Slashdot Mirror
Google Lively To Be an Online Gaming Platform
GamesIndustry.biz recently interviewed Kevin Hanna, creative director for Google Lively, about the virtual environment's beginnings and the plans for its future. Earlier this month, he announced that Lively would open to developers, and now he says the long-term goal is for Lively to be "used as an online games platform." Hanna goes on to say:
"I'd like for it to be invisible, where, when it makes sense to have 3D aspects of the web, that everyone will have already downloaded the plug-in, it's one of the first things you do when you install your machine, and you're able to just jump around and play in a creative space. I feel like a big chunk of the games industry out there has a corporate mentality where you're first to be second, and I've been there, where they say, 'Make sure you include this aspect, and this aspect, and this aspect, to ensure that we have an 80 per cent market share.' And it's sucking the life out of what should be the most creative and innovative medium out there."
I wonder how many markets Google will get into. I can't wait until Google starts working on their female douche product line. hehe.
Valve denied it was being purchased by Google, but it leads me to believe that the opposite may be true. Time will tell.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
Though I'm not really sure it'll work, this actually might make a bit of sense - or at least more sense than simply creating a competitor to second life where you can't build objects.
It's like an open version of ps 3's home.
My goodness, imagine the hardware requirements for this thing... and without any foreseeable return on investment? I guess if anyone can do it, it would be Google.
If you can read this... 01110101 01110010 00100000 01100001 00100000 01100111 01100101 01100101 01101011
I just hope they do better than Shockwave 3D. If nothing else, it would be an improvement in that it's unlikely they'll charge for the creation tools as opposed to the overpriced Director MX.
DONT PANIC
Well, of course online gaming is going to be lively. You wouldn't expect Google Bore (beta) to be a force here.
And the answer:
Insert Generic Sig Here:
I don't remember how I stumbled across this, maybe even a link somewhere on /., but I think Metaplace seems like it's going to be quite similar. From what I've seen of their news when checking back from time to time, they seem to be moving along and some people have built some pretty impressive stuff with the editors they give you.
"Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?" - Patrick Henry
"when it makes sense to have 3D aspects of the web, that everyone will have already downloaded the plug-in, it's one of the first things you do when you install your machine, and you're able to just jump around and play in a creative space"
Everytime I hear someone propose something like this, I think of VRML and the failed (and misguided) attempt to reskin the web into something it's not.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
How exactly can a douche product be beta tested? Those are some TRAINED monkeys you gots!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Does anyone else think that this sounds like the beginning of the creation of The Matrix?
If you have something that you dont want anyone to know, maybe you shouldnt be doing it in the first place -Eric Schmidt
I would love to see a 3D sandbox where freelance programmers could just be given the tools to create whatever they want and share it in a virtual world. Anyone could download a client application and navigate this virtual world like Google Earth.
Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson portrayed a world like this. Destinations could be anything from lavish corporate offices where company execs conduct virtual meetings, to virtual clubs (which would really be nothing more than spiffy looking chat rooms), to games, to virtual concerts with pixel shader driven light shows. Everyone could create their own avatar, or download templates, to represent themselves in this virtual world.
The problem is 'policing' the content introduced to the system. In an open ended world like this it'd be trivial for someone to upload some malicious code. There'd have to be some sort of submission system where all code is reviewed before it's introduced to the system, but even that wouldn't be fool proof and it'd probably be pretty expensive.
That aside, the possibilities would be endless.
Murphey's fighting Occam, and we're in the stands.
Like making it only work for Windows? Yeah, that pretty much sucks the life out of it for me.
I thought it said online gambling platform.
You can get 15 minutes of fame, but you can go down in history for infamy.
If you're a traffic based site gaming is a natural. Surprised they didn't do this earlier. Too obvious?
I hate being bipolar; it's awesome!
Second-life's attempt to be the world's Metaverse turned out to be just a huge advertising/hacking cluster fuck. Not saying that that Lively won't be a advertising/hacking cluster fuck but at least it sounds it would be more open to programmers, which will allow for more diverse possibilities, so there could be just as much good stuff as bad.
Abaddon: An Xbox 360 Indie game
Google pwns you and yuor computer.
Persian Project Management Software as a Service
I thought Second Life was a place where Furries go all go and have virtual furry sex....
It is funny to say, but think about it. Google has a mass of information that covers the entire web, including personal data about you and me. If it wanted to, google could track its users of the new google phone. Heck i have google maps on my blackberry, so they could track me too.
Is Slashdot now becoming the marketing arm of Google? I swear this is like the 90th article about some new whiz-bang software they developed. There are other companies writing software!
120 characters isn't enough to explain it.
Out of all the 3d user interfaces I've used, this is probably the worst. There's no connection between you and your avatar at all, and even getting your avatar to walk along a straight line is frustrating... the normal motion is to have you avatar teleport from one piece of furniture to another while you pan around at a distance.
If simple movement is so hard, how on earth do they expect people to use it for a gaming platform?
Here's the translation from the corporate speak:
"We've released it and no one bit. We have no idea what to do with it, so let us see if we can use other people's ideas for free."
Not saying that that Lively won't be a advertising/hacking cluster fuck but at least it sounds it would be more open to programmers
Second Life: in-world creation of in-world content (no special tools needed for building and scripting), open source client, active cooperation with competing open source server platform, runs on Windows 2000, Mac, Linux, in-world scripting based on Mono, ...
Lively: no user-created in-world content, in-world or out, just promises, no developer API, no information about an API, just 'you can put a non-interactive web page in a frame', only runs on Windows XP or better.
This is some version of "open" that only applies to Google.
I'd like a second life where I could create a 50 megaton virtual H-bomb.
They had those in Second Life 3 years ago.
I've hidden a geocache inside my room(s) starting at http://www.lively.com/dr?rid=-8673303648343481619 It's part of a geocaching.com puzzle cache you can see at: http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_details.aspx?guid=089d9a0e-5747-48d8-aedb-ebb8d284e57a
I read about lively quite a time ago ... but tried it just now to see how it feels.
And i must say ... it sucks ... big time!
If they do really want to make anything fun of it ... it looks like starting from scratch would be a good idea.
Why ?
- Its slow (on a dual core system that runs cyrsis just fine)
- Loading takes ages
- Controll via point and click not well done
- Camera controll annoying
- Overall usability far away from google standards
I tried to find more about Gamebryo but when I got to Emergent.com it said:
Although Linux isn't the current most widely accepted platform for gaming :
- It is an emergent platform in the netbook form-factor. And although you wouldn't play Crysis on an Eee PC, if they plan to make Lively a casual and common plugin it better has to run on the small machine everyone will lug around in their purse/lab coat pocket/etc...
- Also running Linux and also running lots of other OSes none of which are Windows XP are the PDAs and smartphone. Currently the form factor is a tad too small. But on the other end, if google is trying to make Lively pervasive, it better has to have room for crossplatform porting.
Other wise it'll end up just like Flash (required everywhere but too few plugins to accommodate with this fact) and Silverlight (doesn't exist outside Microsoft).
- And don't forget the main part : The current most widely recognised platforms for gaming are the consoles. None of which has ever run WinXP (maybe we could argue because the XBox ran something remotely derived from Win2k, and the current XBox360 runs a remote derivate of that).
Granted none of this runs Linux either (when in gaming mode. PS3 can run Linux out of the box but it was designed for research and the hypervisor blocks access to the nVidia GPU - only hacking CELL's SPUs is allowed).
Nevertheless, restricting development to Windows-only is very narrow minded at a time when lots of gamer only play to thing hooked up to their TeeVee.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
I told you so Now What?
Lively is a disconnected collection of small rooms. If the web were be like that we'd have fixed-length non-scrollable pages with almost no way to jump from one to another but the bookmarks/favorites menu. I hope that Google's not only opening the API but is also going to remove the constraints on the room size or let people connect rooms together to create a continuous environment like SL (the latter would be enough). If they don't it will never become a 3D WWW.
none of which are standard across the various platforms that use the linux kernel.
So, the standard combination of SDL + OpenGL + OpenAL + X11 is pretty solid across all desktop-like platforms, with the exception of embedded devices, which still probably have MiniGL.
BTW: The name you are looking for isn't MiniGL (= a partial implementation of a non-standarized subset of OpenGL functions. Back in the day when Voodoo 1&2 didn't have yet full OpenGL drivers) but OpenGL/ES (the "embed" version of openGL - a precise standard, geared toward embed systems, that also removes the window manager out of the equation OpenGL/ES draws directly to the frame buffer whereas OpenGL draw to the X11 windows manager).
Beside the frame buffer difference and some technical details which don't interest the game designer, both are pretty much close one to another. So in the end it's still OpenGL for the developer.
And X11 isn't even required : SDL's role is to handle low-level graphics & sound and completely abstracts whatever is underneath (SDL applications are source compatible across Linux, Windows or one of the huge amount of console with SDL ported to it - independently of presence absence of X11 or even some window manager).
Usually it's :
1. use SDL to init graphics, opengl, sound and joystick
2. start sending commands to opengl
3. there's no step 3
It's hard to screw.
If the indie game developer distributing binaries, if the few commercial Linux ports, and if the demoscene can all manage to do it properly, there's no reason that Google wouldn't with all resource at disposition
(And for the fun of it, substitute "SDL" with "Allegro" and now you can even run it under oldskool Free-/MS-DOS. With OpenGL. With hardware 3D acceleration under DOS, if you happen to have an old Voodoo laying around).
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]