Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[jetex1911]

Serial Killer Roguelike.

[Solifuge]

I'm looking for this.

You know, I'm frankly surprised I haven't seen a Big Sandbox game like this yet. Little Big Planet did something like this, but it forces users to create within a "get from Point A to Point B" objective-based system, with pre-scripted objects, which limits what can be done. I think a multiplayer, physics-based, user-scripted "map making" tool would be great... almost like MMO Klick 'n Play, without the suck.

Also, thought I'd link this thread here, since it's relevant for concept broadcasting.

[Alkhemia]

Dungeon Keeper 3 

[Farmerbob]

OMG.  If it's not vaporware, we're about to hit a level of graphics improvement that will be comparable to the creation of color monitors.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=00gAbgBu8R4&feature=related

The claims are, honestly, too good to be true.

Unlimited point cloud data - basically modeling similar to molecular modeling.

Here's the webpage.  I'm considering this to be like Cold Fusion until something playable is created with it, but if it does work, it's going to do crazy things to game graphics.

http://unlimiteddetailtechnology.com/home.html

[Drago55577]

A game like FromDust and Dwarf Fortress, with the ability to do godly acts or become a disguised god
. And 3D.
*walks around a fortress. FB attacks. A massive spire comes out of the ground. Continues walking like nothing happened*

[Neyvn]

Here is my idea. Written on a Phone and made up without alot of thought while working. Also written in lunch break. :p
An MMORPG. I havent really thought about how the "Monster Player" faction would work but for the human or good side you start off as an unknown character. You can choose from a group of jobs and earn a living doing them for the main city which caters for all players. the economy is player driven. You can adventure into dungeons and such places which are randomly genned each cycle when you can afford base gear. grow in status to a point where you are invited to a challenge which if you win you are awarded "land" which you can start turning into a city of your own where other players can come live and work or use as a home base for dungeon crawling. Equipment is like boarderlands style which can be broken down skyrim echanting style by enchanters and remade better and even combind for differwnt effects which can be sold by players to players in cities. to build cities you need the resources that players can gather and so forth. The thing is that the other faction is doing the same sort of thing but Dungeon style. PvP between factions is one side attacking each other on the roads or in the dungeons/towns that are built by player or genned. Leaders can hire players as adventures to fight or defend amd so forth.

[Draco18s]

OMG.  If it's not vaporware, we're about to hit a level of graphics improvement that will be comparable to the creation of color monitors.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=00gAbgBu8R4&feature=related

The claims are, honestly, too good to be true.

If you look carefully you'll see that they use the same, oh, twelve assets over and over and over again.  Repeated ad infinitum.  It's actually trivial to render the one object and then duplicate it across the screen a thousand times (each object acts as a pointer to a source asset, which is computed once).

The point-cloud objects also don't deal with transformations (eg. rotation) very well, although possible.  They deal with morphing animations even more poorly.  I.e. they've got a super detailed character model.  That model cannot walk or move its arms.

So in other words: they're implying that they can do more than they really can.

The other downside to the point-cloud rendering method is data size.  If you're storing one point per cubic millimeter, and each of those points is represented with three 32 bit values (X, Y, and Z) then it's going to take 11 Gigabytes to store all of the information in a 1 meter cube.  Obviously, you only need to represent the surface of any given object, but the space requirements are still massive.

[Matz05]

Yes but, if your elements are small enough (the blades of grass, leaves, pebbles, etc.) you only need 10-20 variations to lay out in various preset patterns. You don't need to keep every pixel of a fractal to render it, you just work it through. There is no reason to keep thousands of volumes of the same rock in memory at the same time, when one volume and thousands of sets of xpos, ypos, zpos, xrot, yrot, zrot will do.

[Draco18s]

Yes but, if your elements are small enough (the blades of grass, leaves, pebbles, etc.) you only need 10-20 variations to lay out in various preset patterns. You don't need to keep every pixel of a fractal to render it, you just work it through. There is no reason to keep thousands of volumes of the same rock in memory at the same time, when one volume and thousands of sets of xpos, ypos, zpos, xrot, yrot, zrot will do.

While true, the technology they're presenting as "new" has existed for a decade or more.
And they manage to "fool" people into thinking that they have technology that allows for "infinite resolution" which isn't true.

In fact (!) Notch had something to say on it.

[Farmerbob]

Yes but, if your elements are small enough (the blades of grass, leaves, pebbles, etc.) you only need 10-20 variations to lay out in various preset patterns. You don't need to keep every pixel of a fractal to render it, you just work it through. There is no reason to keep thousands of volumes of the same rock in memory at the same time, when one volume and thousands of sets of xpos, ypos, zpos, xrot, yrot, zrot will do.

While true, the technology they're presenting as "new" has existed for a decade or more.
And they manage to "fool" people into thinking that they have technology that allows for "infinite resolution" which isn't true.

In fact (!) Notch had something to say on it.

Correct.  This is why I consider it to be on par with cold fusion.  Wonderful if it works, but I'll damn well need more evidence before I really count on it.

My impression is that rigid mobile and immobile objects could be modeled this way.  Flesh and flexible materials will probably still need polygon methods.  The terrain modeled with point, the rest modeled with polys.

Doesn't it just irritate the junk out of you when you watch the rigid equipment on your character stretch and shift and bend when your character breathes?

It would be nice, however, if this company has figured out how to make this stuff work.  I'd imagine you would need an SLI card set to handle it though - one for points the other for polys.

[Kogut]

"Unlimited something something"

Obviously, it is extremely unlikely to be true and possible. Maybe this perpetum mobile design is working but is a good heuristic to ignore claims like this.

[Farmerbob]

"Unlimited something something"

Obviously, it is extremely unlikely to be true and possible. Maybe this perpetum mobile design is working but is a good heuristic to ignore claims like this.

If you listen between the lines, they don't actually claim unlimited resolution onscreen which is obviously impossible.  There are only so many pixels.  But thats all they need to calculate - the pixels on screen, and the pixels which *might* shortly appear onscreen.

They seem to actually be claiming they can model as finely as they desire, only limited by the storage space available, and only displaying a small part based on viewing angle.

We shall see soon, I imagine, or they will just fade away.

[Kogut]

They seem to actually be claiming they can model as finely as they desire, only limited by the storage space available, and only displaying a small part based on viewing angle.

This part is possible with polygon graphics ("only limited by the storage space available" is obviously untrue, as this data must be accessed).

[Farmerbob]

They seem to actually be claiming they can model as finely as they desire, only limited by the storage space available, and only displaying a small part based on viewing angle.

This part is possible with polygon graphics ("only limited by the storage space available" is obviously untrue, as this data must be accessed).

Exactly.  They seem to be claiming that accessing and handling their point data is more efficient than accessing and handling polygon data.  To some minor degree this seems plausible, since it's a lot easier to define a point than a poly, and GPU's are getting pretty scary in their capacity.  I have a GTX560 with 2GB of RAM, and what that card does to SETI @ Home work units is amazing.  Just a few years ago, the thought of using GPU's for processing was a non-starter really.  Then someone started it

I'm trying to give them the benefit of the doubt.  I don't have much hope for it, but it might bear fruit, and if it does the fruit will likely look very good indeed   If they do have something truly innovative in how they are actually processing the data, it will be interesting.  Others have done similar work in the past, but it's always been too cumbersome for games.  Maybe it still is.

[Matz05]

One thing I wish existed: A MMO/otherwise large scale multiplayer vehicle building game. I just started looking at a Lets Play of Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts and wonder why the concept never caught on.