New Mmog To Beat Sl....?

Even more telling is that Spore was branded as "Sim Everything" during on point.

After the original release of the video some time last year, there was a flurry of discussion on a number of sites (including Terra Nova). Among them were some seemingly legitimate comments regarding the limitations of procedural content. From the perspective of using procedurals in CG applications like rendering textures, I tend to agree. There is a quality to them that simply feels a bit fake when rendering for realism (to me at least). So while I am very much impressed by Spore and have often used it in examples of where content creation is heading, I do not think it will solve all the problems people claim it will solve wrt content.

Me computationally stupid,, so bear with me.

I can intuitively understand that procedurally-created textures wouldn't be able to able to spontaneously create realistic-looking signs and more human-made things like that. AT least that's what my gut tells me. But wouldn't it be perfect for more organic/biological textures like ground, grass, plants, amimals, fur, etc. I'm thinking fractals here too, even though I'm not sure if they are related to procedural computational thingamabobs.

Are they?

Csven, you make a very good point. It isn't a panacea, but I think it will add a subtle level of reality and flexibility to increasing numbers of games, whilst also providing developers with a way of not having to produce the vast amounts of content they currently have to. As with my example of WOW earlier, with textures, procedural creation can lead to a kind of "samey" feel, and a lot depends on the quality, and complexity, of the procedural rules that are applied. There will obviously be limits to the freedom that any system using procedural techniques can achieve, and much is largely dependant on the CPU power we have available as to how complex that can be, but I don't think it's in doubt that it will add a level of realism and immersion that hasn't been possible without it. That's why I feel it's the most important development for gaming in the last decade or so.

Generally, yes. Procedurals** and more importantly fractals of a sort are pretty much how nature creates many "natural looking" things, so it makes some sense that the technique would produce results more suited to natural stuff. It's primarily a question of finding the right procedure and appropriate settings.


** All fractals are procedurals, but not all procedurals are fractals ... a procedural is basically just a way of creating a texture using some mathematical operation or operations. You can say "here's a coordinate, tell me what the color should be there". Procedurals can include obviously non-organic stuff like checkerboards, circles, and grids. Basically, if you can find a bunch of math that produces it, given a set of coordinates, it can be made with a procedural. So, signs are unlikely.

Where is the new one? I've only seen the 35 minute one.

Quite a number of procedurals are fractal-based, though not all. Even so, there is simply something that feels wrong sometimes. In my opinion it's most likely the person behind the creation of the offending procedural. They're defining reality through their eyes; how they understand what it is that they're experiencing (after all, this is all about interpretation).

If they don't interpret the world the same way I do, there will be a disconnect. The difference can be subtle, but people tend to pick up those subtle differences even if they aren't consciously aware of them.

For example, I know that when I talk about "bounce color" to some people, they don't know what I'm talking about. If for example a ball is defined as blue, then they'll want it rendered that blue... even if it's sitting in an orange box. If they were programming a render engine, they'd never get to where renderers are today because the concept would never make it into the render code.



Agreed.

Thanks Dyne & Csven, that helps a lot!

I just did a general Google Videos search for Spore video, and it popped up very easily - it was 1 hour, 1 minute if I recall correctly - his talk was only an hour long, but most of it is the 37 minute video (if the one I saw was the one that's being discussed).

Keep your heads up and your asses covered at E3.

I wonder what Spore 2 will be like?

Should prolly wait until the first has been released

It'll not be as good as Spore 3.

I think Spore 2 has already be given the green light for a movie. Cronenberg directs and teams up again with Marilyn Chambers.

What did David Cronenburg do with Marilyn Chambers?

In a cinematic sense, that is. That we didn't get to see. I mean what movie would you be talking about?

Maryilyn Chambers was Misty Beethoven, and David Cronenburg's name is most closely associated in my mind with Videodrome.

Female lead of Videodrome was Deborah Harry the singer of Blondie, right? Maybe?

I didn't mean to suggest a movie Spore and it's sequel Spore 2, I meant a singlish player computer game Spore and its next multiplayer version, Spore v. 2.0.

Rabid. Before Videodrome. And I was just having some fun. The name "Spore" makes me think of Cronenberg's flicks.