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3D First-Person Games, So Far
Gernot Ziegler writes: "One of my professors (Stefan Gustavsson) has written
a good summary that explains the history & technical background/innovations that Doom, Quake & Unreal brought with them when they were released.
Check it out." It's a pdf file. Gustavsson ends with a list of hopeful questions about where such games can go, after nearly a decade of running and violence. What I'd really like to see is a goal-free 3D world like the Snowcrash Metaverse, but it will take games to get there ;)
If the women go there, the rest of the world will follow. Market a non-goal 3d virtual world to people who aren't playing Quake, not to the people who are.
I was pleased to see he at least mentioned Descent (but what does he mean by "the gaming environment was even more restricted than that of Doom"?) which offered true 3D environments ages before Quake claimed to be the first to do so.
Descent did offer true 3D environments, but I think it's mistaken to argue that it's in Quake's technology class. My understanding is that Descent was heavily dependent on "1 room with tunnels" architecture, which was the limitation they were able to exploit to make 3D possible on a very low-end system. Quake was the first engine that offered true 3D with relatively few geometry limitations (obviously, certain geometry worked better than other geometry).
I think it's arguable whether DOOM or Descent was more limiting. Descent was true 3D, but you couldn't do "real" architecture. Doom could do relatively real places, but was limited to 2.5D maps (i.e., you had height, but no room-over-rooms) and 2D sprites.
This is not to knock on Descent, by the way, which was and is a great game and a solid technological achievement.
Tomb Raider was the hardware "killer application", not Quake.
I have to disagree, although it depends on how you define "killer application". Tomb Raider might have reached more people, but Quake has driven hardware development since day 1. Tomb Raider has never been about pushing the boundaries of hardware acceleration (they want mass-market appeal), but Quake engines have consistently pushed it.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
Right you are. And ActiveWorlds demonstrates that making your software "goal-free" reduces your "game" to a glorified chat room.
It's funny how writers like Stephenson and Greg Egan manage to grossly underestimate the difficultly of modeling physical reality. The best supercomputers in existence have to strain to model relatively simple events. You may balk at my referring to an atomic explosion as a "simple event", but it pales in comparison to the problem of determining the meteorological impact of that famous Chinese buttefly. Even if we take shortcuts (Stepenson suggests ignoring the inability two objects to occupy that same space), it will be a fair number of Moore cycles before we have a serious implementation of the Metaverse.
William Gibson got it right in Neuromancer when he assumed that the human ability to fill in the details would be a necessary part of an VR application.
Did this guy do any research? Or did he just start rattling whatever popped into his head that he remembered from the good ol' days as a grad student? Why ignore flight simulators - they had simplistic graphics, sure, but they first-person perspective and did 3D graphics. What about 3D first-person space sims, like Elite? And, of course, Wolf3D, which he completely omits.
This guy is a complete moron when it comes to the history of 3D FPS games. What's his PhD in, geology?
it seems like the "run from room to room" and "shoot stuff" motif has been done to death. a successful FPS needs a good nitch that it alone holds (until it's copied to death in the following months).
Max Payne is a great example: simple controls, basic story, but Bullet-Time kicks butt.
maybe we need new concepts instead of new technology?
_f
I think that the ideal goal-free 3d world would be developed *without* and emphasis on talking, which would force the designers to making the world itself an interesting place to act and interact.
I've been working on a project that combines a variety of social/physical simulations into one MMP world, which can have a variety of interfaces (graphical, text, web-based, etc.) People are born, grow up, work, play, have relationships, have offspring, etc.; The focus is on the world itself, rather than on having a pretty place to chat.
Got Rhinos?
I agree, a goal free universe would rock. But the thing is, people are so used to violence in games that it would take a MAJOR company releasing a MAJOR kick ass game to even get people to take a second look at it. IMHO.
Well, you don't HAVE to use the adobe reader.. but point well taken!
Quick thought, definately not air tight:
...
.. if we can invent any kind of ball, on any kind of field, with any kind of rules, why don't we see new sports being invented weekly? Certainly that would be more interesting? I say no; I think Q3 and UT are the 'equipment and vanue' to play Deathmatch (or arena, or ctf, or what have you). Sure, other games are sure to come along with their own unique and new concepts, but these online games are only as good as their popularity, community, and support (read: variety in competition), so it's likewise important that we dont try and re-invent the sport with every new game lest we drive off the community into more fractions that it already is. (And I should know .. I stuck around Quake 1 TF for 4 years, simply because nobody could 'copy' the game well enough using the current crop of games.) I think it's time to admit that videogames can easily have a playability of over 5 years .. while many people switch and update for the eyecandy, the real gamers value the subtle details like the physics and gameplay, and arn't neccessarily drooling for a whole new way of playing.
I thought it was interesting hearing him compare the current Q3 and UT type games as being basically the same. He says "the current state of 3D gaming is like a world where no one invented anything but football, and the only difference is what color jersey you wear [paraphrase]"
That maybe so, but football has been around for ages, and people still play it. Everyone knows the rules, and has a general idea of how to play with other people, etc
Nobody wants to learn a Whole New Game or Whole New Sport (especially after dropping 70 bucks for it), so I liken the online deathmatch community to the sports world
"Old man yells at systemd"