Slashdot Mirror
What if Game Graphics Never Aged?
An anonymous reader writes "If you've heard of Procedural Synthesis, you already think it's amazing. It's been used to create some extraordinary visuals in tiny packages, like .kkrieger, which is less than 96 Kilobytes big but still has graphics that look like like a modern PC title. Beyond that, there's even more that Procedural Synthesis might be able to do; what if your old video games never aged, never looked out-of-date? Imagine putting Halo 2 into your Xbox 360 only to have it automatically upgraded to look like Halo 3 in graphical quality. This article examines the unexpected way that Procedural Synthesis might impact gaming in the generation after the Xbox 360, PS3, and Nintendo Wii."
When I read this Slashdot article, all the rules of software design came flooding back to me. Low coupling, high cohesion, encapsulated complex structures, all that jazz. Before you even started to program a complex FPS game, you might start by carefully separating the layers and keeping things like two dimensional surfaces rendered to be de-coupled from other things like the AI of the enemies. Separate the garphics from the rest of the gameplay. I completely buy into the possibility that games can be designed well enough to abstract their graphics to a point where the same exact graphics package can be used in even several different types of games.
.kkrieger's procedures.
When I read this article, it sounded like a classic example of someone going nuts with the design patterns that encourage encapsulation and separation of layers to improve modularity. Like someone had actually put in a lot of effort to the game to reduce the amount of effort that will be required later when new platforms and libraries come out for the game. On top of that, the imagery doesn't come from a data file but instead is derived on the fly from a library of procedures--something easily achieved by the strategy pattern. The funny thing is that if other games have abstracted their graphics packages sufficiently, they should be able to rework the libraries to be procedures instead or maybe even build adapters to
Why don't we see this more often in all games? Because I think most games today are disposable. They're built for one console or platform with the intent of only running on the current version of Windows or Mac and with no interest in coming out with new releases that support new hardware or software. They do this because games are construed as novelty software that expire as the user tires of them. Games like WoW or other MMOs might bring about a shift in the way game designers spend their efforts. Maybe games will start to take a longer time to develop but last a hell of a lot longer than they traditionally have?
My work here is dung.
Super Mario Brothers, Duck Hunt and Rad Racer still look just as awesome as the day I first got them!
When I have a kid, I want to put him in one of those strollers for twins and then run around the mall looking frantic.
Screw Halo 2 in your XBOX 360, I want to put Duke Nukem in my 360 and have it play with Duke Nukem Forever graphics.
There's all this hype on graphics and technology, but the heart of any game is still (and always will be) gameplay. Sure the games of old look "crappy", but in many cases they provided a great gaming experience. I for one hope that we just get to the point where graphics are real-life quality and we can focus on gameplay. Just my $.02
http://religousfreaks.com/.kkrieger is certainly a feat of software engineering (pretty much anything .theprodukkt puts out is) but procedural synthesis can only go so far. When you get to elements of the game that should be static (such as specific characters) then a static model would probably be more efficient than an algorithm to generate the same.
Of course, I could be (and probably am) wrong.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
Why don't we see this more often in all games?
Speed. Running algorithms to generate every damn thing takes a lot more processor time than loading a pre-rendered object file. Disk space is dirt cheap compared to processor cycles, so the appropriate trade study is made....
That's an interesting thought. The article makes it out to be a bit like a magical cure, but some aspects of it sound good to me. You can often improve the "wow" factor by tossing in "more" of something. Denser foliage; more of the tiny rocks that make up the detail; and so forth. Procedural generation would mean that these wouldn't have to be placed by hand, so this could make it easier to scale the visuals with system power. Similarly, particle sprays are often done procedurally, so being able to tweak those "up" to create more complex fireworks for mysterious future hardware could also work.
:)
Some games are still played for years after they've fallen behind the curve on graphics; this might mitigate the future ugliness, adding longevity to a popular title. Keeping gamers interested in (and talking about) your game makes sense, whether you'll be producing different titles in the future or will be focusing on sequels.
Ultimately, though, my hope is that algorithmic content generation will bring game development costs down for indies. Maybe I'm dreaming.
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There's no way that video game companies are going to take the time to do this for every game, especially considering the fact that only some parts will be upgraded while some will look like the shitty blocks they were originally. You will definately see some of the classics re-released with this technology because it will be a way to actual increase revenue and profits without being too much work. People want to play classic games like Zelda with modern graphics, I doubt there will be the same interest in 'Echo the Dolphin'.
Despite what the article says, everyone sees the same trees in Oblivion. The trees were generated using procedural synthesis (SpeedTree) *once*, and then the whole shebang was saved as a huge map and put on the disk. It's an example of the opposite of something like kkrieger, which puts the math on the disk and lets the end-user's machine to the generation, rather than the developers' machines.
The grass, on the other hand, is randomly placed and might qualify. About all that could happen on better hardware in the future is "more grass," though.
The portrait of Dorian Duke Nuke'm
Faith: n. -- That human impulse that drives them to steal appliances when the power goes out
Not really - the game remains exactly the same... it just gets "prettier" when you pop it into the XBox "720".
The onus (real word ??) to improve and change the game then falls onto the model rather than the graphics.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
From talking to artists I'm acquainted with, one major reason procedural rendering is moving so slowly is that it's difficult to exercise real creative control over it. All you have to work with are the inputs, and their linkage to aspects of the output may not be clear. It's very hard to tweak a procedural generator with any kind of strategy; all you can do is poke around at random values until the result looks pretty close to what you originally had in mind. Compared to the precise pixel/texel/vertex-level controls artists are used to, it's a step backwards and won't make game development easier or faster.
Exult was a good example of "procedural" "growth" of a game.
Ultima VII was a 2D RPG. Yet, all objects in the game world have height. One guy at Exult hacked up a version of Exult that runs Ultima VII in 3D mode - basically, mapping all 2D tiles around cubes as described by their dimensions and height data.
The results were quite interesting (buildings looked kind of good, creatures and many plants and natural formations not so good, so they are being replaced by 3D models).
But it is a good example and exercise in extracting more detail from the game than the original developers intended or envisioned.
I've often wondered if the bloat in modern games is somewhat intentional as a deterent to piracy. If a game is 96k (or 300 megs for that matter) it is easily moved, stored, downloaded etc. whereas a game that is 4Gb takes much more effort, bandwidth and energy.
For those who want to try the 96 k game kkrieger : :http://kk.kema.at/files/kkrieger-beta.zip
Download here (beta version)
Wincopy
Nethack still looks as fresh and crisp as it did 20 years ago.
Popular movies come out with 'remastered' versions that are basically the same movie but sell as well. If you look at games like Megaman powered up, DS Mario, and a few upcoming titles, people are obviously willing to pay for old games with new graphics. In fact i would say we already have the same games with newer graphics, what we don't have is an industry that has room for innovation because all the time is spent on just getting the things to work on different systems and getting it to market. What would help is if we could actually preserve the originals and work on serious gameplay enhancements that we know will last virtually forever, instead of spending the budget on just getting it to work on new hardware with new graphics. It's not a waste of resources if you've created a loyal base of players that know they can expect a constant increase in quality and visuals, instead of a debate of one vs the other.
This would be AMAZING, though, as an open-source project. Get an amazing, constantly-updating engine down, and let people release all the content they want for it. It would be like Doom WADs on steroids.
The whole concept of procedural creation in games has not been fleshed out as I would have hoped. Procedural methods can do much more then make great FPS graphics fit on 800K. Way back in 1986, I played a game called Starflight. Starflight used fractal algorithms to create a pretty diverse universe with about 200 star systems and 800 planets. You could land on and explore each planet. Close up. Let me say that again, you could land on each planet, collect it's life, find unique artifacts and rove your little tank around for hours. All of this fit onto two low density 5 1/4" floppies. Now, the CGA graphics and restrictive CPU power did no favors. Things got pretty repetitive, but the enormity of the game went unmatched for about 12 years.
In reflection, and now that I better understand it's design, it seems to me to be a microcosm of the real universe. You have a set of rules and a set of elements and by happenstance, (not by human hands in 3ds max) worlds are born.
For a long time, we've been stuck with with character models, human built maps, plot-lines on rails and worlds confined to the imagination of the story line department. Procedural graphics and world creation could make the universe out of a few megabytes.
There are a few games here and there that use this idea. Here is a game in development using procedural graphics and fractal planet creation: Infinity
"Console companies have gone ot such great lengths to make sure their API is so specific that we have to spend a year porting from one console to another, that we'll just come up with a way to make it all never change."
At least half the design time of a console these days is making sure it's HARD to port games to another console, so that it will be an exclusive title, and they can make more money.
I fyou think Microsoft hates things like OpenGL, you've never seen the fires of hell hatered that people like Sony, Nintendo etc have for anything that makes game development easier.
- Adam L. Beberg - The Cosm Project - http://www.mithral.com/
This game... created in the 1990's looks as good as ever. And in fact, recently went to a true 3d environment ("Spring"). All those tiny 1/2" objects were 3d objects from the beginning. As the 3d cards got better, the game got better.
Likewise, the AI engine and other aspects were forward thinking- table based, programmable and over the years the AI for the game and units and maps have all only improved with age.
It is the *only* game that I purchased back then that I still play and enjoy.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
The games are disposable today. I don't know how many I own or have rented and played, but never finished - or just never picked up again. Yet again and again I go out and get these asinine games which I will not remember in the future, but merely use to burn up time. I think i'm going to start going to the library to get books more often, at least I will gain something from there, rather than wasting my time on pointless games. It's cheaper and healthier that way.
The gaming industry is like medicine, there's no money in the cure. Return customers are where they make their bucks.
What else can happen when an unstoppable force collides with an immovable object?
Procedural synthesis has been around for quite awhile in the demoscene. These demos are computer programs that have been specifically engineeered to impress in both sound and graphics quality?
Check out FR-08, circa 2000, by Farbrausch...this demo goes on for nearly 15 minutes at 1024x768 graphics that certainly blew away anything of that time, and its 64KB.....64KB!!
Download Here[pouet.net]
Also, see FR-025, circa 2003, this "popular" demo absolutely blew my mind when I first watched it.
Download Here[pouet.net]
Heaven Seven, circa 1999, the demo completed by Exceed, is a journey threw time with beautiful textures and graphics. This is also a 64KB demo, so beautiful...
Download Here[pouet.net]
The demoscene is alive and well, publishing the most beautiful and interesting works of art in modern days. Even the largest demos (~50MB), blow away HL2 and any other 4GB+ game. Check these out at http://www.pouet.net
Firstly, there is the question to how much effort a company would want to put into making a version of their game that gets better with age. Using current models of "create a game, sell a couple hundred thousand copies, then make another game" it doesn't really make sense. The key is that the graphics can improve as hardware improves, and the only sorts of games that really come close to fitting that sort of lifecycle today are the MMOGs. Like I wish Ultima Online had graphics that had improved over time. The game is almost 10 years old and is largely unchanged. Other games (like the soon to be serialized Half-Life 2 and SIN series) might also benefit from improvements, though HL2 is already incorporating improved graphics with each new episode (according to the developers commentary). Secondly, the procedural systhesis method is much more compute intensive. They use as a prime example the forest scenery in Oblivion. As we all know, Oblivion is a performance-killing game on the PC, and the Great Forest part of it is the slowest part by far. So if you go too far with procedureal synthesis today, your game can turn out to be a real pig. So there's a definite balance that you have to strike between performance today and upgraded visuals tomorrow.
What is with this constant fear of aging? People (mostly girls?) are scared to get some history on their body, and now videogames?? I think it is quite charming to dust off my old video games, and play them like "the good old days"
It is available at www.longnow.org (previous months lectures). Its not the same topic, but it is a talk with brian eno entirely about 'generative content'.
This generation or next.
The problem with the idea is instead of creating larger high quality unique images, or large quanity of images, the idea is to generate your images on the fly through code.
Ok that would work. And it does. However it doesn't work in large scale games. First off if you look at Procedural generation you have to code the way the system works very carefully. It's like explaining to an alien what my DDR pad is. "it's a large pad with four buttons on it, It has lights." oops forgot it's metal, forgot this and that. And what's worse, every single time you use it you'll have to create a new way to describe the texture, or you'll get the same texture for everything.
But do you realize how long it would take to design the ENTIRE world of Halo with that tool? How about Prey? how about GTA? It wouldn't take 3 years between games, it'd take 10 years, or it would cost vastly more.
Xbox 360 fanboys (not that I hate the system) tout this as the reason they don't need blu-ray. The theory is sound. (It does work, it will work, it will always work) But at the same time, the developed a small game for it. Did they have trees, multiple people with tons of different clothes, flowing textures. Did their game sell a couple million copies?
Some companies do use procedural generation, for stuff that's inconsiquencial. Trees is the big one currently, Speed tree save tons of time, but that's the only widespread use of the technology so far.
It boils down to this. If procedural generation is the solution to all our problems why haven't we used it in everything? Why wasn't it discovered earlier? It's not because of the power of computers, it's because it's not going to save the world. We arn't going to see well made games using procedural generation for graphics because it just bogs down the processor, and it doesn't give any noticable improvement in graphic quality. If we had 10 processors, then yeah we can waste 4-5 working on generating the world, but even with 6 processors, 1 is for graphics, 1 or 2 is for physics (a must have in most games now), and the rest is for your gameplay components, we don't have the extra power no matter what ivory tower scientists want use to believe.
This is all "what if" the answer though is "it can't"
I can't see this working for long...
Eventually when memory (RAM & HD) are nearly free and nearly infinite, visuals in games may come close to paralelling reality (i.e. a tree in a game may look more like a real tree than it does today). A game that is developed today even with the most advanced mathematical algorythms applied in a graphics platform to be expandable to future, will not be imediately upgradable (from an end-users's perspective) to benefit from an instant graphics upgrade. I.e. you can't just shove the game in the latest new console and expect it to have graphics magically upgraded to the latest high standards. Somebody will still have to go through the entire game and add granularity to each wall, floor, and animated characters in the game which mathematics can not auto-magically generate with accuracy enough to come close to paralleling the randomness & beautify of reality. So the only alternative, I can see is to have the games of today allow future artists to ADD new graphic content into the old game with some newer gaming technology... but somebody still has to put in the effort to create & import all the new graphics.
So I think perhaps the article is misleading. Again, from an end-users's perspective, the game can't just magically upgrade all its graphics and have it equal in looks to whatever the latest high benchmark of impressiveness might be. At best, the end-user plugs in the CD/DVD into the new console (assuming it even accepts older formats) and over the internet, for a fee, newer graphics are downloadable... will users pay a small fee for this service? And more importantly, will gaming companies bother to re-create nicer graphics for old games? Is this a sustainable business model? I would venture to guess that only the most popular addictive games of all times might justify this kind of effort in a gaming company's project list.
Having said all that, I'm all for http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Reality
Adeptus
No trees were killed in the making of this post; however, many trillions of electrons were horribly inconvenienced.
I'm going to have to disagree. Lets take a look at something like Grand Theft Auto..
...because people are interested in the story or the characters involved. They're interested in new scenarios. If you created a version of those games who's graphics were procedurally generated and upgraded with whatever hardware the games were played on franchises like GTA would get lots of people buying the old versions after playing the new versions long after the game was "past it's prime". As it is right now when GTA4 comes out for the next generation consoles GTA3, VC, and SA will be left in the dust because they'll be graphically crap by comparison. But if their graphics updated procedurally someone who's first experience with the franchise is GTA4 might be interested in picking up the older titles without being turned off by their bad graphics.
Grand Theft Auto III graphically looks the same as Vice City graphically looks the same as San Andreas. Those games sell incredibly well when new "versions" come out regardless of the fact that there arn't any graphical improvements.
Why?
It doesn't work for every game but it does work for quite a few. I can think of lots of games (mostly from the PS1/Saturn/N64 era) that I enjoyed a whole lot back then but can't stand to play now due to their horrid 3D graphics, if I could play them today with more modern graphics I'd buy them again, and new gamers would still be buying those titles.
Collector's Edition
I don't know if developers are taking advantage of it, or to what extent it supports it, but I'm fairly sure the Xbox 360 already has Procedural Synthesis capabilities.
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2005/10/07
...security through obesity?
-={(Astynax)}=-
"Darkness beyond Twilight"
But it is true that most mainstream games are either really shallow or have a plot you just don't care about. However, a game that tells a captivating story is one that you might want to replay later just to experience the story again.
For example, I'm going to buy Escape Velocity Nova, not because I'm such a big fan of Elite clones but because in the demo I played halfway through the Vell-os storyline and I want to get that mind-control device out of my pilot's spine and then get back at the Federation. I'm not thinking in terms of "by getting rid of the device I can advance in the game", I'm thinking in terms of "just wait until I can free myself (and hopefully the Vell-os) and Fucking Kill(TM) you assholes". I want to get back at them. I am pissed about how they used me to hurt their enemies (getting those enemies to hate me in the process). That kind of passion is pretty rare with games; I usually reserve it for good books or movies.
Without the storylines (and modability; I love modding) EV Nova would definitely not be worth thirty US bucks to me. But I am willing to spend the money on a game that does such a good job at storytelling. The fact that I want to Summer Bloom the shit out of Commander Krane also plays into that.
When I think about truly good games with high replay value I usually think about games with a good story (off the top of my head: Fallout 1/2, X-Com 1 to 3, Final Fantasy Tactics (NOT Advance), most LucasArts games before Monkey Island 4, the Marathon series...); games that are great without a decent story usually are so because of great modability (Unreal, Unreal Tournament, Quake 3 Arena). The few games that have neither invariably have outstanding gameplay (Gunbound, the 2D Metroid games (Fusion even has a half-decently told story)).
A brilliant story might not be the best way to drive sales, but it is an excellent way of increasing replay value. If graphics really would become self-upgrading and more developers would focus on things like immersion that goes beyond the visual/acoustic level we'd probably see more memorable games.
Let's see... Presenting the name of the game, check. Linking to the game's website, check. Telling the price, check. Praising the game while giving away teaser-sized parts of the plot, check.
Getting paid for what amounts to a Slashvertisement... un-check. Damn.
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)