Chambers wrote:
> Darren New wrote:
>> I never realized before that when people talk about an "RPG" game, 
>> they mean one involving "leveling up". I always thought it had 
>> something to do with, I dunno, role playing or something. :-)
> 
> Most video game players, when speaking of RPGs, are really speaking of 
> CRPGs.  Historically, computers have lacked the ability to allow 
> adequate RP, and instead focused on the systems used for running the 
> games (the numbers).
> 
> As a result, most people think of RPGs as being characterized by such 
> systems.
> 
> Rather sad, really.  There was a real RPG a few years ago, an indie one 
> where you're sitting in a room with a married couple.  You talk to them 
> by typing sentences in, using natural language, and they also responded 
> naturally.  Since there was no apparent system (everything under the 
> hood was hidden; the only feedback you got was what the couple said), 
> along with no end-state (no way to win or lose), many people said it 
> didn't even qualify as a game.  Yet, working through this couple's 
> problems with them was supposed to be quite engaging.
> 
> (NB: I never actually got around to playing it, unfortunately, but I 
> read a few good articles on it!)
> 
> Yet games like WOW, which nothing *but* grinding through the system, 
> sell like Mary Jane hot-cakes bundled with free condoms :(
> 

CoLA - City of Lost Angels, in Second Life, not to mention New Delphi, 
Crossroads, Bloodrayne, and a mess of non-English ones, all in SL, are 
fair examples of RP (was 135 such sims, in... probably close to 15+ 
chains, or worlds if you will, each with anything from 1-20 sims). There 
are probably far more now, but the page that showed all of them was 
removed a while back from the website for it. Story line is 100% user 
fed, within the parameters of the back stories. It "does" have levels 
and stats, and the like, but its only for combat (at the moment), not 
for anything else. A redesign is in the works that will integrate the 
function of the system into the client used to log in, and go with a 
system where you assign points to traits, to get specialization in 
different "skills", rather than just getting levels, and becoming move 
powerful as a result. There is no "grind", since there isn't anything to 
kill, other than other RPers, and that won't gain you XP (only being in 
the sims, with the meter on, actively involved, will get you that).

But, it has flaws, not the least being that it depends on SL to work, 
and.. their sim system can be unstable as all hell some days, not to 
mention lagging and other problems. :p

But, yeah. Most people think RP, and they think WoW, or EQ2, or 
something like that.

-- 
void main () {
   If Schrödingers_cat is alive or version > 98 {
     if version = "Vista" {
       call slow_by_half();
       call DRM_everything();
     }
     call functional_code();
   }
   else
     call crash_windows();
}

<A HREF='http://www.daz3d.com/index.php?refid=16130551'>Get 3D Models, 
3D Content, and 3D Software at DAZ3D!</A>

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Warp wrote:
> Of course the stories, settings and paths are rather fixed because it
> would be quite impossible for a computer to generate the story as it goes,

I'm not so sure about that.  While in theory there are an unlimited 
number of stories, they're constructed of discreet elements that show up 
repeatedly even in widely varied plots.  There are even fewer stories 
that readily qualify as 'stereotypical RPG fare', even taking 
mind-bending plot-twists-from-left-field into consideration.  So it's 
really just a matter of chaining together elements from a table, 
throwing in unique names and geography, balancing mechanics (which could 
probably be done by the software, really...run a few hundred simulated 
events in the background, adjusting things as needed), and you have a 
computer-generated 'unique' storyline.  How complex it is is really just 
determined by quality of the table from which it grabs elements.

--
Tim Cook
http://empyrean.freesitespace.net

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Tim Cook wrote:
> I'm not so sure about that.  While in theory there are an unlimited 
> number of stories, they're constructed of discreet elements that show up 
> repeatedly even in widely varied plots.  There are even fewer stories 
> that readily qualify as 'stereotypical RPG fare', even taking 
> mind-bending plot-twists-from-left-field into consideration.  So it's 
> really just a matter of chaining together elements from a table, 
> throwing in unique names and geography, balancing mechanics (which could 
> probably be done by the software, really...run a few hundred simulated 
> events in the background, adjusting things as needed), and you have a 
> computer-generated 'unique' storyline.  How complex it is is really just 
> determined by quality of the table from which it grabs elements.

For one of my classes I wrote a detailed business proposal to do just 
that :)  Of course, I figured on a 5 year timeline, and a few million 
dollars for the R&D, so we never got to try it out...  still, it's been 
on the "back shelf" of my head for a while now, and I keep hoping I'll 
have a chance to work on something like this.

-- 
Chambers

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Darren New wrote:
> Maybe I'm just spoiled by Thief 
> and Deus Ex.

A few years ago they released an announcement trailer for DE3, by the 
way.  Hmm, I wonder what happened to that... ok, looks like it's set for 
release in '10.

Man, I wish they would forget about sequels, and just make a next-gen 
version of the original instead :)

BTW, from all the talk you do of the Thief series, I can't believe I've 
never tried them...

-- 
Chambers

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Chambers wrote:
> BTW, from all the talk you do of the Thief series, I can't believe I've 
> never tried them...

The first two are great. I've played each at least half a dozen times. And 
cheap - $3 in the bargain bin if you can find it.

The third?  Meh. I can't even work up the enthusiasm to finish it.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Insanity is a small city on the western
   border of the State of Mind.

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On 9-7-2009 0:54, Tim Cook wrote:
> Warp wrote:
>> Of course the stories, settings and paths are rather fixed because it
>> would be quite impossible for a computer to generate the story as it 
>> goes,
> 
> I'm not so sure about that.  While in theory there are an unlimited 
> number of stories, they're constructed of discreet elements that show up 
> repeatedly even in widely varied plots.  There are even fewer stories 
> that readily qualify as 'stereotypical RPG fare', even taking 
> mind-bending plot-twists-from-left-field into consideration.  So it's 
> really just a matter of chaining together elements from a table, 
> throwing in unique names and geography, balancing mechanics (which could 
> probably be done by the software, really...run a few hundred simulated 
> events in the background, adjusting things as needed), and you have a 
> computer-generated 'unique' storyline.  How complex it is is really just 
> determined by quality of the table from which it grabs elements.

So you want to create in interactive soap?

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andrel wrote:
> So you want to create in interactive soap?

Absolutely.  That'd be awesome!  Way better than existing games where 
once you've played it, that's it.  Even multiple-ending things with a 
few internal branchings are lame compared to something that's entirely 
new each time you start a new game!  XD

--
Tim Cook
http://empyrean.freesitespace.net

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Darren New escreveu:
> I never realized before that when people talk about an "RPG" game, they 
> mean one involving "leveling up". I always thought it had something to 
> do with, I dunno, role playing or something. :-)

Pretty much all videogames are about "role playing" in a broad sense. 
Few however live up to the original Dungeons & Dragons turn-based combat 
+ stats and leveling up.

-- 
a game sig: http://tinyurl.com/d3rxz9

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nemesis <nam### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
> Pretty much all videogames are about "role playing" in a broad sense.
> Few however live up to the original Dungeons & Dragons turn-based combat
> + stats and leveling up.

"live up to the original..."?

The irony about this all is that what most computer players consider
"role-playing elements" was actually adapted by D&D from the older "fantasy
wargames" genre to combine with *actual* role-playing - of which the majority
of computer games have virtually *nothing*.

So a more fitting term for this trait in computer games would be "fantasy
wargames elements".

I'd say role-playing in computer games starts where you are free to address
quests by significantly different means (e.g. stealth vs. brute force vs.
wits), *and* this subsequently affects other characters' behavior towards you.

A good start in this respect, IMO, are games like "The Guild", in which you can
make friends and enemies among the AI characters, may get charged for crimes,
and stuff like that...

*That* is what I'd consider "role-playing" in computer games - not exact
simulation of the D&D combat & skills system.

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clipka wrote:
> I'd say role-playing in computer games starts where you are free to address
> quests by significantly different means (e.g. stealth vs. brute force vs.
> wits), *and* this subsequently affects other characters' behavior towards you.

Yep. Deus Ex was a prime example of this. I think Black&White tried to do 
something like this, but the game was so lacking I never got past the 
mid-point, so it's hard to say.

> A good start in this respect, IMO, are games like "The Guild", in which you can
> make friends and enemies among the AI characters, may get charged for crimes,
> and stuff like that...

I'll have to see about that one.

> *That* is what I'd consider "role-playing" in computer games - not exact
> simulation of the D&D combat & skills system.

Exactly my original point. I was trying to figure out why Bioshock was an 
RPG and Half-Life was a FPS, and someone somewhere mentioned you can improve 
your skills in Bioshock, and buy better versions of skills, and I twigged. 
"D&D is an RPG. D&D has level-ups. Hence, RPGs have level-ups."  Bzzt.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "We'd like you to back-port all the changes in 2.0
    back to version 1.0."
   "We've done that already. We call it 2.0."

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clipka <nomail@nomail> wrote:
> The irony about this all is that what most computer players consider
> "role-playing elements" was actually adapted by D&D from the older "fantasy
> wargames" genre to combine with *actual* role-playing - of which the majority
> of computer games have virtually *nothing*.

  I wouldn't say "nothing". While it's technically too difficult to have
the same kind of freedom as a tabletop game run by a human DM, some computer
RPGs do have some variation depending on your choices.

  The most typical variation in computer games is based on your "karma"
(for the lack of a better name): If you do good things and make choices
which show compassion and empathy, NPCs will behave differently towards
you than if you act in evil and selfish ways and act like a bully. In the
worst extreme you will be a wanted criminal who can't even enter cities
(unless using stealth) because all the guards will immediately attack you.

  I think Baldur's Gate 2 goes a long way in this direction. Most of the
NPCs in your party are completely optional, you can bully them and drive
them off, or you can make them like you, and you can even lose them
*forever*. (There's actually a really nasty spell which some enemies cast
which will destroy a member of your party irrecoverably, ie. that member
will be truely lost forever, and you can't get him/her back ever again.
That can really hurt if you had emotionally invested in that particular NPC.)

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Btw, do you know what I think is the closest thing to a role-playing game
among computer games? The Sims, and its sequels.

  The only thing it doesn't have is dungeon crawling and monster fighting,
but otherwise it's difficult to get any closer to actual role-playing in
a computer game.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Warp wrote:
>   Btw, do you know what I think is the closest thing to a role-playing game
> among computer games? The Sims, and its sequels.

Is there any actual game involved there? Everything I've always seen made it 
look like there's no goal other than to create people you then beat up.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "We'd like you to back-port all the changes in 2.0
    back to version 1.0."
   "We've done that already. We call it 2.0."

Post a reply to this message

Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> Warp wrote:
> >   Btw, do you know what I think is the closest thing to a role-playing game
> > among computer games? The Sims, and its sequels.

> Is there any actual game involved there? Everything I've always seen made it 
> look like there's no goal other than to create people you then beat up.

  At least in the original The Sims 2 you decide what type of life your sim
will have, and the core goal is to get to the top in that. For example, if
your life orientation is political, the ultimate goal is to become the
president. Similar goals for other orientations. (You always start from
the very bottom of the heap.)

  Of course one common goal to all is to become rich and build yourself
a huge mansion. :)

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Warp wrote:
>   At least in the original The Sims 2 you decide what type of life your sim
> will have, and the core goal is to get to the top in that. 

I see. So there's a level of competition, so to speak, from NPCs (or 
non-present characters or something), not unlike SimCity or some such. OK.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "We'd like you to back-port all the changes in 2.0
    back to version 1.0."
   "We've done that already. We call it 2.0."

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Darren New wrote:
> I see. So there's a level of competition, so to speak, from NPCs (or 
> non-present characters or something), not unlike SimCity or some such. OK.

Not really.  Characters all have short-term wants (things like buying a 
couch, or having sex in public), and their lifetime aspiration is 
basically a really big one of those (becoming Pres, etc).  Still, it's 
completely optional.

Sims is actually a great example of pure role-play, because there is no 
meaning or value except what you assign to it.  Your goal could be to 
make everyone happy, or to torture and torment them until they're all 
insane or dead.  The game doesn't reward either method, or any other, 
but rather permits and facilitates you in your quest for whatever it is 
you're after.

-- 
Chambers

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Warp <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote:
> Btw, do you know what I think is the closest thing to a role-playing game
> among computer games? The Sims, and its sequels.
>
>   The only thing it doesn't have is dungeon crawling and monster fighting,
> but otherwise it's difficult to get any closer to actual role-playing in
> a computer game.

I'd rather watch a virtual aquarium all day long or even play Wii Sports than
watch this virtual soap.

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nemesis <nam### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
> [-- text/plain, encoding 8bit, charset: iso-8859-1, 13 lines --]

> Warp <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote:
> > Btw, do you know what I think is the closest thing to a role-playing game
> > among computer games? The Sims, and its sequels.
> >
> >   The only thing it doesn't have is dungeon crawling and monster fighting,
> > but otherwise it's difficult to get any closer to actual role-playing in
> > a computer game.

> I'd rather watch a virtual aquarium all day long or even play Wii Sports than
> watch this virtual soap.

  You don't have to watch it. You can play it! :)

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Warp wrote:
>   You don't have to watch it. You can play it! :)

Soaps would be a lot more fun if you had the ability to punish the 
characters involved ;)

-- 
Chambers

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Warp wrote:
> clipka <nomail@nomail> wrote:
>> The irony about this all is that what most computer players consider
>> "role-playing elements" was actually adapted by D&D from the older "fantasy
>> wargames" genre to combine with *actual* role-playing - of which the majority
>> of computer games have virtually *nothing*.
> 
>   I wouldn't say "nothing". While it's technically too difficult to have
> the same kind of freedom as a tabletop game run by a human DM, some computer
> RPGs do have some variation depending on your choices.
> 
>   The most typical variation in computer games is based on your "karma"
> (for the lack of a better name): If you do good things and make choices
> which show compassion and empathy, NPCs will behave differently towards
> you than if you act in evil and selfish ways and act like a bully. In the
> worst extreme you will be a wanted criminal who can't even enter cities
> (unless using stealth) because all the guards will immediately attack you.
> 
Think most games have this to "some" extent now. EQ1 didn't, EQ2 does. 
You can change cities without too much trouble, if they are "allied" 
cities. Some are neutral and stay hostile only until you gain enough 
faction that they start to ignore you. If you go from a Qeynos faction 
city to one allied with Freeport, you have to use stealth, enter via the 
sewers, and dodge city guards. You "can" gain some limited faction in 
the outer guards, that protect Commonlands and Antonica, and this avoid 
being killed on sight by "those" guards, but you have to betray your 
home city, be exiled to Haven, then regain faction in your new city 
(which loses you faction in the opposite ones in the process). Its 
nearly impossible to gain faction with the guard in an apposing city (or 
at least enough to matter), but, you can do some quests for a few places 
like the mage guild, and others in those cities, and stop them from 
attacking you on site, once you get "into" the city.

Even the new Neverwinter Nights releases include new things, like 
building and maintaining keeps and guilds, which means hiring people, 
and keeping them, etc. Its likely to get more and more complex as AI 
goes from simpler scripting to more detailed stuff. So far, that is just 
in how they act in fights, and the like, but, at some point, its likely 
to find its way into NPC interaction too.

-- 
void main () {
   If Schrödingers_cat is alive or version > 98 {
     if version = "Vista" {
       call slow_by_half();
       call DRM_everything();
     }
     call functional_code();
   }
   else
     call crash_windows();
}

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3D Content, and 3D Software at DAZ3D!</A>

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Patrick Elliott <sel### [at] npgcablecom> wrote:
> Its likely to get more and more complex as AI 
> goes from simpler scripting to more detailed stuff.

  It's rather telling how difficult good AI programming is (especially for
real-time games, where you have a small slice of a 20-millisecond time
period to calculate all the AI of all the NPCs currently interacting with
something in the game) when some games boast about having new and innovative
AI, but when you play the game, it's nothing impressive, really. Might be
slightly better than in older games, but you can still notice the patterns
and the "artificial stupidity".

  What is really happening is that the developers took some time and effort
to get a few steps forward in game AI programming, which was really difficult
and required a lot of work. Thus they themselves see it as a huge effort and
a big step forward, so they naturally use it to advertise the game. However,
the players cannot see the amount of effort and code put into it, they only
see the noticeable patterns and stupidity of the AI, and thus they are usually
not very impressed.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Warp wrote:
> real-time games, where you have a small slice of a 20-millisecond time
> period to calculate all the AI of all the NPCs currently interacting with

How does one normally handle this? I would think it might be best to cycle 
through (say) three sets of nearby AI, evaluating a third of the AIs and 
taking up the whole amount of time. It's not like real humans don't have a 
60ms delay in their reaction times. :-)

I've been amused when I noticed (for example) that the AIs in the older 
thief games keep moving when they're far away, but they stop walking. As in, 
they'll just skate back and forth until you get close. There's only a couple 
places in the game with line of sight straight enough to see it, tho.

And in bioshock, it's not unusual to hack a turret, walk away, come back 20 
minutes later, and find a big pile of bodies and a half-broken turret, 
indicating that the game at least *seems* to keep running all the AIs and 
spawning enemies even in areas where you aren't.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "We'd like you to back-port all the changes in 2.0
    back to version 1.0."
   "We've done that already. We call it 2.0."

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Warp <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote:
> Btw, do you know what I think is the closest thing to a role-playing game
> among computer games? The Sims, and its sequels.

I guess so, yes.

>   The only thing it doesn't have is dungeon crawling and monster fighting,
> but otherwise it's difficult to get any closer to actual role-playing in
> a computer game.

Well, in that case it would even qualify as *fantasy* role-playing. But even
without the fantasy part, it still constitutes role-playing.

That's some other strange association people have: RPG == fantasy.

SciFi-RGBs have proven this connotation to be wrong.

This reminds me of a German point-and-click adventure, "The Book of Unwritten
Tales". Set in a fantasy world, one scene to encounter in the course of the
storyline is a magician and a merchant busying themselves with a role-play game
called "WoB: World of Bureaucracy" :D

(I don't know if there's an English version out there, but in case there is: If
you loved stuff like the famous Monkey Island series, then this is definitely
one to go and get!)

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clipka wrote:
> That's some other strange association people have: RPG == fantasy.
> SciFi-RGBs have proven this connotation to be wrong.
         ^^^

You know you've been ray-tracing too long when...

> called "WoB: World of Bureaucracy" :D

http://dragonstuff.com/images/gallery/bw/full/houses_and_humans.jpg

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "We'd like you to back-port all the changes in 2.0
    back to version 1.0."
   "We've done that already. We call it 2.0."

Post a reply to this message

Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> How does one normally handle this? I would think it might be best to cycle 
> through (say) three sets of nearby AI, evaluating a third of the AIs and 
> taking up the whole amount of time. It's not like real humans don't have a 
> 60ms delay in their reaction times. :-)

  Yeah, I suppose the game doesn't need to execute the AI routines for
every single AI entity in the entire game at each frame, but each entity
could indeed get its turn eg. each 10th frame or so (the in-between frames
are simply linearly interpolated, if the action it's performing needs to
be continuous).

  However, it can still get pretty complicated, especially when the number
of AI entities grows. Think about a real-time strategy game with armies
consisting of thousands of individual soldiers...

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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clipka <nomail@nomail> wrote:
> That's some other strange association people have: RPG == fantasy.

> SciFi-RGBs have proven this connotation to be wrong.

  Well, scifi is a peculiar kind of fantasy, where you have races (well,
more precisely species), jobs, advanced technology (which, when advanced
enough, is indistinguishable from magic, as the saying goes), fighting
(usually between spaceships rather than between characters, but sometimes
also between characters), fantastical creatures, and so on.

  I suppose that what you meant is that RPGs are usually associated with
so-called sword-and-sorcery fantasy and high fantasy.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Darren New wrote:
> I've been amused when I noticed (for example) that the AIs in the older 
> thief games keep moving when they're far away, but they stop walking. As 
> in, they'll just skate back and forth until you get close. There's only 
> a couple places in the game with line of sight straight enough to see 
> it, tho.
> 
Less to do with AI than with animation limitations. The more things you 
have moving at the "best" rate, the harder your hardware needs to work. 
EQ2 you can adjust this from "everything is moving at best frame rate 
and best graphics resolution, but no machine in the universe will give 
you better than a frame rate of like 0.001 fps doing this", to, "Stuff 
uses almost no animation, textures look worse than Ultima VII, when 
games ran at 640x480 and 8-bit color, and you can't see more than 20 
meters in front of you." lol

In general, since you never see more than about 20 people, and 20 mobs, 
and most don't move around a lot in EQ2, you can place the animation on 
high, as well as the textures, and not take much of a hit. I tried 
setting mine far higher on the new card I have, (which is well past what 
was available at the time it came out), and only got brief lag in 
"certain" stages of combat, or when moving from a low mob part of a 
region to one where I could see a "lot" of them. But, its a basic 
optimization that "position", and "activity" be computed, which is not 
terribly high cost, compared to loading all the textures, animating the 
skeleton/mesh, etc.


-- 
void main () {
   If Schrödingers_cat is alive or version > 98 {
     if version = "Vista" {
       call slow_by_half();
       call DRM_everything();
     }
     call functional_code();
   }
   else
     call crash_windows();
}

<A HREF='http://www.daz3d.com/index.php?refid=16130551'>Get 3D Models, 
3D Content, and 3D Software at DAZ3D!</A>

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nemesis <nam### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
> I'd rather watch a virtual aquarium all day long or even play Wii Sports than
> watch this virtual soap.

  Btw, 20th Century Fox has bought the rights to make a The Sims movie.

  This is honestly something I cannot comprehend. The Sims has no story,
and even its setting is mundane: Raise a family, get rich, build a house,
advance in your career. There are no distinguishing or peculiar features
in the game series. (Ok there are a few, such as the occasional alien
child, but those things are not the main idea in the game nor something you
could build a movie on.)

  How can you make a movie about The Sims? Almost *any* boring, realistic,
almost documentary-style drama could be a "The Sims movie".

  The only other alternative I can think of is not making a movie about
the game universe itself, but about people playing the game (there are
a few movies like that). However, I can't figure out how you could make
an interesting movie about people who play The Sims. There's nothing
special about people who play that game specifically.

  OTOH, given Hollywood's custom of making game movies which have absolutely
nothing to do with the game itself (apart from some names and a very loosely
similar setting), I'm not wondering that they would do this. Especially in
this case, as said, almost *anything* could pass as "The Sims movie", so
why not.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Patrick Elliott wrote:
> Less to do with AI than with animation limitations. The more things you 
> have moving at the "best" rate, the harder your hardware needs to work. 

Is that really true? I thought the whole (visible) scene got pumped out to 
the graphics card on every frame. Hence the need for AGPx8 and such.

Or are you talking about the CPU calculating angles of elbow and knee joints 
and such?


-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "We'd like you to back-port all the changes in 2.0
    back to version 1.0."
   "We've done that already. We call it 2.0."

Post a reply to this message

Warp wrote:
>   How can you make a movie about The Sims? Almost *any* boring, realistic,
> almost documentary-style drama could be a "The Sims movie".

http://strangerhood.com/archive/?id=85

You could make it a meta-movie, where the characters don't know they're Sims 
but the audience does.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "We'd like you to back-port all the changes in 2.0
    back to version 1.0."
   "We've done that already. We call it 2.0."

Post a reply to this message

Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> Patrick Elliott wrote:
> > Less to do with AI than with animation limitations. The more things you 
> > have moving at the "best" rate, the harder your hardware needs to work. 

> Is that really true? I thought the whole (visible) scene got pumped out to 
> the graphics card on every frame. Hence the need for AGPx8 and such.

  It may have something to do with LODs: When the object is farther away,
it usually will be switched to a version with less triangles. It might also
be that in this case the lowest-resolution LOD models were not animated at
all, and thus the effect you see.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

Post a reply to this message

Warp wrote:
>   It may have something to do with LODs: When the object is farther away,
> it usually will be switched to a version with less triangles.

Interesting theory! :-)

I'm kind of thinking it'll be cool when motion capture finally comes to the 
masses. When someone sends out a PDF you can print out, cut up, and tape to 
your clothes, and point a web cam at yourself...

Pretty much everything else is available for free at this point, at least in 
the video rendering path.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "We'd like you to back-port all the changes in 2.0
    back to version 1.0."
   "We've done that already. We call it 2.0."

Post a reply to this message

Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> clipka wrote:
> > That's some other strange association people have: RPG == fantasy.
> > SciFi-RGBs have proven this connotation to be wrong.
>          ^^^
>
> You know you've been ray-tracing too long when...

LOL - yeah, that has happened to me multiple times recently; to me, "RPG" is a
7-letter acronym: "RGB<backspace><backspace>PG" :P

Post a reply to this message

Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> Patrick Elliott wrote:
> > Less to do with AI than with animation limitations. The more things you
> > have moving at the "best" rate, the harder your hardware needs to work.
>
> Is that really true? I thought the whole (visible) scene got pumped out to
> the graphics card on every frame. Hence the need for AGPx8 and such.

There is some stuff that - fortunately - does not need to be pumped around for
each frame. Traditionally, textures are such stuff. I bet static meshes are
another one these days: Applying the same transformation matrix to a wagonload
of vertices is no big deal for a GPU, and sufficient to have the object hover
around and maybe rotate.

One more reason to not animate stuff which is just barely visible.

Post a reply to this message

Warp wrote:
> Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
>> Patrick Elliott wrote:
>>> Less to do with AI than with animation limitations. The more things you 
>>> have moving at the "best" rate, the harder your hardware needs to work. 
> 
>> Is that really true? I thought the whole (visible) scene got pumped out to 
>> the graphics card on every frame. Hence the need for AGPx8 and such.
> 
>   It may have something to do with LODs: When the object is farther away,
> it usually will be switched to a version with less triangles. It might also
> be that in this case the lowest-resolution LOD models were not animated at
> all, and thus the effect you see.
> 
Exactly.

-- 
void main () {
   If Schrödingers_cat is alive or version > 98 {
     if version = "Vista" {
       call slow_by_half();
       call DRM_everything();
     }
     call functional_code();
   }
   else
     call crash_windows();
}

<A HREF='http://www.daz3d.com/index.php?refid=16130551'>Get 3D Models, 
3D Content, and 3D Software at DAZ3D!</A>

Post a reply to this message

> There is some stuff that - fortunately - does not need to be pumped around 
> for
> each frame. Traditionally, textures are such stuff. I bet static meshes 
> are
> another one these days: Applying the same transformation matrix to a 
> wagonload
> of vertices is no big deal for a GPU, and sufficient to have the object 
> hover
> around and maybe rotate.

Being able to store static meshes on the video card started with DirectX 7 
and the GeForce 256, about a decade ago.

In most modern games even non-static meshes are held permanently on the GPU. 
The CPU simply tells the GPU some angles (or other parameters) each frame, 
and a vertex shader running on the GPU suitably deforms the mesh prior to 
rendering.  This greatly reduces the data bandwidth between the CPU and GPU 
and allows huge numbers of animated meshes to be drawn in realtime that 
otherwise wouldn't be possible.

It also allows for clever things like real waves in water (not just normal 
effects), whereby the GPU can distort the water mesh itself every frame and 
not need to transfer the whole mesh from the CPU per frame.

Ditto for terrain, even if the terrain itself does not need to distort, you 
can smoothly fade between different LOD levels using just the GPU to avoid 
having to send interpolated meshes per frame.

Post a reply to this message

scott <sco### [at] scottcom> wrote:
> Being able to store static meshes on the video card started with DirectX 7 
> and the GeForce 256, about a decade ago.

> In most modern games even non-static meshes are held permanently on the GPU. 
> The CPU simply tells the GPU some angles (or other parameters) each frame, 
> and a vertex shader running on the GPU suitably deforms the mesh prior to 
> rendering.  This greatly reduces the data bandwidth between the CPU and GPU 
> and allows huge numbers of animated meshes to be drawn in realtime that 
> otherwise wouldn't be possible.

> It also allows for clever things like real waves in water (not just normal 
> effects), whereby the GPU can distort the water mesh itself every frame and 
> not need to transfer the whole mesh from the CPU per frame.

> Ditto for terrain, even if the terrain itself does not need to distort, you 
> can smoothly fade between different LOD levels using just the GPU to avoid 
> having to send interpolated meshes per frame.

  Deciding what to render and what not (iow. hidden surface/object removal)
has to still be done with the CPU, though. Too complicated for a GPU to do,
as it requires rather extensive and complicated code using lots of complex
data structures.

  Also, I'm wondering that nowadays there are many games with ginormous
amounts of scenery (such as eg. Oblivion, Fallout 3 and Far Cry 2). I doubt
all that scenery would fit in RAM at once, much less in the graphics card.
The scenery is being loaded on-the-fly as the player advances in the terrain
(in the latter two example games mentioned, this is done transparently,
without any "loading" messages or delays). Naturally all this scenery needs
to be transferred to the GPU.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

Post a reply to this message

>  Also, I'm wondering that nowadays there are many games with ginormous
> amounts of scenery (such as eg. Oblivion, Fallout 3 and Far Cry 2). I 
> doubt
> all that scenery would fit in RAM at once, much less in the graphics card.
> The scenery is being loaded on-the-fly as the player advances in the 
> terrain
> (in the latter two example games mentioned, this is done transparently,
> without any "loading" messages or delays). Naturally all this scenery 
> needs
> to be transferred to the GPU.

Graphics cards can store quite a lot of mesh and texture data on-board, the 
CPU algorithm just needs to carefully predict and spread out any big updates 
to avoid noticeable frame rate drops.  For example some common meshes like 
trees and grass might always be in the GPU memory, but some detailed 
versions of buildings might only be loaded when you get near to them, and 
the actual mesh load peformed over several frames.  The terrain is also 
typically sectioned up, and the LOD for each section is dtermined by a CPU 
algorithm and the GPU updated whenever necessary.  This way, *most* frames 
you will hardly be sending any data from the CPU to the GPU, and the frames 
where you do need to send mesh data you are only sending a very small amount 
that won't impact the rendering performance.

Of course if it all doesn't fit in normal CPU RAM the CPU algorithm must 
also manage reading from the disk in a similar way to be transparent.

It's certainly not trivial to implement a massive game environment.

Post a reply to this message

Warp <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote:
>   Deciding what to render and what not (iow. hidden surface/object removal)
> has to still be done with the CPU, though. Too complicated for a GPU to do,
> as it requires rather extensive and complicated code using lots of complex
> data structures.

This is moving more and more towards "hidden object removal"; a decade ago, in
an FPS like Unreal Tournament there would be a single data structure per level
representing all the static stuff, from the general room layout to the smallest
ducts & decorations, with some smart geometry tree like BSP to handle hidden
surface stuff; only the moving actors would exist as "independent" meshes, out
of pure necessity.

When I looked again a few years ago, the classic level structure had been
reduced to the basic room layout, and all the details - ducts and stuff - were
modelled as independent objects.

I conjecture that developers have been shifting more and more of the hidden
stuff removal workload to the GPU, to free the CPU for other tasks. With the
added benefit of having less traffic between CPU and GPU. So the CPU just does
a comparatively rough pre-selection of which objects *may* be visible, and the
rest is left up to Z-buffering and brute force.

>   Also, I'm wondering that nowadays there are many games with ginormous
> amounts of scenery (such as eg. Oblivion, Fallout 3 and Far Cry 2). I doubt
> all that scenery would fit in RAM at once, much less in the graphics card.
> The scenery is being loaded on-the-fly as the player advances in the terrain
> (in the latter two example games mentioned, this is done transparently,
> without any "loading" messages or delays). Naturally all this scenery needs
> to be transferred to the GPU.

As the player normally can't move too fast, there's probably plenty of time to
"swap in" scenery data by and by.

Post a reply to this message

clipka <nomail@nomail> wrote:
> As the player normally can't move too fast, there's probably plenty of time to
> "swap in" scenery data by and by.

  I wouldn't say there's "plenty of time" because the CPU, the GPU the
I/O buses and the graphics bus have to do quite a lot of other things
at the same time, at 60 frames per second preferably.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

Post a reply to this message

Warp <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote:
> clipka <nomail@nomail> wrote:
> > As the player normally can't move too fast, there's probably plenty of time to
> > "swap in" scenery data by and by.
>
>   I wouldn't say there's "plenty of time" because the CPU, the GPU the
> I/O buses and the graphics bus have to do quite a lot of other things
> at the same time, at 60 frames per second preferably.

Let's look at it this way:

Traditionally, games have been organized in individual "maps"; Let's say such a
map would usually load within 30 seconds, and you'd spend at least 5 minutes in
there.

If the game layout was roughly one-dimensional (say, a FPS in the classic
corridor-type setting), a simple approach at hiding the loading times would be
to pre-load the data for the next map. That would gives you 300 seconds to
perform a 30-second loading operation. For two-dimensional games (vast
landscape to travel freely), the task of choosing which "maps" to load would be
less straightforward, but I guess it wouldn't significantly change the amount of
data to be provided, if the algorithm is designed smart enough.

So this takes 10% of your resources, right?

Wrong.

When it comes to moving data, by far the worst bottleneck in your computer
system is the hard disk. In classic games, while loading a new map the
processor is just as bored as the player, waiting for the disk hardware to
retrieve sector by sector. (Don't expect the stuff to be readily available in
the hard disk's tiny internal cache; so this will *not* push SATA to its
limits.)

So it takes 10% of your total *hard disk* bandwidth. Say, when was the last time
you played a computer game and your hard disk was constantly busy?

I guess that leaves us with, say, 1% of CPU and GPU bandwidth to be set aside
for preloading maps - at most. And it's a task that can be easily priorized:
There's no strict deadline to get the job done; for instance, in the heat of
the action it can safely be deferred until after the fight (all the more since
you usually don't move very far during a hot battle).

Post a reply to this message

> I guess that leaves us with, say, 1% of CPU and GPU bandwidth to be set 
> aside
> for preloading maps - at most. And it's a task that can be easily 
> priorized:
> There's no strict deadline to get the job done; for instance, in the heat 
> of
> the action it can safely be deferred until after the fight (all the more 
> since
> you usually don't move very far during a hot battle).

Especially if you keep a low-res (both mesh and texture) version available 
for the surrounding parts of the map anyway, if there is any slight delay 
with the high-res versions loading it's not going to ruin anything.  This 
happened in GTA San Andreas, if you (maybe with a little hack (-:) drove or 
flew really fast then you could actually see these low-res models for a 
second until the high res ones could be loaded.

Post a reply to this message

"scott" <sco### [at] scottcom> wrote:
> > I guess that leaves us with, say, 1% of CPU and GPU bandwidth to be set
> > aside
> > for preloading maps - at most. And it's a task that can be easily
> > priorized:
> > There's no strict deadline to get the job done; for instance, in the heat
> > of
> > the action it can safely be deferred until after the fight (all the more
> > since
> > you usually don't move very far during a hot battle).
>
> Especially if you keep a low-res (both mesh and texture) version available
> for the surrounding parts of the map anyway, if there is any slight delay
> with the high-res versions loading it's not going to ruin anything.  This
> happened in GTA San Andreas, if you (maybe with a little hack (-:) drove or
> flew really fast then you could actually see these low-res models for a
> second until the high res ones could be loaded.

No hack! It happened all the time to me on the PS2 version, usually when I was
letting off some steam or trying for stunt bonuses in the super-taxis. When you
came to an abrupt halt, the low-detail high-speed versions of buildings etc
could be visible for up to half a second, sometimes more. I couldn't comment on
how this reflects on my gameplay :-}

Post a reply to this message

Bill Pragnell wrote:
> No hack!

Even on Bioshock on the XBox360, if you suddenly turn around and look 
closely at something (machine, person, etc) you can see at least two or 
three levels of detail being drawn in - Smooth stuff, then clothes, then 
dirt/blood/etc, kind of thing.

I don't know if it's because it's bringing it in off disk tho.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "We'd like you to back-port all the changes in 2.0
    back to version 1.0."
   "We've done that already. We call it 2.0."

Post a reply to this message

Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> Even on Bioshock on the XBox360, if you suddenly turn around and look
> closely at something (machine, person, etc) you can see at least two or
> three levels of detail being drawn in - Smooth stuff, then clothes, then
> dirt/blood/etc, kind of thing.
>
> I don't know if it's because it's bringing it in off disk tho.

Maybe there's a trade-off between frame rate and frame quality. I've never
played Bioshock, but certainly GTA:SA wasn't dropping frames while this was
going on. By contrast, I've been playing Fallout3 recently (and loving it, I
might add), and while I've not seen any detail changes, occasionally the frame
rate drops when there's oodles of stuff going on.

I'd rather see the detail switch than the frame rate lower, personally, but
still...

Post a reply to this message

Bill Pragnell <bil### [at] hotmailcom> wrote:
> I've been playing Fallout3 recently (and loving it, I might add)

  Btw, at the beginning of the game there's a quite detailed face editor
for your character, which is fun to play with. However, I'm wondering what's
the point. As far as I can tell, you can't see your own face in the game in
any situation, not even when changing the camera to 3rd-person perspective
(because the playable character always looks in the same direction as the
camera, and thus you only see the back of his/her head, never the face).

  At least in Oblivion you could see your face in the inventory screen,
but this is not the case in Fallout3.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

Post a reply to this message

Warp <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote:
> Bill Pragnell <bil### [at] hotmailcom> wrote:
> > I've been playing Fallout3 recently (and loving it, I might add)
>
>   Btw, at the beginning of the game there's a quite detailed face editor
> for your character, which is fun to play with. However, I'm wondering what's
> the point. As far as I can tell, you can't see your own face in the game in
> any situation, not even when changing the camera to 3rd-person perspective
> (because the playable character always looks in the same direction as the
> camera, and thus you only see the back of his/her head, never the face).

There's the paused combat mode - during the slo-mo sections you often see your
character's face. Enough that I've since gotten him a haircut, even!

If you sit in chairs you get a glimpse too (although this doesn't seem to serve
any purpose).

Post a reply to this message

Bill Pragnell wrote:
> Maybe there's a trade-off between frame rate and frame quality.

It does ever so occasionally get slow when you're in a complicated space 
with lots going on, with the frame rate dropping to maybe 3 or 4 frames a 
second if you're flying head over heels thru a bunch of enemies.  But that's 
maybe once or twice in a full play thru of the whole game, if that.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "We'd like you to back-port all the changes in 2.0
    back to version 1.0."
   "We've done that already. We call it 2.0."

Post a reply to this message

Warp wrote:
> nemesis <nam### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
>> I'd rather watch a virtual aquarium all day long or even play Wii Sports than
>> watch this virtual soap.
> 
>   Btw, 20th Century Fox has bought the rights to make a The Sims movie.

Wasn't it going to be about people figuring out that they're Sims?

Personally, I'm much more interested in this movie:
http://gamerthemovie.com/

-- 
Chambers

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Chambers wrote:
>>   Btw, 20th Century Fox has bought the rights to make a The Sims movie.
> Wasn't it going to be about people figuring out that they're Sims?

OK, that *is* Roosterteeth's "Strangerhood" movie.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "We'd like you to back-port all the changes in 2.0
    back to version 1.0."
   "We've done that already. We call it 2.0."

Post a reply to this message