Other Same old same old, I have something different?

I want to know your comments.

My game is not a game.
My demonstration is a foundation on which games could be built.
My graphics are poor at best, but that's not my goal.
I've been working by myself, so the task has been time consuming.
Even after explaining my new game engine, people are still giving me blank looks.
You think I'm just making another game, but I wish I could open your eyes to what this has the potential of being.
Everyone demands the latest and greatest. Best processor, best graphics, best gameplay, best this, best that...
you know what I see with all of these? The Same Old Games. Nothing New... just recycled and upgraded atari games.

I gave a presentation at my college to some classmates, and my teacher was kind enough to record it. So for your viewing pleasure, feel free to view.



Be sure to watch the Infinite maze video also, for a better angle of gameplay. My graphics are worse than Pong, but that's not the point! It's the game engine, the software that's doing a ton of work in the background that nobody seems to appreciate.

I sent basic threads to other forums, no comments at all. I seen the youtube video of ID Tech and their graphics engine and was hoping you guys would be more talkative.

 

Very cool. I also liked the video of the never-ending maze as well

 

so this is a procedurely generated world?

It looks very interesting.

I have a question though, when you move away from a place and then return to the smae place does it still remain the same?

 

you are correct

This environment is just very little, so things change quickly. I have many other designs in mind, and one example for your curiosity:
This maze has a set of rules applied to it, thus the walls are in perfect positions, however...

If I were to attach an invisible randomly generated "permanent path" that these walls are not allowed to block to the Maze environment, hence you would have a landmark. Something that remains the same each time you revisit.

But just for kicks, if you left the "permanent path" then you could not reach the goal without going back to where you left. This would be annoying, but really easy to find the correct path. Walls would block you from the correct path until you entered where you left off.


Looking way into the future on this, MMOPG... Say two guys travel through a "Desert Environment". One manages to find a randomly generated gold mine. He then sends a request to the Desert Environment that this be established as a landmark. The second guy would then be able to go to the gold mine at that position without previous knowledge of it.

Another possibility. If the first guy marked this gold mine into his own inventory, then only he could come back to it, unless he had friends come with him to "see" what he sees. Now we know why we can't find elves... lol

Or he could give his newly discovered landmark "note" to a nearby tavern. This impression gives truth to "rumors". Anyone hearing the rumor would gain access to that goldmine.

 

This sounds pretty interesting. Do these landmarks have a fixed position relative to each other or can the distances between them change? Would they be defined, e.g. as being 500m apart?

How would this handle multiple players? Would they only share local paths if they went as a group?Would each see their own randomly generated local terrain?

Imagine one player is exploring and discovers a feature that they want to landmark. At the exact same time another player comes across another feature at the exact same spot (relative to the other landmarks) that they also wish to landmark, what would happen?

I like the sound of it, though. Interesting stuff.

 

I watched both your movies and I didn't really know what you were talking about to be honest. I figured out very early on that you were basically talking about procedurally generated content, at least I thought I did, you haven't actually used that term. Perhaps that is an old expression now? I think that alone is a very exciting concept. It's been used before in some games, very successfully. I didn't really understand what made your idea different or special though, until I saw your MMO example. That got me really excited.

I am still having a hard time fulling understanding it though. For example at first I'm thinking, Ok, so each player can chat together like in an MMO, but they are all exploring their own worlds that are completely different. So nobody can actually meet each other because they are all in their own unique worlds, but the plus side is that each person has a unique experience which can't be spoilt or cheapened by someone else giving you directions or telling you where something is. I really like that idea. Where it all got more complex was when you said that the system can match stuff up, so if two people travel together they can both discover the same landmark. That's really exciting but again, a little confusing for me and I would need to try to figure out how that works in reality.

For example as the previous poster mentioned, if two players discover a location together, they would be sharing knowledge of a location, and yet wouldn't the entire rest of their worlds be different? If so, that's pretty odd. Not necessary bad, but definitely odd and something I would need to ponder a lot. I also wondered other stuff. If it was a "persistent world" MMO, it would be crazy because people would be running around in different worlds and it would be confusing. I think if places were procedurally generated and then shared with each player so everyone was in the same procedurally generated world, that would be really cool, yet crazy too because the world could be absolutely enormous. If you had a thousand players all running off in to the sunset in different directions, the world could be a billion square miles and if that had to be matched up with all other players then would that not be a big issue both technically and gameplay wise? Alternatively it could be so the worlds are all uniquely generated but multiple players can travel together and have their own world generated and that could mean people can play together in the same world, but they will be in a different world to other groups of players. That could be really cool and I'm sure would be the holy grail of game development in a way, especially if you look at it from a pen and paper roleplayer kind of perspective. In other words, people want to go on adventures together, but it's all cheapened a lot in current MMORPG's because it's a fixed world so you aren't much of an explorer because some dude has already done it all before and conquered it all before etc. So for people to go together on a genuinely new, unique adventure, that could be amazing.

Again though I'm still a bit unsure of how it could all work. From you would I love to hear two more things.

1) Firstly, I'd love you to explain a bit about the scope of this idea some more. It's one thing to say "walls are generated" in PacMan but why? Why is that good and how is it unique? Is what you are saying that any game that involves travelling or exploring, with your idea, the world could be almost infinitely enormous? Either way, how do you picture this all being used? Say an investor gave you $60million and asked you to make the ultimate game with your idea, what kind of game would it be? How would it play? I know a fair bit of technical stuff, but really I am just a gamer, so from a gamer's perspective, what would the game be like? And what other kinds of games could you make? FPS's? MMORPG's? 2D action platformers?

2) Secondly, I would suggest that I think people would be far more excited if you hyped yourself a bit more and a bit differently. You seem really smart and your idea could be ingenious, but it's hard to get excited about it because I'm not really sure what it does. Gamers are easily hyped by numbers and scale! So you should use this to your advantage. For example, if you said, "With my idea, you could play a MMORPG with a world 1 million times larger than World of Warcraft. Or an RPG with a world 200million times larger than Elder Scrolls Oblivion. Or you could play a puzzle game like Valve's Portal, only each level is absolutely unique on YOUR computer so nobody can spoil things with youtube videos." Stuff like that. I wanna know how it works in real gaming terms and I wanna get hyped.

At the moment I am just seeing it as a real time area generation tool but with a twist, and I'm not even fully sure what the twist is. It's all really interesting though so far but I'm still trying to wrap my mind around the idea.

 

Yeah - I found this pretty hard to follow. I get the feeling you might be on to something and I'd love to see a real-time demonstration of how it works, but I'm having trouble seeing how this differs from existing methods for either randomly or procedurally generated content.

Something it seems that you might have missed out on too is the idea that, even if someone took your technology and used it to create an infinite world, that world would still be useless unless it was populated with content. At that point, the best content is always bespoke - anything else turns into random fetch quests.

Or have I missed something?

 

you guys are just awesome, you know that. Really just awesome. I was beginning to lose hope there, but now I'm getting hyped up again. Thank you.


EVILRUSK quote:
"Do these landmarks have a fixed position relative to each other or can the distances between them change? Would they be defined, e.g. as being 500m apart?"
> Since boudaries go to infinity, landmarks are given an Nth dimension coordinate. Objects don't have to keep tabs on each other unless a collision has occurred. kinda like a radar system.

EVILRUSK quote:
"How would this handle multiple players?
Would they only share local paths if they went as a group?
Would each see their own randomly generated local terrain?"
> I am imagining a huge server for people that are in close proximity of one another, this way users are looking and reacting to the exact same object. But if a user were far enough away from anyone else... The server could transfer processing power to the user's computer. This would relieve stress from the main server.

EVILRUSK quote:
"Imagine one player is exploring and discovers a feature that they want to landmark.
At the exact same time another player comes across another feature at the exact same spot (relative to the other landmarks) that they also wish to landmark, what would happen?"
> I have pondered this before, and one idea might be: if one person's landmark was active, then the second person could have a choice of temporarily dimensionally shifting their landmark, so both could coexist in the same say 3D position, but the 6th dimension is different, thus no collision and no interaction.


books questions:
"1) Firstly, I'd love you to explain a bit about the scope of this idea some more. It's one thing to say "walls are generated" in PacMan but why? Why is that good and how is it unique? Is what you are saying that any game that involves travelling or exploring, with your idea, the world could be almost infinitely enormous? Either way, how do you picture this all being used? Say an investor gave you $60million and asked you to make the ultimate game with your idea, what kind of game would it be? How would it play? I know a fair bit of technical stuff, but really I am just a gamer, so from a gamer's perspective, what would the game be like? And what other kinds of games could you make? FPS's? MMORPG's? 2D action platformers?"
> I've been taught math and programming with the idea of making things universal. I could never come up with a new "theme" like "Mario", "Zelda", "MegaMan", "Ninja Blade", etc. My current goal, is to take a theme, separate the elements, analyze why each part exists, and build a set of rules appropriate to the element. Once each element's rules have been established, variables can be used to make the game experience random and entertaining.

The current problem: eeeeverything's copyrighted...

Pacman example:
there are some basic elements to the game.
The hero: Pacman
The goal: collect the dots
The obstacles: the walls
The enemy: the ghosts
rules established:
The Pacman: contains certain traits and controlled by human
The dots: why on earth do I need to collect dots?! My decision, use dots as ammunition. lol
The walls: "how can I explain to the computer how to build a maze..." trade secret. lol
The enemy: The ghosts have one purpose, kill Pacman if seen.
There were other factors attached that were not mentioned, but you know, I wouldn't want to let everything out at first.


I would like to see this not just for gaming, but simulators as well.

Military Example:
Intel: "We've located a terrorist hideout. Buildings with these specifications. "This" number of terrorists with "this" mindset. Weapons of "this" caliber and quantity. We have seen "this" kind of activity"...

The computer could then build a simulation with all these specs, but the catch is maybe Intel was inaccurate, or changes were made. Maybe there are more of some elements, maybe there is less. Maybe the enemy is smarter or dumber. We have pictures of the outside of the building, but who knows how the inside is built.
There are rules for how people act.
There are rules for how buildings are designed.
Perhaps there are rules for how weapons are created. Bringing in never before seen items.
There are rules for general organization activity. Drug dealers would not act the same as Arms dealers, or Religious fanatics.
There are even rules for the lay of land. What kind of rules are there for terrain? What rules do animals follow?


Back to the game engine:
Something else that was interesting, you know how two overlapping circles will share area? What if one circle represented say "Super Mario Land" and the other circle had "Megaman's city", you would be interacting with both games simultaneously. Watch out Bowser, Megaman is gonna Rock your world... okay, okay, bad joke. But still, you wouldn't have to play the role of the hero. Maybe a lookalike, or change your form into one of the residents, like Toads, or Mavericks, or whatever. The user is the soul, what body they are in doesn't matter.

That wasn't too long winded was it?

As far as content of the game... I leave that to other people to fill.

 

Presumably this could be implemented into procedurely generated permanent content to create an infinite universe like Spore except with some sort of directional path; I can see that being a very useful game mechanic in the conventional sense so the player has a specified path but with room to explore.

I love your idea though and there's a ton of applications for this.

I'd love to see a game where every person has a different universe but there are some similarities and players can go through "rifts" into another universe. Perhaps as a player moves far enough from a logcation it goes into "Flux" and changes (perhaps it morphs into another universe).

EDIT: I'm in the midst of designing an MMO-FPS and some of this is quite relevant.

 

Yeah. I wouldn't worry about that, I think your job is to get the technology working to perfection and anything you create (like Pacman type games or whatever) are just to demonstrate your software not to actually be entertaining.

Game development companies will have game designers to do that stuff, and they could do that based on your technology. That probably happens all the time. For example it was probably a math/programming guru like you, working at Valve who decided that everything in the game could have physics, weight etc.. so the game designers and level designers will have designed the game around that concept. And that's why Halflife 2 ended up with lots of falling cars and SeeSaw type puzzles and so on. So your idea could work the same way.

I don't know what you would want to do with your idea but there are probably a few ways you could go. You could perhaps license the idea to game development companies. A good example of that being done is "SpeedTree" which is some kind of tool that generates really nice looking trees, with minimal frame rate loss. So many game developers have so much to make in their games, if they can save a lot of time by just buying in this tree making software, they are saving themselves a lot of trouble. So they do. The list of games that use SpeedTree is massive and there are lots of huge big budget games in there. So perhaps your software could work the same way.

Or alternatively you could find a job with a game developer. They ALL need programmers and I'm sure they would much rather a creative programmer like you, than just a code monkey who can only really follow instruction. They probably want both types to be honest but whatever, I bet you would sought after.

Either way, have you thought about somehow registering or copyrighting your idea? Wouldn't want you to do an IBM ;P

As the others have said, there is practically unlimited scope for an idea like this. It's also pretty much a proven technology because procedurally generated content has been used before. I remember as a kid, reading reviews of Elite2, and it said that there was an almost infinite number of planets you can explore in your space ship.... and yet it actually fit on a single 3.5" floppy disk! It was amazing. And it's been used since then, most recently Spore as Ending Credits mentioned.

So the idea works and is extremely valuable. I'm assuming your idea works similar to that but does more than just creating land, and in fact can potentially create enemies and landmarks and stuff too. I think if a good game designer could fully understand the idea and it's scope, they could come up with great games based around that technology.

 

Well, summer classes have started so it's gonna be a while before I update my program. Still, once I get a good version of it running I'll post again. until then.

 

This is pretty beyond me, I won't understand it until I can try it. :-o

I don't really see how this is different than a normal game, just a little zoomed out. The maze doesn't look too interesting, but I like the randomly generated Pac-Man thing.

 

Update to my engine

I'm currently in the process of making 3d models based on sprites from the NES Super Mario Bros. Once things start to settle down a bit, I'll build the game using secondlife. The program I'm using to create the models is sculpypaint.

If there are other, better programs, I'm all ears. If nothing else, I thought I'd give an update.

 

Better programs for what? 3D Modelling? http://www.blender.org/

 

think they kinda did this in oblivion.. it was a sandbox, a really big one with certain permanent fixtures in the box, including roads- everything else, trees, rocks were generated on the fly.. think farcry 2 did the same thing, only the game was cox

 

I could use blender, but sculptypaint allows me to mold an object and treat it as a single object. This is one of the important factors of secondlife.

I played a little bit of both, from what I could tell, these games created everything before you entered. In oblivion, it was cool to watch a particular character going from place to place based on a set schedule. In addition, I noticed that rocks, bushes, land, buildings were all in the same place when you came back to them. My game engine doesn't remember where a specific object is, unless you or someone else records it. This makes the game interesting, because a well known path may be broken do to an earthquake.

 

Gotta be honest madifier, I think you're massively underestimating the amount of work behind a system like this. I am a programmer myself so if you wanna go into detail about it, PM me.

 

This was pretty much what got me; how is your concept interesting? Will your software be fun to use? I still don't really understand how it will much different than actual games nowadays, except without a real goal.

Try playing Sims 3, except just don't zoom in and build a house.. Observe the neighborhood. As far as I can tell, that's what your software is trying to accomplish.

 

I'm not sure you understand; the forum posts here explain it quite well.

 

I probably did misunderstand it, madifier's posts are a bit 'out there'..

The video reminded me a bit of the timecube explanation.