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How on earth is this 'a pleasing way of uncovering system architecture'?
3D visuals? OK, I get that. However, I'd leave out crappy wall textures and 3rd grade FPS props and stick to abstract platonic and geoedic shapes with distinct colors, connected with various forms of lines and indexed with a cool looking 3D-enviroment-friendly font. ... The pointy balls aside, I'd basically do pretty much everything exactly opposite of how they did the 3D. ... This guy has it pretty much nailed in terms of 3D enviroment UI and data ... since, like, 8 years ago or so.

The actual work I'd have scripts do, while I go and flirt with the helpdesk cutie over a latte. ... As, errm, pretty much everybody does it today already, I might add.

What system analyser in his right mind is going to wave his hands around and shake his hips to lauch scanners and change views?? My fingers can do that way faster. And much cheaper. ... And the technology is there allready.

Bottom line: Nothing new. Not so spectacular realisation. Way better solutions out there allready. No cookie!

My 2 cents.

For a glimpse of a highly regarded independent creative vision - try Eskil Steenberg's highly regarded multiplayer world LOVE.

I'm a lazy bastard, so rather than write a whole new post for this, I'm just going to copy and paste what I wrote on another forum.

About a month or two ago, I heard of this interesting project for an MMO of sorts being produced by a company called Quel Solaar. This game is supposed to be experimental in that it isn't as massive as other MMOs, with each server being limited to perhaps 300-500 players, the game world is entirely modifiable, with players and AI making constant changes to the landscape, and it is also experimental in that it is meant to provide a reasonably modern game with only one person making it. In an age when develop teams of a hundred or more are the norm, Eskil Steenberg has created the tools and an engine which can produce a fully realized game by one person. This game is his work of Love.

He recently released an alpha of it, which can be freely downloaded, though connecting to a server runs €3 a month. It is indeed in alpha state in that while it is fully playable and in more or less complete form, it has major balance issues. The AI is relentless after a recent update, and people have trouble building up settlements that last more than a few hours. There isn't a great deal to the game. The primary gameplay factor is that it changes over time, with new settlements being created and recreated. There is no direct PvP. Griefing is possible, but the intent is to have players work together against the AI, building up competing settlements. Users create account names, but the player names are generated by the games. This is excellent to me, as it prevents the inundation of "BritneySpears22" and "M45T3R_BL45T3R" style player names.

Graphically, the game is actually rather simple. The whole system is based upon blocks, but the engine applies a great deal of variation to the blocks, which allows for terrain to combine in unique compositions throughout the gameworld. Eskil himself used the example of trees in the game. Every single tree in the game is based upon the same model. The variations in the trees are created from the details of the blocks upon which they're placed, which makes a forest of trees actually look like a bunch of different trees of the same type. You can potentially create a line of the same tree over and over when creating a settlement, but this requires "planting" the trees on the same size and shape blocks. In addition to the variation on the building blocks of the game, there are previously designed bits - the trees, as mentioned, as well as various forms of stairs and bridges. There are also graphical filters added to make different "materials" and to add a somewhat cartoonish fuzziness to the game. These combine in such a way that the game can be played on relatively weak hardware, using relatively few OpenGL calls to produce these effects.

The game world actually forms around a sphere of sorts, created by taking a cube and "smoothing" it over. This means that a player could potentially circumnavigate it, and it allows for a night and day system created by having a "sun" going around the world (or the world going around the "sun", I don't know which). This is especially noticeable when traveling far from a chosen respawn point, as I have died during the late day of one part of the world only to respawn and find it to be night time.

Well, I've gone on far too long as it is, but I'm honestly very excited by this game. It's more of a proof of concept rather than a full game, but it has so many cool ideas, and with all the variation in a gameworld, I can go in after a day and expect to find new settlements and new terrain. It's a marvel of one man's creativeness and ingenuity that I really hope has a powerful impact on future games. It is a bit difficult to get into at first - it has a steep learning curve to start, in part because of the unreal look to the game. It takes time to get your bearings and in the meantime, you

I'm a lazy bastard, so rather than write a whole new post for this, I'm just going to copy and paste what I wrote on another forum.

About a month or two ago, I heard of this interesting project for an MMO of sorts being produced by a company called Quel Solaar. This game is supposed to be experimental in that it isn't as massive as other MMOs, with each server being limited to perhaps 300-500 players, the game world is entirely modifiable, with players and AI making constant changes to the landscape, and it is also experimental in that it is meant to provide a reasonably modern game with only one person making it. In an age when develop teams of a hundred or more are the norm, Eskil Steenberg has created the tools and an engine which can produce a fully realized game by one person. This game is his work of Love.

He recently released an alpha of it, which can be freely downloaded, though connecting to a server runs €3 a month. It is indeed in alpha state in that while it is fully playable and in more or less complete form, it has major balance issues. The AI is relentless after a recent update, and people have trouble building up settlements that last more than a few hours. There isn't a great deal to the game. The primary gameplay factor is that it changes over time, with new settlements being created and recreated. There is no direct PvP. Griefing is possible, but the intent is to have players work together against the AI, building up competing settlements. Users create account names, but the player names are generated by the games. This is excellent to me, as it prevents the inundation of "BritneySpears22" and "M45T3R_BL45T3R" style player names.

Graphically, the game is actually rather simple. The whole system is based upon blocks, but the engine applies a great deal of variation to the blocks, which allows for terrain to combine in unique compositions throughout the gameworld. Eskil himself used the example of trees in the game. Every single tree in the game is based upon the same model. The variations in the trees are created from the details of the blocks upon which they're placed, which makes a forest of trees actually look like a bunch of different trees of the same type. You can potentially create a line of the same tree over and over when creating a settlement, but this requires "planting" the trees on the same size and shape blocks. In addition to the variation on the building blocks of the game, there are previously designed bits - the trees, as mentioned, as well as various forms of stairs and bridges. There are also graphical filters added to make different "materials" and to add a somewhat cartoonish fuzziness to the game. These combine in such a way that the game can be played on relatively weak hardware, using relatively few OpenGL calls to produce these effects.

The game world actually forms around a sphere of sorts, created by taking a cube and "smoothing" it over. This means that a player could potentially circumnavigate it, and it allows for a night and day system created by having a "sun" going around the world (or the world going around the "sun", I don't know which). This is especially noticeable when traveling far from a chosen respawn point, as I have died during the late day of one part of the world only to respawn and find it to be night time.

Well, I've gone on far too long as it is, but I'm honestly very excited by this game. It's more of a proof of concept rather than a full game, but it has so many cool ideas, and with all the variation in a gameworld, I can go in after a day and expect to find new settlements and new terrain. It's a marvel of one man's creativeness and ingenuity that I really hope has a powerful impact on future games. It is a bit difficult to get into at first - it has a steep learning curve to start, in part because of the unreal look to the game. It takes time to get your bearings and in the meantime, you

I like his idea, but I want to touch on his game for a moment.

It seems that he has an interesting way of doing the game art or graphics.

http://www.quelsolaar.com/love/screen_shots.html

To add more:

Games should "look good". What this means can vary a lot. Is your design served best by making it "realistic"? Is it served best by making it highly stylized? Discuss this with your lead artist. What kind of world are you trying to evoke? What kind of mood, what kind of story? Do you want it to be deadly serious, do you want it to be a beautiful dream? Do you want to fly through an electric painting, creating beautiful fireworks, or do you want to simulate something down to the last smear of dirt on a muddy shoe?

You can spend a lot of time getting non-photorealistic render paths optimized and beautiful if you want to go that route. You can spend a lot of time (and money! realism takes a lot more man-hours!) making things realistic. How much time and money do you have? Can you afford hyper-realism? Do you want it, even if you can?

You sir, then, are definitely looking for Love: http://www.quelsolaar.com/

Wow verse finally hit slashdot...

So what is verse?

Verse is a network protocol that is designed to let any apps talk to each other in real-time over a IP network. So if one app changes the data all other apps gets the changes sent to them in real-time. This means that multiple apps, people and developers can collaborate. its all Free BSD and portable.

Verse support can be given both existing and new applications.

It has been around for quite some time. I and i friend was hired to write verse a few years back. (at II) it is one of few apps written from the ground up as open source and the people who wrote it got funded to do it.

Verse used to be on source forge but is now living on at blender.org

Loq Airou, Nil salentinn, and connector are very recently added apps and you can find some screen shots here and here

Ton (head of the blender foundation) wants to base Blender 3 on verse technology.

E

Wow verse finally hit slashdot...

So what is verse?

Verse is a network protocol that is designed to let any apps talk to each other in real-time over a IP network. So if one app changes the data all other apps gets the changes sent to them in real-time. This means that multiple apps, people and developers can collaborate. its all Free BSD and portable.

Verse support can be given both existing and new applications.

It has been around for quite some time. I and i friend was hired to write verse a few years back. (at II) it is one of few apps written from the ground up as open source and the people who wrote it got funded to do it.

Verse used to be on source forge but is now living on at blender.org

Loq Airou, Nil salentinn, and connector are very recently added apps and you can find some screen shots here and here

Ton (head of the blender foundation) wants to base Blender 3 on verse technology.

E

Most people using Maya or any 3D modeling application for anything other than dabbling would rather not waste time clicking on buttons. 3D modeling workflow is such that the modeler needs to spend all his time focusing on the model, rather than stopping to hunt-and-peck through menus or to click on some icon that does nothing but waste screen space 99% of the time. Maya uses marking menus to speed up workflow, and all professional 3D apps use keyboard shortcuts for the same reason.

If you really want to be innovative, you will do away with widgets entirely. Oh, wait, it's already been done.

The project you speak about is called Verve.

I was lucky enough to attend the conference (two days out of the three), and saw several really Excellent presentations on and about Blender.

The project you speak of was one of them. I won't give away the end-product's name, but know this: The author gave a really in-depth, and well educated explanation for many aspects of both his system, and how Blender can be extended to make use of it.

http://www.quelsolaar.com/connector/index.html

I was extremely excited to be at the conference and see for myself not just the enthusiasm of everyone involved, but a history of Blender, how to extend it, concepts on improving it's interface and featureset, and more, including discussions about the Blender Organization.

Some very good things.

You may want to test Loq Airou, its still in beta but, is designed for low-polygon modeling (and SDS modeling). Its out for Win32 and OSX, Linux and Irix will follow. you can download it here

E