Slashdot Mirror
The Future of PC Gaming
Warrior-GS writes "GameSpy has two new articles up talking about the Future of PC Gaming. The first talks about the The Future of PC Game Engines, talking to Tim Sweeney, Chris Taylor, Stuart Moulder and others about everything from physics to lighting to AI. The second is an interview with Peter Molyneux about his areas of expertise and what lies ahead. The series will continue next month with a look at the Future of User Created Games and an interview with Warren Spector on PC Gaming's future."
Seriously though, I know the Holodeck doesn't make for good Star Trek episodes, but how many of you Slashdotters wouldn't LOVE to game in that manner. Totally escaping reality, you could experience any aspect of life that you wanted, consequence free. I'm very sure that would cause widespread peace of mind and mental health, because people would have an easy way to vent any destructive urges in a non-destructive manner. Hopefully, I'll be able to see stuff like this in my lifetime (I am about to turn 21), but perhaps I'd only see the humble starts of true "Holodeck" type technology.
A game that mirrors reality to exacting detail, where the only limits are those of your own imagination-- THAT'S what I want! Hurry up, developers! ;)
"To confine our attention to terrestrial matters would be to limit the human spirit." -Stephen Hawking
For those who haven't heard of it, I recently picked up an older game called "Nocturne." The gameplay was clunky, and the storyline at times annoying, but the lighting effects were quite awesome for its time. In fact, in comparison to some games I've played today, the lighting is quite superior.
From what I've read up on the game, all scenes are rendered from complete darkness. This means that only the point and spot light sources exist (no ambient). Shadows in the game are incredible. If an object passes in front of a light, the shadow blocks it.
While some newer games have good shadow effects, having a realistic shadow that follows the characters movement (in the game, your character has a trenchcoat which swishes around, making the shadow move too) is extremely cool in comparison to the often used "dark blob" shadow effects in many games. I'm hoping Doom 3 uses these "dark and sinister" effects too. It would be extremely cool to be able to site who is coming around the corner by their shadow cast on the wall or ground.
In short, polygons and texture rendering play a great part in detail, but realistic light and shadow rendering make scenes much more lifelike.
Not At All :)
Then again, I kind of miss Karateka, but Stick Fighter fixed that.
"The words of the prophets are written on the Slashdot walls."
I'll be happy when the future of PC gaming involves me not having to buy another version of Windows just to play them. Hopefully, once the hardware gets fast enough, games can be written in some sort of compiled scripting language that has an interpreter for any OS and any processor. It's not too much to hope for.
Is Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. Nothing else comes close.
Finally, math books without any of that base 6 crap in them.
i was surprised that none of the gaming gurus had anything negative to say about PC losing out as the gaming platform like this earlier slashdot article .
PCs have so far been one step ahead of consoles in terms of hardware/processing power, hope those innovations (like AI, ability to use more polygons etc) hit the PCs before consoles.
Siggy Say, Siggy Do
A video card's ability to crunch polygons is not as important as it used to be. What is important is what you can do with those polygons. Polygons are just a medium to deliver your textures, lighting effects and shaders. Particle effects are also a staple in modern video games.These are the things that will be improved in future game engines. Imagine a game engine with full global illumination (not faked)
If you remember, virtua fighter had more polygons per charachter than virtua fighter 2. Virtua fighter 2 looked so much better because it acually had textures instead of just flat shaded polygons.
Well, 3d shooters, aside from interface (why does every game use 1-10) actually have some real variety. The problem is in the leaders - Q3, UT, HL, Shogo, Doom, ROTT, Wolf3d - those are all one genre, just some have more multiplayer mods and some have an SP campaign.
If you look a little further you will find some variation. BattleZone (FPS/RTS hybrid), Tribes 2 (Team FPS with some RTS elements), Aliens VS. Predator (really impressive), the new OMF (waiting on the edge of my seat for that) and various other games that are breaking away from the FPS stereotypes.
The main element they have in common is control - move with left hand, aim with mouse. And really, there's more variety then those sidescrollers had.
I used to play a lot of computer and console games but I got pretty bored of the same old thing again and again. Rarely there would be a true gem that I would play even after completing it, e.g. Diablo 2.
Nowadays I tend to play Go (The oriental board game) a lot. I am kind of addicted to it. I am still so rubbish that GnuGo can whip my ass on its max difficulty setting, but it's still fun playing against other people on the internet.
I have found something in Go that I couldn't find in any computer game, but still lacking is the eye-candy you get with modern games. Sometimes I have to get the latest 3d shooter and play it for a bit just to watch shiny things rotate.
graspee
That begs the question: Is 3D really better?
I for one like the 2D isometric view as in [insert almost any Blizzard game here], Ultima Online[original client], Crusader (anyone remember that one?) and the like.
I think it looks much better graphically. For example, as in the city of Lut Gholein in Diablo II (anyone know if that is available for a background image?). 2D games also do not seem to 'skip' frames (sorry, I don't know the technical term).
I also play 3D games, though not too many 'twitch' type games. Even though I like Neverwinter Nights a LOT, I notice that I play it in a... wait for it... iso point of view.
So why 3D? Is it easier (ha ha) to code for than a similar 2D offering? Is it better visually? Perhaps not now, but maybe later? Will DirectX 9 help with that? What about for Linux?. Are there so many 3D shooters out there that the players are more involved in the gameplay rather than the scenery? Or, are we all just victims of technology for technologies' sake?
I'd be interested in others thoughts on this...
This space for rent
Prince of Persia, now there was a cool game. I loved the sword fights in it. Not only did you have to worry about attacking, but parrying as well. And, it didn't degenerate into a button mashing fest, or jumping around maddly swinging(*cough* Jedi Knight 2 *cough*). Actually, from what I remember, trying to win by button mashing tended to get you killed. You actually had to think your way through the fight.
I do have to give credit where its due. The 3D version of Prince of Persia that came out some time ago did a great job of capturing the feel of the old game, though I was still killed far too many times because of the camera angle.
Speaking of camera angle, am I the only one who finds this to be the biggest problem with 3D games? You effectivly have 2 choices: first person, which lacks good periphieral vision; or 3rd person, which gives pretty good periphieral vision, but then makes lining up a jump a real pain, also, if the controls are based on the camera they will often change on you while you are in mid-air, really screwing the jump.
Also for what its worth, someone above mentioned Thief, I really like the idea, but all of the Zombie levels and the semi-steampunk atmosphere really detracted from that game. Though I would love to see that engine applied to a Ninja-esque game (and for god's sake, put in a story co-op mode, real ninja worked in groups). I would love to play as a ninja that actually concentrates on stealth. (I tried tenchu, nice idea, really bad controls, stupid enemies, and really bad controls. Did I mention that the controls sucked?)
Oh well, guess I'm just ranting about not being able to find a game I like recently. I'll stop.
Necessity is the mother of invention.
Laziness is the father.
two words for ya: guardian legend. Half overhead adventure game, half top scrolling fighter-type. Without a doubt, my all-time favorite NES game. Give it a whirl. :)
Triv
This reminds me of an odd college lecture...
;)
I had a PC achitecture class at my college. When we got to the history of video adapters, our professor explained in graphic detail how each successive graphics adapter (mono to cga to ega to vga) was pushed along by the need for more detail in pornography!
He pointed out how EGA looked lousy, and 256 color VGA was bad for round things with light, such as women's stomach's or breasts. He was pretty into this explanation. He wasn't kidding! This class had about an equal number of men and women.
I would have thought desktop publishing or gaming or something like that would have pushed graphics adapters along. So, maybe based on my professors great theory, maybe its not the gamers that are pushing on realtime rendered 3d graphics, but maybe the porn-mongers. And all this time I thought it was quake upping the odds!
Of course, if you listen to liebermen games such as GTA3 are supposedly pornography.... Maybe I highly realistic, pornographic 3D will be the killer app to get a GPU into every home.
Easy guys, I put my pants on one leg at a time. The difference is after I put on my pants I make gold records!
It's tough to bash someone with so much clout and commercial success, but Peter Molyneux does *not* make fantastic games. He comes up with great concepts that are fun for a little bit, until you realize that your entire function as a player is basically housekeeping. Populous had me hooked for a few levels, and then it got boooooring. Same with Black and White.
He just *isn't* the visionary that everyone claims him to be. I mean, just look at his interview: "More AI. More graphics. More sound." Yeah, those are some pretty bold predictions. The real visionaries would be the ones that take Molyneux's ideas and turn them into a real game.
--Jeremy
Jesus was a liberal
All the "future of gaming" articles I'm constantly seeing are about improving the physics models in games and creating more realistic graphics and actions?
Civilization 3 is an extremely popular game with no physics or highly advanced graphics engine, just some nice animated units that entertain you while your conquering Egyptians.
Heroes of Might and Magic is also a very popular game that also does not require physics, and barely has any animation.
Diablo 2 is unimaginably popular and their physics consists model consists of pushing you in the opposite direction when you get "knocked back" and all the characters/monsters die in roughly the same way with similar animations.
I'm not sure about Warcraft 3 but I can't imagine it requires a sophisticated engine that makes the goblins blow up in just the right way.
This is self-serving tripe about first person shooters. There are dozens of genres out there that don't require physics engines to make their games the absolute best. Hell I just want a game that doesn't crash or contain so many damn gameplay bugs; can we have an article about the future of better QA processes please?
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
On page three of the GameSpy article, they get into AI a bit. I wonder if we're ever going to have AI cards like we do now with nics and graphics cards.
Why not? Why not have a whole processor dedicated specifically to the type of algorithmic applications that AI requires?
My
Limekiller
Are the most immersive. Think Zelda 64. Think GTA3. These are games with a lot of action and a lot of attention to detail. The designers made it entirely entertaining to do nothing more than explore the landscape all day long. The attention to every detail is there in some of our other favorites, too... Space Quest I-III spring to mind, not to mention the Z-word, Zork. Even the abstract, near-wordless Out of This World -- a game I'd happily spend hours arguing is the most entertaining game of the last twenty years -- had this quality, full of the little details in the periphery that made playing the game such a successful escapist fantasy.
I remember playing Prince of Persia back in the day on my green monochrome, system speaker sound, POS computer. It was a ton of fun. Then I went over to my cousin's house, who had a screaming fast 286 with EGA and an original 8-bit soundblaster, and you know what? It made Prince of Persia A LOT MORE FUN.
Granted, a good game engine goes further than just putting pixels on the screen, but the future of gaming doesn't rest in the ability of programmers to design wonderful new game engines. It lies in the creativity of the designers to take gaming in directions its never gone before.
This comment was generated by a squadron of trained super elite albino ninja chickens for you.
FreeDOS. Seriously. It even has experimental FAT32 support. And its free. And the latest one is CD bootable. Pop the cd in, load Ultima V to your FAT32 HD (unless you're using NTFS) and play. I believe you can even customize the boot cd and make an Ultima V "live cd". Saving might be a problem there tho...
FreeDOS.
Why not fork?
My son and I currently play numerous games but all he wants is cheats and game saves.
my little brother is like this (im 13 years older than he is). its gotten to the point where he will rent a game and BEFORE HE EVEN PLAYS IT ONCE, he will go online and get all the cheats and play it that way. he does the same thing with pc games too. it really aggrivated the crap out of me when he went into the data files for civII and made one uber-undefeatable unit that you can build from the beginning....then made fun of me for liking the game (it really is the best ever) since he thought it was so easy and pointless to play! i swear that boy is never gonna learn what its like to get real satisfaction from finishing a game.
Gentlemen...BEHOLD!
-Dr. Weird
That sounds just like my girlfriend's son. I can't get him to play a game without cheating, except for racing games.
At least now he's unable to because I won't let him near a cheat site for any of the newer titles. He asks if he can play games with the adults sometimes, but I've had to point out to him that he'd have no fun because he'd get his ass handed to him (and I don't need to hear him whine about it). Not because anyone would pick on him, but because he hasn't actually developed any gaming skills.
I don't mind if he'd use the FAQs or strategy guides out there, but right now it's all about cheat codes. Ah well, I think it's slowly sinking in.