Absolutely fascinating: a must read...

#1 I think the most interesting thing here is you are only limited to your programming abilities, not by simple animations and stuff like that.

And the games are VERY small, easily downloadable by anyone.

#2 Very interesting article - I like the quote, "He encouraged everyone else in the room to do the same -- not to be intimidated by what everyone is saying about the next generation of content -- but just to go out and make great games!"

#3 I guess the game will be small by comparison, but the code will be much bigger than a lot of other games. Smaller art budget, bigger code budget.

I have always admired what Braben and Bell managed with Elite, I played that game non stop for months till four and five in the morning every night, and all that in a 48kilobyte sqidgy keyed Sinclair Spectrum. Its responsible for setting a terrible sleeping pattern I still have today.

edit :

Imagine if he patents it........

#4 Procedural content is nothing new. Demo groups have been doing it since the C64. One group recently released an FPS that was something like 90k.

#5 75k demos are awesome, aparantly he hired a bunch of the guys from the demo scene to work on that game.

#6 @Ken: yeah, saw that 90k FPS... not bad for 90k lol... though not sure how fun the game really was...

to me as a consumer the size isn't too important as long as the game is fun enough though

as a developer the size is exteremely critical of course however

#7 I think the main purpose for procedural content wasnt the size, it just removed limitations of the game itself. If you can do whatever you want to do, go wherever you want to go in the game, then it means that no matter how much art you pour into the game, its going to be a limitation.

#8 I think this is a cool idea for a new genre, but this will never replace how games are made now, at least not fully. A lot of people like to play a scripted story, like Halo, Star Wars, or anything like that. This just shows complete randomness, which some people aren't interested in. I can definitely see potential there though.

#9 Size is one benefit, but certainly not the only one. Using procedural content to generate "infinite worlds" is also well known, though not many mainstream games use it.


Guy W. Lecky-Thompson has a few books out covering the subject. One of which is:
Infinite Game Universe: Mathematical Techniques

#10 I also think that artist-assisted procedural content will get more popular.

In tools like Terragen you can set some parameters and have it create a world for you. An artist can then tweak the results to fit your game. I don't think it will be long before tools like this are available across all art tools.

#11

Quote:I think this is a cool idea for a new genre, but this will never replace how games are made now, at least not fully. A lot of people like to play a scripted story, like Halo, Star Wars, or anything like that. This just shows complete randomness, which some people aren't interested in. I can definitely see potential there though.

You can still script a story in a procedurally generated world - infact, you have less limitations.

#12 That maybe, but I wouldn't see too much of a reason if his point is to cut out artists. Why would you hire and spend money on an artist and a story writer and have a scripted game if that is what he is trying to cut out? Just isn't that appealing to me yet...guess I would have to see some games that show me the possiblities first. Plus I am one of those artists..hehe.

#13 A good artist is valuable for far more than their ability to push polygons around or paint pixels. Artists will always be valuable to game development.

3D Engines haven't put programmers out of work, they just give us more time to focus on the game itself. Procedural content will do the same for artists.

#14 The SNES had a game called 'evo' which you evolved your creature, starting from a simple fish, up to whatever you wanted (kinda). I had an idea which was eerily similar to spore when I was just a dreaming little kid.

The idea doesn't really suprise me, but the fact that someone has the balls to "yup, we're doing it" warrents respect.

I hope he goes through with it and changes more than just the gaming world.

#15 Evo was a great game :)

#16 Ive always felt that gameplay is WAY more important than graphics and that in the final analysis it is way cheaper to code a game than to make artwork into a game. This may be due to my bad/slow 3d modeling skills however. :)

Programming, if done right, provides a much richer, diverse experience. Think about physics based games- GTA, etc. Why attatch a script to everything when you can code it so everything operates? Same thing for programming a flocking based AI versus something like A*.

Similar deal for shader programming- instead of textures that have everything you want burned in, you code a shader.

Overall, I've always thought that the way to go is w/ gameplay and good gameplay should be based off a few simple rules that combine to create complex behaviors/strategies. All of this is kinda loosely based on emergent behaviors/gameplay/whatever.