to ever happen.

I had hoped CD:PR would build on their experience with the nwn engine and build something with multiplayer when they announced the witcher 2 but they seem to have gone in another direction entirely (A beautiful one but not a multiplayer one). Gaming tends to go in cycles and the flavour of the month fad is what takes over peoples thinking. Thats why I wish there was more noise being made about the success of games like Minecraft and Terraria especially in the ears of RPG developers who could actually take on the task of a truley community centric game.

Looking forward to getting to know more about plan 9 though, I really hope it is all you make it sound like DNO because if it is, I think you guys are onto a winner.

[dunniteowl]

Well thanks. The idea is at this point more idea than anything. I am convinced that the technology is emminently doable. If I was a programmer, I'd be busting my chops to get some bits and pieces chunked together to demo. I know the basics of the technology behind the concepts, but I don't have the practical on hands expereince necessary to realize the ideas. That said, I have taken the core rules of PnP RPGs that I've played and a couple that I developed from scratch and applied those to the mechanics to be drafted. Additionally, I have been studying up on the engine requirements and the graphics engine as well.

Then I, like Wormtongue in LotR, whisper in the ears of those who can do these things, convincing them it can be done. So far, I've had limited success. When I can get more time, I will have to start plugging the idea again and then get more in-depth studies going for modeling, which is where I wish to ply my efforts. In the meantime, I am always interested in more ideas and methods for pursuit of these ideas and this gaming system.

When I can I'm going to listen to all your YouTube casts. Right now, this laptop has a bad sound connection and it's just too hard to make it work and listen.

dunniteowl

[painofdungeoneternal]

It actually has pretty good MP support now ( what happens when a PW admin happens to implement features in the last patch )

Really wish it had that on release.

[foil-]

I'll add my own wispering. There are some new (still in innovation phase) graphics technologies (or at least new advances in old ideas). This one deals with non-polygon graphics. Obviously it's not DirectX based.

http://www.extremete...-more-unlimited

P.S. It's not the heat, it's the humidity.

Modifié par foil-, 11 août 2011 - 06:42 .

[dunniteowl]

"P.S. It's not the heat, it's the humidity."

Oh, don't I know it! I was born and (mostly) raised in Northern California in the greater Bay Area. There a humid day is like 35%. Here a Dry day is like 45%, so on a normal day, it's about twice as humid as I initially care to have it. Average humidity in my neck of the woods runs around 75-90%. Sheesh.

tough to deal with.
dno

[kamal_]

^^ Foil: looks neat, but the extreme amount of repeated objects is suspicious. They have 99 bazillion triangles, but 99% are the same 10 or so. The whole "just after we made this we figured out another major advance" thing is suspicious as well. After a year of silence they didn't wait another week to show the advance? It reminds me of Bit Boys (them of the light years beyond any other vid card fame).

[kamal_]

I installed Morowind the other night for something to do while internetless. It is of course a massive sandbox. Two large distinctions compared to nwn2 stood out from a sandbox perspective. One is that they made virtually everything not nailed down "takeable". Doing that in nwn2 would require turning off the "usable object highlighting" nwn2 does, or nwn2 would just be a visual mess (it would also require placeables instead of environmental, but that's not an inherent issue, just a design issue for builders). The second distinction was that most objects default to being grabbed and stuck in the pack, whereas nwn2 tends to default to some other form of interaction. Default grab makes collecting all those objects easier.

[dunniteowl]

Doesn't matter, kamal, repeated objects still take up processing power and all I can say is Holy Crap, that's amazing. I think the fact that they got a 1.9 million grant from the Australian Government speaks volumes for having the chops to do what they say they're doing. I can't say how good it will be, but any methodology that uses a different paradigm for video creation is a good thing in my book.

Wow.
dno

[kamal_]

Repeated geometry takes much less power than you might think, and allows tons of objects, see Minecraft. Impressing the government doesn't take much when you consider the average level of intelligence and competence there. When there's a demo or large investment from nvidia/AMD/intel or one of the big companies, then I'll reconsider.

[Lugaid of the Red Stripes]

The atomistic project that foil- links to, as best I understand it, is about replacing textured polygons with just a bunch of dots. The big advantage being that the dots are really simple to work with, math-wise, letting you depict massive, complex game worlds with modest computing resources. The problem with that it, though, is that most of the things that make for an interesting game experience depend on manipulating things like polygons, and not just individual dots. Animations, for example, are real easy if you're just rotating polygons, but really difficult if you have to independently move a bunch of dots around.

DirectX, though, I think, is more the direction we need to go in, a very standardized, modular system for handling routine game functions. To a certain extent, all games rely on the same basic elements. First you have the game world, which is basically a stretch of static terrain and then a bunch of interactive objects located on that terrain. Then you have a main display that shows the player's view of that game world, a HUD overlay that gives more information and interface options, and then a few direct input devices (i.e. keyboard and mouse). If all those basic functions can be built into a standard engine, built right on top of the existing DirectX functionality, then you create a toolset that can be used to create virtually any kind of game. Add in a few libraries for handling specific genres, like RPGs, RTS, and FPS, and you're good to go. All you have to do next is create a community website to house all the bits and pieces that get generated, and some sort of marketplace for distributing the finished games. The more things are standardized, the more interchangeable the individual elements are, then the easier it is to throw together new games, and the more creativity you'll see coming out of the crowd. Throw in an ad banner somewhere on the interface, and the whole thing can pay for itself. Get enough people on board, and eventually you'll just have product placement to pay for it, whole villages furnished by Ikea, and name-brand beer in every tavern.

[kamal_]

Budweiser brand dwarven grog is more wrong than the Kardashians being famous.

[painofdungeoneternal]

Lugaid of the Red Stripes wrote...

DirectX, though, I think, is more the direction we need to go in, a very standardized, modular system for handling routine game functions. To a certain extent, all games rely on the same basic elements.

Replace that with "rendering engine", of which the most successful free engine is Ogre3D. It's not a game engine, it just does what you are describing DirectX as doing, but it allows easily swapping DirectX for OpenGL and a lot of platform independence. ( and it's well organized with the ability to extend everything, even the resource loader easily ). It is more of an abstraction layer which lets the game engine deal with telling it what needs to be rendered, and then it goes and deals with the operating system and video card, and as they update it, it improves all the games that use it.

We don't really want a more complete game engine because each is really optimized for a different sort of games, things that appeal to a FPS game ( 200FPS ), just don't matter as much to a RPG game, and it's important that the end result is not something which is largely owned by some entity that can at their whim change prices, restrict usage, or change terms of how end users can distribute their games.

If pixel based rendering takes over, well that will quickly show up as an option in ogre3d ( or we decide later to use another rendering engine, which won't be too hard because ogre3d is pretty well organized, and we can actually make even that part modular up front using a well planned design )

Modifié par painofdungeoneternal, 11 août 2011 - 11:16 .

[dunniteowl]

Even so, kamal, we know that the NWN2 toolset chokes at a certain point due to polygon overload, and that can be done with nothing more than a repetitive model on a default flat green grass background. This might prove to do things differently and it still respects polygonal models, It just translates them for it's purposes. I think it's exciting, really.

And I agree with pain. Ogre3d can do the job. My impression of this atomic dots concept is not for physical manipulation, just rendering. Physics and rendering are two different things. Manipulation of articles in a game environment is independant of visual rendering. The critical flow of information telling the rendering engine to show what's happening during a manipulation is what makes all that seem interconnected.

There are other videos and one of them indicates that in another 16 months or so we should see some new and hopefully game changing video demos.

dno

[Lugaid of the Red Stripes]

@pain: Yeah, I don't really know enough to tell the difference between DirectX and OpenGL, my only point there was that off-the-self technology makes more sense here than something new, especially considering that the game might end up on all sorts of platforms; PC's, phones, and tablets.

I would also be ecstatic to see Plan9 come to life with out any corporate overlord pulling the strings, but as long as the OP want to lobby the industry for a new kind of game, he might as well pitch it to companies that mine social networks for profit. Facebook, for example, could easily cobble together a flash-game toolkit so the kids can make their own clique-specific versions of Farmville.

@DNO: The video mentioned a converter for taking polygon models and converting them to atoms, but I doubt that it does it on the fly, for every frame. A swaying tree branch, for example, is easy to do because you're just rotating a few polygons. With atomistic model, you first have to figure out what atoms belong to the tree branch, then calculate their position within the tree branch and how much they should be moved. The key to the atomistic model's performance seems to be that it's just working with a big mass of undifferentiated atoms, a homogenous mass that can be easily compressed and routed through a handful of simple routines. Manipulating and rearranging specific bits of that mass would be far more difficult. It's like the difference between taking a picture with a film camera or drawing one with crayons. The film picture is really nice looking, but you can't really change it. The crayon drawing is crude, but it just takes a little more scribbling to change it.
If the project comes to fruition, I bet we'll see something like those old-school cartoons, with the static oil-painting backgrounds, and the lighter-coloured cels laid on top to handle the moving bits. Atoms for the static parts, polygons for the animated.

[-Semper-]

foil- wrote...

I'll add my own wispering. There are some new (still in innovation phase) graphics technologies (or at least new advances in old ideas). This one deals with non-polygon graphics. Obviously it's not DirectX based.

http://www.extremete...-more-unlimited

P.S. It's not the heat, it's the humidity.

euclideon... vaporware all the way
btw who needs a voxel engine when there is tesselation, displacement and parallax mapping? billions of polys possible and in cooperation with cuda everything is possible. today the amount of polygons ain't a bottleneck anymore, the limitation is the texturespace. with intelligent streaming like id tech 5 there's a solution on it's way.

we have all the tech in dx11 available - we just have to use it.
every now and then someone drops their voxel based octrees engine and failes horribly. someone remembers voxel comanche and outcast? btw outcast was a very good game^^

Modifié par -Semper-, 12 août 2011 - 09:05 .

[kamal_]

Comanche had one of my favorite gaming moments ever, I took a hit from literally the first enemy on a level and only was able to fly via ground effect. Somehow I beat the level, including climbing up a large mountain to the end level that I had to inch up because gaining any altitude was nearly impossible with ground effect flight.

[nicethugbert]

GAF Roofing: How To Do Valleys , just in case the PC comes online soon.

[dunniteowl]

Aww shucks, thank NTB. I already got a nice book with pictures and everthang, though. It's not the pictures and descriptions, it's putting it into practical use while up there. Not complex, but not easy to manually do at times, either. I'm getting there. I have about 1/4 of the stripped back section re-shingled. But thanks for the link.

dno

[foil-]

nicethugbert wrote...

GAF Roofing: How To Do Valleys , just in case the PC comes online soon.

It's the uncanny Valley that always ruins it for me.
Watch out for ice damming dno.  That's a real game ender.

I've heard skylights can be tricky and leak if you don't do them extremely well (this comment serious).  I personally would contract those out the first time and watch them do it.  But that's because I know absolutely nothing about roofing.  Or ruffing, as you American Dogs like to call it

As for the whole voxel debate, its still innovative.  Which means yes, it has more chance at sinking than succeeding, but its always interesting to keep an eye on these things.  I don't find a lot of the new DX11 features like tesselation delivering like they promised to but that seems to be more related to limited graphics card power resulting in very minor implementation.

I'm probably wrong, but I keep seeing these voxel systems more like particle systems which I think many engines use to create pseudo solid graphics/spell effects.  Handling the animation looks like its already taken care of in their work otherwise why gear it towards the game industry instead of the medical industry which it was traditionally geared towards.

Anyway, I know it has a snowballs chance in texas and I've seen lots of these systems come and go.  But I still find it interesting to look at alternatives.

dno: being a west coaster originally myself, I know what you mean.  Nothing like the Pacific to moderate all that nasty, muggy weather, and give you a cool, mosquito free breeze to boot.  I guess retirement and going back gets closer every day.

Modifié par foil-, 12 août 2011 - 03:47 .

[likeorasgod]

dunniteowl wrote...

"P.S. It's not the heat, it's the humidity."

Oh, don't I know it! I was born and (mostly) raised in Northern California in the greater Bay Area. There a humid day is like 35%. Here a Dry day is like 45%, so on a normal day, it's about twice as humid as I initially care to have it. Average humidity in my neck of the woods runs around 75-90%. Sheesh.

tough to deal with.
dno

With this Texas heat, or any summer or it, it's not good to be doing any type of out door work.  Specialy roofing.  LOL I'm on the costal area so defently know about that humidity.  Been out in the GOM lately for work and so wishing for a new visa to get back down to Brazil...where it's there winter time and a nice cool 70 something.

[-Semper-]

foil- wrote...

I don't find a lot of the new DX11 features like tesselation delivering like they promised to but that seems to be more related to limited graphics card power resulting in very minor implementation.

that's simply because the current console generation can't handle these features, but in the same time they dictade where the money is. not many developers are putting the extra work and budget into the pc because of the relatively low sales numbers. the power of the available graphics cards are quite sufficient^^

crysis2 with all the features enabled.

[nicethugbert]

Sold! I'm going out to get Crysis 2 in a couple of minutes. I'm getting it because of the graphics. That is just about the only significant positive difference between games nowadays.

Modifié par nicethugbert, 12 août 2011 - 09:38 .

[kamal_]

If fps don't push the graphics frontiers, the RPGs don't get them later on...

[nicethugbert]

The only reason for a genre to be technologically backward is if and only if it is based on a historical period in technology. Other than that, I have no reason to accept that RPGs should be technologically second rate.

Much of what people consider RPG has nothing to do with role playing. For instance, having a first person perspective does not prevent a game from being a RPG.