the future of computer games?

[mark_battista]

Hi, I'm doing a report and some research into the future of computer games. I am currently a student studying computer games at degree level and would like to ask a few questions to get the general view on the future of games.



What do you consider the future of games will be?
What do you in general want to see in the future?
Does anyone know of any places where I can collate research?
What genres are expected to become big and what genres are expected to be scrapped, are genres merging?

You get the idea, If you could help me in anyway it would be much appreciated. Thank you

Mark Battista

[Joseph Duchesne]

Hmm...

ïFrom what I see 2.5d games(ray casters) are already obsolete.
ïTop down games may make a comeback.
ïSidescrollers are like dimonds, forever

That's all of the top of my head. I'll think of more later.

[Justin Brimm]

To answer your questions in order...

1) How far in the future? Ten, fifteen years, we'll probably be playing better looking and more elaborate games, but the only likely interaction improvement will be your ability to talk directly to characters, and have them respond back in a way you would expect a human to react (can already be done on large military training simulations). If your talking a hundred or two years down the future though, we might have something like the holodeck in StarTrek.

2) I want to see the death of cut and paste games, even more than I want to see the death of cut and paste movies. You all know what I'm talking about, the game that is essentially the exact same thing as many other games, only the graphics are a little different. For instance, Marathon to Halo is good sized step towards improved gaming (with some exceptions, going backwards, ok, more than a few)... Unreal to Quake or vice versa is cut and paste. Even Unreal Tournament to Unreal 2003 is cut and paste.

3) Look in the links section.

4) While cut and paste games just rehash popular genres, I think the games that take steps forward are beginning to merge genres. Genres are a funny thing, they evolve over time, and it's rare you can even imagine a new genre ahead of time. Sadly, some genres die out because technological advances just push them out of the spotlight, but sadder still, are the genres that were pushed out because the majority of gamers wanted something that didn't require thinking. One currently dead genre which I would like to see revived (and I wish to play a part in it's resurrection), is the graphic adventure, that included games like The Dig, Full Throttle, and Sam & Max.

I hope I could be of some help.

[skyhawk]

Originally posted by mark_battista

What do you consider the future of games will be?

I would hope computer games would get away from the "everything must be 3D and HYPER realistic, but that isn't going to happen. The current trend is to make everything as realistic as possible. I also see There being quite popular. It definitely looks.... interesting.

What do you in general want to see in the future?

I personally want to see an advancement made in the 2D department. Now that graphics cards are all powerful, it would be nice to see some old school RPGs (chrono trigger, shining force 2, Phantasy Star 4) with much higher resolution graphics (see 1024x768) I am frankly tired of the 3D scene and will more than likely by a fun 2D game than a 3D game. I would also would like to see more FUN games out there and not just generic games (Serious Sam2, Unreal 2k3, Battlefield 1942, Ghost Recon). All those games are boring as hell because they have been done so many time. Another trend I would like to see die is The Sims. Say what you will about it, but I refuse to play anymore of that game (stopped playing after the first expansion) until they get a better plugin system that doesn't BLOW HORRIBLY like the current one does (install all expansions and patches in the correct order or your computer will blow up!) Worst Programming Ever!

What genres are expected to become big and what genres are expected to be scrapped, are genres merging?

Whether I want it to or not, the Massively Multiplayer Online Games are taking off. (I rather see Massively Single player games but oh well). There aren't many well done MMOG, but companies still see it as the bandwagon to jump on to. 2D games are becoming rarer and rarer now adays except on possibly the portable system (GBA, GBASP, cell phones *shudders*). This is quite sad. The main Genres merging at the time are Online and EVERYTHING! I wouldn't be surprised if they had an online mario game or an online snood game. It's crazy how almost every game now a days needs an internet connection. Game designers have all but given up on AIs (except in the bot designing market) and have decided that PEOPLE make better AIs.

On a side note, if I'm quoted anywhere, please tell me so that I may read whatever article I'm put into.

[David]

Maybe I'm just overly optimistic but I think the virtual reality thing is closer to the 10-15 years mark than 100-200

[Carlos Camacho]

VR in 10-20 years? I recall when Lawnmower man came out. How long was that? Still some time off. But I suppose it depends on what you consider VR. Do you mean goggles on the head, and strapped into some device. Or do you mean eletronics connected into the brain and feeding all the senses things... err... like you are watching a dream unfold.

>What do you consider the future of games will be?
I think if you search Goggle, you will find many articles on this..

>What do you in general want to see in the future?
* Games that allow for people to engage in a world at all levels. For example, one person could be playing at a soldier level (FPS), while another on a general's level (RTS)
* Games that push the boundaries of the game world. For example in a space game, most of them have some limit on how far you can go. I want to do like the Enterprise people did and go beyond the known-universe, but I don't want to land on every planet that looks the same, except for the rock that was moved on the set. There is a good book (expensive) on making infinite game worlds.
* Games that are rewarding and don't just require body-count stats

>Does anyone know of any places where I can collate research?
There is thing called the Internet which I hear has some info. Read stuff by Sid M., Peter M., Mr. Wright and so on.

>What genres are expected to become big and what genres are expected to be scrapped, are
>genres merging?
* Massive (like 500,000 or more) gaming worlds
* more in game advertising
* gaming everywhere... like on cereal boxes, cell phones, Burger Kings tray mats

that's it for now...

[OneSadCookie]

Originally posted by Camacho
Sid M., Peter M., Mr. Wright

That'd be Meier, Molyneux and Will :)

[macboy]

Originally posted by Camacho
* Games that allow for people to engage in a world at all levels. For example, one person could be playing at a soldier level (FPS), while another on a general's level (RTS)There's a not-very-popular-but-very-cool commercial game called Dogs of War that has that in it. You can control your units like from an RTS or jump in a helicopter or whatever and fly around. But it's Windoze-only. :(

[Darkgold]

Originally posted by macboy
There's a not-very-popular-but-very-cool commercial game called Dogs of War that has that in it. You can control your units like from an RTS or jump in a helicopter or whatever and fly around. But it's Windoze-only. :(
I think Camacho means from more of a MMOG stand point.

[Carlos Camacho]

Yes that is right. I think online games now are focused on one genre. I think as technology gets better, different genres will mesh together to offer huge gaming worlds to people from all over.

Other trend I see in the short term (let us say for the next 2 years) is the addition of "Embedded reporters" in FPS. ha ha

[rmanger]

This will be the first of a series of replies, as they got quite long as I was typing them!

Originally posted by mark_battista
What genres are expected to become big and what genres are expected to be scrapped, are genres merging?

Mass Multiplayer RPG is definitely big and will stay big for quite some time. I mean, we have Everquest and The Sims Online. Blizzard has World of WarCraft coming. Due to the addicting nature of the genre (EverCRACK, anyone?), companies are guaranteed to make more of these games in the future.

In the near future ( < 10 years), we'll find microphone chatting in addition to the normal keyboard chatting. Force feedback will be standard in all games. We may even see gaming gloves akin to the old NES gaming glove, except with full force feedback where you can feel an imaginary solid object in the game. An outworldly guesstimate would be that people would have video goggles where the monitor's image is routed to the goggles for direct viewing.

The key to all these new gadgets is player interaction with the world. Players will find themselves in more realistic 3D worlds, where players can interact more fully with the environment instead of just enemies and other players. Instead of just killing enemies and trading items with other players, players can use their battleaxes (normally it's just a weapon for killing your enemies and nothing more) to chop down trees and build fortifications wherever they choose.

Or let's take a school RPG! Another player could be walking down the hall by your locker. You don't see him coming, so you accidently open the locker door in his face. Normally, the CPU would figure that a collision occured, and the other guy would stop walking. The pathfinder would find a way around the door, and he would continue on down the hall. In the future, that locker door would actually hit him, actually leaving a mark on his face. The other player could opt to let it go, or take it personally and pound YOUR face in!

The far future is obvious. Either we will see holodecks ala Star Trek, or we will see direct mind links ala the Matrix. Or maybe both.

For a holodeck, we would need to develop a technology to emulate the attributes of real matter, while using up much less energy than real matter takes to actually exist. Why? I'll explain it shortly, but keep in mind that this will be a heavy physics explanation based on my gimpy knowledge of what I learned back in high school.

Anyway, the attributes of matter that must be emulated are the electromagnetic force, gravity, the strong nuclear force, and the weak nuclear force. The fundamental need of all games is graphics for the overall look of the game world, and collision detection for all interaction with the game world. Translated into physics, graphics would be taken care of my manipulating light, and collision detection would be handled by the electromagnetic repulsion between atoms. "Electromagnetic repulsion between atoms?" WTF is that?

Imagine two regular magnets. When the poles are the same, they repel each other. This property is the same with the electrons in atoms. Remember that atoms are mostly composed of empty space. If there were no EM repulsion between atoms, atoms would just go through each other. Imagine your ass sinking right through the chair your sitting in. That doesn't happen because your ass and the chair electromagnetically oppose each other, keeping you from sinking through. As you can see, EM repulsion is very important.

Anyways, light and EM repulsion are taken care of by the electromagnetic force of matter. At bare minimum, a holodeck must support this attribute.

Handling light is easy. Light waves can easily be manipulated by today's sciences. A standard CRT monitor uses a light gun to shoot colors onto your screen, making up the image of your character kicking the computer AI's ass. Better yet, generating light takes very little energy relative to doing other things. Light manipulation is not a problem.

It's EM repulsion that is holding holodeck technology back. A holodeck can't exist without it. Just like you would get pissed about your sword not hitting an enemy due to bad collision detection, imagine how pissed you would be if your sword went right through an enemy in the holodeck. Not good.

The major problem with emulating EM repulsion is the huge amount of energy it consumes. (This is the major reason why the containment fields in today's nuclear fusion reactors drain more energy than is generated, BTW.) To emulate EM repulsion today, we would need to approach energy levels that of matter itself. How much energy does matter take up, do you ask?

Remember Einstein's equation for energy and matter, E=mc^2. This is the equation that makes nuclear fission work. Fission a heavy atom into two smaller, but lighter, atoms, and release a whole load of energy in the fission. If you add the weight of the two lighter atoms together, they won't equal the weight of the one heavy atom. The energy released was the energy of the matter itself. The sucky thing is that the two lighter atoms ALMOST equal the weight of the heavy atom, showing how much energy even a tiny bit of matter holds.

Surely there must be a better way to energy-efficient EM repulsion, but until we find it, no holodecks for us! But trust me, once we have holodecks, it will be guaranteed to be around FOREVER.

The other far future thing to think about is the direct mind link. Instead of using your computer to hook up to the internet and interacting with the keyboard and mouse, people will be able to link up their minds and interact with thought.

I don't know much about neural biology. Most of this stuff is just guesses and is not guaranteed to be correct, or even accurate. All I know is that the brain functions by firing off electrical synapeses on a need-to-fire basis. This is why sleepy people are slower than one whose been up all night on caffeine. The synapses are what are responsible for manipulating the flow of thought. A stronger electrical charge will change the flow of thought more quickly, but will have a more adverse effect on the mind. To make a mind link, scientists will need to control which synapse fires, how often it fires, and how strong it fires. This is just a guess, but since the flow of thought is controlled electrically, a programmer can theoretically program a series of electrical pulses to manipulate the synapses of the brain, and thus, make the player feel as if they were in the game.

Word of warning though: to do what I'm describing above, scientists will need to experiement on many test subjects, many who will become mentally deranged until the technology is tuned and perfected to the point where their minds can be fixed. Only through this extreme effort of the human patience and will to research, coupled with enormous sacrifice, will a mind link game become a reality. Once mind linking comes to be, we will think that the EverCrack of today was nothing. EverCrack MindLink will be much more addicting than ever imagined! Probably as addicting as the Matrix was.

That's the end of the future of gaming. I think I've wrote enough for that part. Time to discuss which games are phasing out.

Everyone knows that 2D games are phasing out, quickly being replaced by 3D games. The only 2D games I can think of that are still produced commercially are Capcom's 2D fighters (like Marvel vs. Capcom 2).

The most direct replacement of 2D games is where the 2D sprite is replaced by a 3D model in a 3D game where the view is third-person. For example, Mario in the original Super Mario Bros. for NES ran around, stomped on top of enemies, and kicked turtle shells. In Mario 64 for N64, Mario STILL ran around, stomped on top of enemies, and kicked turtle shells. The only difference is that one was 2D and the other was 3D. The game concept is generally the same!

Another shame is that puzzle games are going away. People think that the awesome power of a 3D graphics engine would be wasted on a "simple" puzzle game. Well, game makers, innovate and MAKE a good puzzle game really work those 3D graphics! Back in the day, Capcom pushed their CPS-2 2D graphics engine to make Puzzle Fighter (okay, not pushed to the limit like Marvel vs. Capcom, but still pushed pretty hard for the time), and IT was a puzzle game! Why can't anyone else push their hardware for a puzzle game??!!!! It doesn't have to be pushed to the limit, just as long as the graphics look like the programmers actually used a decent amount of power of the 3D engine. Not everyone likes playing HALO everyday, believe or not. I like a little variety now and then, and playing a few puzzle games adds some of that variety. Sokoban is a good game! Tetris is still fun! Please, game makers, make more puzzle games!

Sorry for the long post. I always feel discussing future and unforeseen events is very difficult, so it requires very difficult answers. I hope my discussion on the physics of making a holodeck game wasn't too confusing! Many people find me too hard to understand, so I end up explaining things and sounding condescending while I'm at it...

[DoG]

I am sorry to interrupt, rmanger, but you need to have another go at physics. Maybe I had too much of this crap pounded into myself, and thats why I am picky.

1) EM repulsion doesn't exist as such. There exists a magnetic field, an electric field, and electromagnetic waves. Moving electric fields create and interact with magnetic fields, and periodic change of such results in an EM wave. The repulsion of two atoms is mostly due to electric field effects, I find your comparison to magnets outraging. But, the inner workings of atoms and molecules are not as simple as that. Quantom mechanics is a little of and counter-intuitive to anything else.

2) Electric and magnetic forces are not the only things holding our world together. There are sub-atomic forces like the weak and strong nuclear force. And don't forget gravity. Those can harldy be emulated, contrary to your suggestion. Electric and magnetic forces are only a part of the equation, and until somebody finds the GUT, we can't relate all these forces.

3) A CRT in your monitor is a "cathode ray tube", it is shooting electrons bundled by magnetic lenses, not light. Light is emitted when the electrons hit the phosphors on the screen, which are excited and emit light.

4) Light manipulation is a HUGE problem. Light generation is terribly inefficient, and once its sent out, it is hardly changeable, except for redirecting it with solid matter, like lenses and mirrors. And light taken as an EM wave, is very hard to generally manipulate. Most devices only work for certain wavelengths, eg. radar with microwaves, lenses with visible and IR light, X-ray devices with x-rays (aka Rˆntgen waves). An optical lens is not transparent to wavelengths other than visible light.

The major problem with emulating EM repulsion is the huge amount of energy it consumes. (This is the major reason why the containment fields in today's nuclear fusion reactors drain more energy than is generated, BTW.)

"EM repulsion" is not used in fusion reactors. A strong magnetic field is built up to exploit the fact that the positively charged nuclei in the plasma are forced into a circular path by the magnetic field, which means they won't touch the sides of the container. The energy is drained only because of the resistance of the coils generating the magnetic fields. Sever hundred or thousand ampere are need, so even small resistances will cause large energy dissipation. But this is only minor, the energy is lost mostly because the fusion cannot be kept going, and it takes horrendous amounts to start it up. So, basically, they pump a lot of energy to get fusion going, but the cannot keep it up long enough to regain that energy.

As I see it, the only way to generate holodecks would be to somehow exploit the wave nature of matter, and generate virtual words by generating waves in such a way that their interference pattern results in solid matter. Basically, nothing else is happening in the spontanious generation/destruction of sub-atomic particles in vacuum. Its time to roll out an ether theory again, but then again, I am no physicist. :p

[mark_battista]

wow, this is excellent people. Its always interesting to find out what other people think. Please keeep this thread going, some fantastic theory and ideas are coming through, if I quote anyone in my article, I will contact you first for permission and credit it to the appropriate source. You will then be given a copy of the article via e-mail so you can read it.

Dont be selfish, if you have an opinion to add please share this with us but lets not digress too far.

Thank you for your comments so far

regards
mark battista:D

ps rmanger u have some fantastic ideas, although your scientific explanation was incorrect your ideas are wicked. Ideas and theories are never wrong some of the best creations come from theory. Thx

[Fenris]

Other trend I see in the short term (let us say for the next 2 years) is the addition of "Embedded reporters" in FPS. ha ha

Well, whaddayaknow, the very idea of 'embedded reporters' emerged from the spectator feature of Q3 and CS...

(Ooh, that was on the border to tasteless, was it? Sorry if anyone was offended.)

[rmanger]

Hey DoooG, thanks for the scientific enlightenment! I needed that. Geez, do you pounce on every inaccuracy and error you see? :p

1) EM repulsion doesn't exist as such. There exists a magnetic field, an electric field, and electromagnetic waves. Moving electric fields create and interact with magnetic fields, and periodic change of such results in an EM wave. The repulsion of two atoms is mostly due to electric field effects, I find your comparison to magnets outraging. But, the inner workings of atoms and molecules are not as simple as that. Quantom mechanics is a little of and counter-intuitive to anything else.

I know that atoms aren't as simple as what I talked about. I just wanted to leave out some details because it was a really long post, and that I wanted to target my post about what it means towards game development. I guess the magnets comparison was a little over the top. It's kinda like saying comparing a two-door sedan to a 18-wheeler semi-ton truck! Oh yeah, they both use wheels and operate on combustion engines, but... um... they're fundamentally the same!

2) Electric and magnetic forces are not the only things holding our world together. There are sub-atomic forces like the weak and strong nuclear force. And don't forget gravity. Those can harldy be emulated, contrary to your suggestion. Electric and magnetic forces are only a part of the equation, and until somebody finds the GUT, we can't relate all these forces.

When it comes to game development, no one gives a crap about the weak and strong nuclear force. Who cares about how atoms are held together? (Unless I'm in a WWII game where I'm dropping the A-bomb!) People just want the look and feel of an object, and are unable to easily interact with the strong and weak nuclear force. In terms of simplicity, these forces can be disregarded. Gravity can be disregarded too unless we're simulating a different gravity, like when the player is doing a man-on-the-moon game. However, I feel it would be simpler to just put a huge central gravity generator under the entire holodeck, instead of actually emulating gravity in atoms. I wish that gravity didn't hold back the GUT. Anyway, slick programming can be used to make up for most of the features provided by the other three forces (admittedly, gravity only to a certain degree). It's the EM force that is absolutely required for anything holodeck to happen.

3) A CRT in your monitor is a "cathode ray tube", it is shooting electrons bundled by magnetic lenses, not light. Light is emitted when the electrons hit the phosphors on the screen, which are excited and emit light.

4) Light manipulation is a HUGE problem. Light generation is terribly inefficient, and once its sent out, it is hardly changeable, except for redirecting it with solid matter, like lenses and mirrors. And light taken as an EM wave, is very hard to generally manipulate. Most devices only work for certain wavelengths, eg. radar with microwaves, lenses with visible and IR light, X-ray devices with x-rays (aka Rˆntgen waves). An optical lens is not transparent to wavelengths other than visible light.

You're right about the CRT thing. My bad. :(

And as I read your post, I began to realize that light manipulation may be more of a problem than I thought! You're right about devices working for only certain wavelengths. However, all the player needs to care about is visible light (and maybe infrared light if the player can use infrared goggles). Even that can be difficult to get because the spectrum of visible light is very small, so we would need to develop equipment that is very sensitive to the changes in light. When it comes to light generation, you're right again. It is energy inefficient. We also need to accurately generate light in a single spot without it moving too much. We need more light technology and know how to make a virtual pixel. More likely, a holodeck would be using virtual polygons than virtual pixels. Virtual atoms? Too much computing power and programming effort to handle. Maybe someday.

And yes. Fusion reactors DO NOT use EM repulsion. That was just my wishful thinking getting in the way again.

[rmanger]

Another reply to the questions. I swear it won't be as long as my first post...

Originally posted by mark_battista
What do you in general want to see in the future?

I like the realism that 3D games provide. I hope we will see more 3D games in the future. However, I hope that 2D sprite graphics make a comeback in 3D games. The following will build on what skyhawk was mentioning about 2D graphics.

NOT EVERYTHING NEEDS TO BE 3D!!!

3D graphics are well and good, but no matter how well lighting and textures are used, nothing beats a hand-drawn, hand-crafted 2D image. 2D images made by human artists will always look better than a 3D model simulated into existence by the computer.

Of course, this brings us into the realm of 3D sprites vs. 3D models, each with their own strengths. A hand-drawn sprite has the potential to look better than its computer-generated counterpart. However, it will only look good from certain angles-- the angles that the animators drew the sprite in. Other angles cause the sprite to face in an unrealistic direction. However, a 3D model will be facing the correct way when viewed from any angle. However, the computer-generated parts will look fake and be readily apparent.

So what is one to do?

Animators can work themselves to death hand-drawing hundreds upon hundreds of angles for one sprite, or they can try to make a 3D model look as if it were hand-drawn 2D. This will probably what animators will do, as making an algorithm is easier than drawing tons of sprite angles by hand. Zelda: Wind Waker seems to already do this. Personally, I'd like to see hand-drawn sprites.

When it comes to the background of the game world, of course 3D models are the obvious choice. Not everything should be hand-drawn, just the most important things that the player focuses on and looks at all the time. (Like the player character, the enemies, and items, to name a few.)

[David]

3d models are made by artists too you know...

[applekid]

1) Depends on how far future you want. Within 5 years, I expect the next-gen consoles to come out with a 256-bit graphics accelerator and maybe some new techniques for art. Of course there are things like wireless headsets with the screen inside, hologram displays, and etc. that we all would like to be put to good use. That might be more off, and more unpredictible, but still, it's a frontier.

2) I would like to see some games that have greater depth. Stories that have twists and turns that can be compared to a classical book. Some more interactivity besides a controller, yet not too complex to control. Maybe something that can sense movement. And I definitely want to see less games that are crap from commercial companies. There are tons of games out there on consoles and the Windows PC that have such low quality replayability, fun, graphics, and everything the player can see or feel in a game. It's a waste of technology. Arcade games and revival of classics I don't mind, but things like 3D action games that are using cheesey graphics and not fun for anyone have problems. Like Beachead for example.

New ways of creating 2D games and platformers wouldn't be too bad either. I miss those days so much.

3) Um, Time Magazine had some reports about future of gaming. It's with interviews with Microsoft I believe. It was when there still was Time Digital Magazine, so you might need to do some work to find it.

4) Well that all depends on how good these game designers are and what kind of hardware will be available around then. Online games seems to be questionable. The only online gaming I see are on computers, but it's only been frag fests and MMORPG's. Sims Online took a good game, but because of marketing problems and probably how the game plays, EA ran into problems.

New genres, you ask? I've always wondered how it would be possible to make a new genre anymore. If someone can make one, I applaud your work.

There are games that would be interesting to see, if they mixed genres. Then again, I think that has already begun. Once Arcade and Action were separate genres, but I see plenty of games with both of that. I always wanted a fighting game mixed with an RPG for the battle sequences. I also wanted to see a game like Oni (fighting + action) put into a more dramatic plot and full of depth. Oni didn't live up to its expectations, but the fighting system was definitely unarugably a nice one. It could use some tweaking, but if someone was to create a great Fighting-Adventure, I'll be your first customer.

I know most of the things I said were more console-relevant, but hopefully that's okay. And most comments are more about the commericial market. The small developers out there, I applaud their work and ambition, and that only fuels my wanting to learn.

[rmanger]

Originally posted by David
3d models are made by artists too you know...

The textures on the models are made by artists, and the animation of the models are made by artists, but the models themselves are computer generated.

I guess what I was trying to say is that the use of polygons shouldn't be so obvious. I know we've made significant advances in the area, but you can still tell polygons apart from other polygons even in the best 3D engine. (Yes, even on the XBox, you can tell!) It all still looks SOOOOOOOO computer generated...

[David]

Models are made by modellers... they don't come out of thin air. You can see polygons on low-poly models if you look too close, but at least they keep their definition and don't turn into huge square pixels :p

I always wanted a fighting game mixed with an RPG for the battle sequences. I also wanted to see a game like Oni (fighting + action) put into a more dramatic plot and full of depth. Oni didn't live up to its expectations, but the fighting system was definitely unarugably a nice one. It could use some tweaking, but if someone was to create a great Fighting-Adventure, I'll be your first customer.

That's pretty much my current project :cool:

[DoG]

Originally posted by rmanger
Hey DoooG, thanks for the scientific enlightenment! I needed that. Geez, do you pounce on every inaccuracy and error you see? :p
...

And as I read your post, I began to realize that light manipulation may be more of a problem than I thought! You're right about devices working for only certain wavelengths. However, all the player needs to care about is visible light (and maybe infrared light if the player can use infrared goggles). Even that can be difficult to get because the spectrum of visible light is very small, so we would need to develop equipment that is very sensitive to the changes in light. When it comes to light generation, you're right again. It is energy inefficient. We also need to accurately generate light in a single spot without it moving too much. We need more light technology and know how to make a virtual pixel. More likely, a holodeck would be using virtual polygons than virtual pixels. Virtual atoms? Too much computing power and programming effort to handle. Maybe someday.


Sorry, as I said, I got this crap painfully beaten into me.

Back to the holodeck thingy: The problem with light is that it travels in straight lines, and I have yet to see some kind of device which can generate light from empty space. If we see light as a whole, though, as an electro-magnetic wave with a certain wavelength, there is much more to it. If you have ever seen an ultrasonic cleaner, you might now what a standing wave is. I can't recall who came up with this, but there is a theory which claims that what we see as solid matter (which is of course not solid, but that's another topic) is the result of the interference of vacuum waves, eg. waves of empty space.

So in theory, if you manage to create proper vacuum (I like to call it ether) waves, you might generate matter from empty space. Of course, the law of the conservation of energy has to be obeyed, but if you destroy your spontaneously created atom, you get it back.

It is already theoretically impossible to generate a solid matter simulation with EM waves, as for them to contain enough energy to push something significantly, as solid matter would do, they would destroy the object on a sub-atomic level, similarly to gamma rays destroying molecules.

If you take into account the theories of multi-dimensional space, however, an interesting possibility comes up: if you manage to move matter between dimensions, eg move it from our 3 dimensions into other 3 and back, an observer in our space would just see it appear and disappear.

The way of creating force fields ala star trek seems far fetched, at least in the form they appear there, but a lot of research has yet to be done in the field of quantum wave mechanics.

Although it seems like we can describe our world with physics and mathematics exactly, it is only within very narrow limits. We can neither explain macroscopic phenomena such as the formation of the universe, nor microscopic phenomena, such as many of the sub-atomic particles, and their interactions. Our physics is only an approximation of the real world, a simulation if you like. Yet, we only have the technology to run a very small subset of our physics theorems in a simulation, especially in real-time. But then again, engineering is all about taking useless thoughts and things and putting them together in such a way that something useful is generated. You never know, maybe a true AI is running in someone's garage already. I recommend reading "The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy", it has some very interesting ideas about simulation, in an extended sense, at least. And it is one funny book.

[Carlos Camacho]

>A hand-drawn sprite has the potential to look better than its computer-generated
>counterpart.
You base that on what we see "today." Today, to make a character for a real-time 3d game, many sacrifices are made. Most of which is using models with low-count polygons. Thus, you can see "the polygons" as you put it. Using textures can help make a character/model more "rich", and in real-time 3d, it is often enough to fool the eye. Especially when an object is moving quickly. (human eye does have limitations... at least in 2003.) Example? You could model all the windows on an airplane in a flight sim. But that increases the polygon count of the model, and the more of them, the harder the engine must work. Instead, you could apply a texture(s) for the fuselage (spell?), complete with diffusion, reflection and transparency textures to make it seem the model is more detail than it really is.

Now, as time goes by, real-time engines and the hardware will keep getting better, and so we will be able to have models and worlds with are much more rich. I think of it like this.. Old games like "Chaos Engine" looked GREAT. The sprites looked good from many angles and were often made in Deluxe Paint. When compared to the 3d games of that era, they really out-shined them. This was really obvious in sports games. (ie sprite players vs low-rez 3d players) The next step in "2d games" was using 3d to pre-render the models. For example, C&C/T.A. and other RTS games. The next step (happening now) is using real-time engines for these types of genres as well. Like Myth, etc... I think over time, all games will use some sort of 3d engine. That said, what will happen is the type of rendering will be altered to fit the game's target/design. So, some games will look "realistic", while other games will use a "toon" renderer, while some games may combine the two.

Another example is to look at the animation business. Although we all love cartoons/animation, how much of the work is now done digitally? A lot of it, because it is costly to do pen-and-ink for all frames. Now, I don't mean to say that all we will see from here on out is "Toy Story"-based 3d animation. Again, depends on what they are after, as "toon" rendering is getting better and better. Do you get my flow? Summary: In the background, what is creating what you see will no doubt be based on 3d, but what you see will be dectated by the game (or movies) designer's wish.

Another example, take a cartoon-style based game. The animators would have to make as many meat-and-potatoes frames for the various character movements. Using 3d models, but rendered with a "toon" renderer, many many things are possible. Again, I want to stress that toon-rendering is not a match for the human hand yet IMHO. But it will be at some point.

Don't know if I got you off-topic. David already took most of the words from my mouth. :mad:

[rmanger]

"Toon Rendering" is a cool name! And what you say is exactly what I'm talking about. I like cartoons and hope that Toon Rendering will be a reality in the near future!

And it's not just the polygons that make CG art so obvious. I just saw Animatrix tonight at the theater and, as realistic as it looked, could still tell it was obviously CG. CG is a style, and it is as much a style as, say, Marvel style, or Manga style. The thing is, I personally like hand drawn art better than CG art, that's all. And that is why I want to see more hand drawn art used in 3D games!

But then again, Toon Rendering would be easier to do, and cheaper for companies to implement. And the concept is just cool!

[Carlos Camacho]

>CG is a style, and it is as much a style as, say
I don't agree with that. I think you really need to look at more CG galleries/films. Without going into great detail, I think the "common Joe" has seen a few types of 3d CG and considers them all that there is. Most likely because the common Joe is only looking at big-budget (or at the terrible terrible movie D&D, low-budget) 3D CG. I see that there is a "Pixar" (Renderman etc) look, a 3D Studio/Lightwave/EI look, Maya/SoftImage look, and custom tools look (ie the studio creates their own tools.) All these "looks" are very different. As different to me as Disney vs Hanna-Barbarra vs Anime of the 2d form. It's interesting that in-house tools like Weta is using is in my mind, truly making CG "disappear." What do I mean? In early movies with CG we could spot one element and say, "That is CG." Later, more elements were CG, but we could still pick them out. Some scenes in "Two Towers" have pushed CG to the point that it doesn't stick out and say "look I am CG!", which is the true goal of CG in my mind. Instead, our minds should see a seamless image, CG, minature, real, etc..

BTW... "shader" technology is getting very very good, and is allowing CG to have much better surfaces. What I mean is this, if "Shriek" was made made about 4 years ago, his skin, etc would be a "plastic-like surface" but if you look close in Shriek or Monster's Inc, you will see many nice surfaces.

Many short-feature CG films use interesting styles, like duo-tone, or "roughness/grain", and various toon-like renderers. Its CG, but the common Joe wouldn't even know. Sorry I don't have any links to show you.

Cheers

[mark_battista]

how off topic are we??
Please remember this thread is about the future of computer games, digressions about CG can be posted in other threads please. I know lots about CG but it aint gonna help me with research for my report on the future of computer games, is it? Sorry to sound snotty, just wanted to get a point across.

regards

Mark Battista

[Najdorf]

yeah, after a while in this community you understand that the main point for which people replie in threads is to take the subject as far as possible from the original topic...;)

[skyhawk]

Originally posted by Najdorf
yeah, after a while in this community you understand that the main point for which people replie in threads is to take the subject as far as possible from the original topic...;)

so, how 'bout those monkeys?:p

[DoG]

I just want to say that, IMO, computer games are given far too much weight these days when it comes to developing new computing technology. After all, its just entertainment, and though everybody needs more or less of it, it is not what we should strive for.

Computer gaming is pushing technology, but it is not pushing it in the quite right direction, just as war is pushing technology. Sooner or later, we see some result which might improve our daily life, but if that energy would have been spent on researching something to do exactly that, to make our jobs easier, much more could be achieved.

With many things in computing, there is a harsh barrier between consumer products and professional products, and this barrier usually results in a steep price jump. In the end, you end up paying a lot for some marginal functionality that makes your day, or waste time on working around a missing feature. It comes down to wasting energy.

But what the heck, fun is fun, and I know it is more enjoyable to program a game than some command line tool, even if I know that that tool might take 1 hour and save me 10 hours of time within the next week alone. I guess that is a bad engineering compromise. :bored:

[Najdorf]

while the game you spent 200 hours to make will make you lose 10 hours of time (playing) within the next week alone...

[Feanor]

Originally posted by mark_battista
What do you consider the future of games will be?
Well, it's sure to be darn big. Games are growing exponentially as an industry. I can't think of anything else to say that is not equally obvious, however. Lots and lots of articles on the Web.
What do you in general want to see in the future?

I want more multi-user immersive environments where it will be possible for players to make up games on their own, starting with a set of meta-rules, which they can simplify. This won't involve programming, but mostly role-playing or other things that kids do before they go online (or before we had online, at any rate). So you open up a big playground with all sorts of stuff, and they can make their own game areas, and arrange things in them, and choose the balls and bats and gloves, as it were.

The cool thing then would be to work out a way to codify the rules so that the game could be refereed by the system in some way. Right now, programming and/or scripting is the only way to do that, but maybe the computer could learn by observing the players or something equally far out and magical. Or if better natural language ever goes mainstream, users could just tell the equipment what it was supposed to be in the game, how it would work, and how the game referee should determine what was and was not allowed and how to calculate the score. Then they could tweak as they play.
Does anyone know of any places where I can collate research?
Greg Costikyan's website (http://www.costik.com) and blog (http://www.costik.com/weblog)
The Designer's Notebook (http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/article_display.php?category=12)
Salon.com (http://www.salon.com)
What genres are expected to become big and what genres are expected to be scrapped, are genres merging?
I expect more of a blurring to continue, but also the classic genres to stick around because they have such dedicated followings and because they each require a focussed skill. Strategy, FPS, and scrollers will always exist. But I expect role playing to continue to evolve as the equipment needed to allow better, richer communication improves.

I think a big invention will be a gesture-recognition product which maps your facial and body expressions (probably exaggerated from subtle to overt) onto your character. The need for new means of input is so overwhelming on the horizon I can feel it. I think they will have to finally create software which will use a camera to observe you while you are in-game. Wearing VR suits is too dumb.

[macboy]

Originally posted by Feanor
I think they will have to finally create software which will use a camera to observe you while you are in-game.I think that could be an invasion of privacy.

[Feanor]

Originally posted by applekid
New genres, you ask? I've always wondered how it would be possible to make a new genre anymore. If someone can make one, I applaud your work.
I think about this on and off. I would definitely love to see a new "genre" if such is possible, but I've re-organized my views somewhat. (I also think that "genre" is a misused word in the games context, which is confusing the issue, but that's beside the point.)

Games types seem to correspond to the skills needed to play them. Strategy is obvious. FPS is about immersive, narrow-simulation stimulus-response. Multiplayer (i.e.: competitive FPS) adds some strategy. In some ways pure FPS are an extension of arcade action games and side-scrollers: mechanically perfecting patterns of action and timing. 3D is just adding a dimension and more complex path planning.

Then you've got sports games, which probably have an infinite possibility if someone would realize that you can make sports games on a computer that are not based on "real" sports. You have an arena/field and some equipment and some way to define scoring points, you make teams of certain sizes and define rules about the roles of the players and their relation to the equipment and the field (when/how you can touch the "ball" or whatever, "offside", etc.), and go. Riffing off my ideas above, I expect a general purpose "make-your-own-sport" computer game to eventually get invented, maybe even by me. Hmmm, I hereby copywrite what I wrote in here.

Finally, there is "role playing", which is a completely infinite area of possibility which in fact has never been created on a computer. Current RPGs are not role playing any more than Super Mario or Doom is role playing (i.e.: you pretend to be some character is a very narrow, strict sense, and perform one or the other of a very restricted set of actions, and basically wander down a path, which sometimes looks bigger than a path, until you realize there is still only one entrance and only one exit).

"Real" (I mean, truly open and flexible) role playing will depend on that other input-hardware stuff I was talking about, on very flexible and versatile fictional environments (a la the Holodeck), and properly run NPCs, either using human actors or damn good synthetic characters that actually understand language within the context of the game world.

Why isn't this thread in game design? It's going there now...

[Feanor]

Originally posted by skyhawk
so, how 'bout those monkeys?:p
Don't worry. They won't be bothering you ever again. :ninja:

[Feanor]

Originally posted by DoooG
I just want to say that, IMO, computer games are given far too much weight these days when it comes to developing new computing technology. After all, its just entertainment, and though everybody needs more or less of it, it is not what we should strive for.

Computer gaming is pushing technology, but it is not pushing it in the quite right direction, just as war is pushing technology. Sooner or later, we see some result which might improve our daily life, but if that energy would have been spent on researching something to do exactly that, to make our jobs easier, much more could be achieved.
Hey, not so glum now! Computer games will, hopefully, transform and become socializing tools again, not just whatever negative connotation you attach to "entertainment" -- as opposed to idea sharing and art, maybe? As opposed to social relationships? OK, for some people games are not as valid as hanging out with people and playing baseball or drinking beer (or both), but those aren't going anywhere fast.

The technological emphasis will continue to move toward more immersive experiences, but that will include richer social interaction and communication, not just 3D graphics and audio. Sensory stimulus is easy, compared to other stuff, because what you are measuring it against (photography, movies, TV, "real" environments) are "there" as obvious goals -- that's what I mean by "easy": imitation of other experiences vs. forging new ones. Creating responsive environments will be a much more difficult challenge, but once they can put nine million and one objects in million-polygon glory onto a virtual stage, users will clamour for things to "act right". Then the possibilities will EXPLODE.

[Feanor]

A last word. Consider extrapolations to six years from now:

1. Processors are sixteen times more powerful, at least, based on Moore's law.

2. Bandwidth explosion (crossing fingers): fibre to the curb, fibre in every building, terabit transmission rates. We have the tech now, we just need the demand to bring the price plummetting a la home networking gear.

3. Better bandwidth makes cell computing commonplace. Buy a cell unit for a couple of hundred dollars. Condominiums offer cell clusters and terabit storage in the basement, fibre to the unit. Put a few more cells in your condo for your own dedicated tasks.

4. GPU gives way to Environment Processing Unit: integrated 3D graphics and audio, experimental tactile surface processing and output devices. Probably 32 times more powerful than today.

5. Voice recognition and synthesis commonplace. These technologies were perfected circa 2001! Dedicated hardware performs these tasks in 2009.

6. First attempts at general purpose Knowledge Processing Unit: A.I. on a chip. Language and general symbolic logic-processing ASICs in limited production, better systems in testing phase. No, it won't be "intelligent" like you and me; yes, it will play chess better than any human alive, and every other game, too. If you can codify the rules and the number of symbols is finite, these things will master the system. They will micro-manage online virtual world economies, for example.

What's missing from this picture? The software architecture to manage and connect the parts of the system I am hinting at. Who will run that architecture? :ohmy: Well, I'm fear-mongering, but I am serious, too. They are at work on the distribution system already. Playstation vs X-Box is only the beginning, kids. The future is Sony vs. M$ for the computer game ¸ber-network that OWNZ JOO!. Apple doesn't even have a clue. Steve Jobs is so goddamn self-satisfied that he can't see the forest for the trees. Anyway, Sony is going to buy Apple, and Steve will be ousted again. He's not an interactive guy, anyway, he's into making art that you can appreciate.

The flip side of this is the underground, Open Source game architecture running on the retro-fitted remains of the old Internet, spliced into the various new networks wherever they can get away with it. This should be pretty kick-ass. As usual, it will be physical real estate that will be the real expense. When bandwidth costs nothing, you still have to pay somebody for a place to keep your cell cluster.

[Feanor]

Originally posted by macboy
I think that could be an invasion of privacy.
Well I was thinking of the user actually buying said camera by choice, purely as an input device. It wouldn't transmit pictures of you or anything, it would just interpret motions that would lead to animations for the characters. No keyboard required, no "logging" either.

[rmanger]

Originally posted by Feanor
Wearing VR suits is too dumb.

I agree.

GPU gives way to Environment Processing Unit...

Environment Processing Unit? EPU? Don't they have EPUs on that CG cartoon, Cubix? Does this mean our future will be like Cubix? :p

First attempts at general purpose Knowledge Processing Unit: A.I. on a chip. Language and general symbolic logic-processing ASICs in limited production, better systems in testing phase. No, it won't be "intelligent" like you and me;

I hope not. We all saw the Matrix. Look at what happened to all the humans when they introduced A.I.? But seriously, I really do hope that computers don't gain sentience, or else we'd really be screwed!

Games of today are becoming more realistic in terms of physics, environmental variables, etc.. If that trend were to continue (and it probably will), then games probably won't be "games" in the sense that we think of today. "Games" will probably be just real-world simulations with different environmental variables (like gravity, fog, and such), except with special rules that make the simulation a game.

An example would be to compare tennis and baseball. In tennis, you hit a tennis ball with a racket over a net. In baseball, you hit a baseball with a bat out of the ballpark. Yes, I know many of you will jump on top of me saying the HUGE differences between baseball and tennis, but look at the similarities.

- Both sports involve hitting a ball, where the force of the hit is based on how hard the player hit the ball.
- Both sports involve running, and players get tired after running a while.
- In both sports, the player's shoes can get ruined. :p

The similarities are all part of the natual environment. The only differences are in the goals of the game, and the pre-defined rules to get to those goals. Once an environmental standard is created, all we need is goals and rules to make a new game. Isn't that what you were getting at, Feanor?

[Feanor]

You are astute! It is indeed what I was getting at. Eventually the creation of specialized environments for particular games will simply be a waste of energy. Computers will be so fast that there will no reason to fine tune "engines" for certain kinds of games, because the complexity of the "simulation space" or whatever you want to call it will be about the same relative to the complexity of the hardware running it, or at least to the meagre input systems we have and expect to have for the next few years.

As for sentient machines, don't worry about that. We don't even know how to make a toaster that doesn't burn toast. (j/k, we can probably do that.) We don't know anything about general purpose intelligence, or about consciousness or sentience. We only know how to search a state space and define rules for transforming it.

The Matrix? That will never happen.

[Carlos Camacho]

Sorry, but I went into a CG discussion because CG and gaming go hand in hand in my mind. Like talking about the evolution of the movie business without discussing the advancements in the delivery media or other technologies that make movies what they are today.

Anyhow, back to the subject.

I wonder if we will get to a point that gaming leagues start to encroach on real sports leagues. Some people will simply watch the games, perhaps as though they are in the stadium, while others will perform as the players. Imagine how many people watch the World Cup. Only a lucky 70,000 or so get to watch the final game in the stadium. How many would be willing to pay to feel as though they are there?

About this, many might think, with a virtual gaming league, there could be cheating. But in the real world there is cheating.

Other thing I was thinking was that MMOG will offer the chance for people from many countries to interact in their native language. So as machine translation gets better, players that speak various languages will be able to enjoy games together. I think that would be very interesting.

[rmanger]

Originally posted by Camacho
Other thing I was thinking was that MMOG will offer the chance for people from many countries to interact in their native language. So as machine translation gets better, players that speak various languages will be able to enjoy games together. I think that would be very interesting.

Hopefully, those Universal Translators from Star Trek will become a reality. And they will be better than AltaVista's BabelFish engine. :p Geez, reading BabelFish translated webpages is like reading the subtitles of a bootlegged anime! You have to translate the translation!

If we can do good machine translation (in conjunction with faster, less laggy connections), then we won't have to have specialized language servers like the ones that exist on battle.net. That way, everyone around the world can use trash talk with each other!

And still, machine translation from spoken English to written English (ala speech-to-text dictation) is pretty difficult. I was wondering, is the difficulty in the fact that our programming isn't sophisticated enough, or that the hardware simply isn't fast enough for sophisticated programming?

[OneSadCookie]

The problem with text-to-speech (in English) is that a lot of contextual information is required to get it right. To a large extent, the program actually has to understand the text to tell which of two identically-spelled words is meant, to tell whether the word is being used as a noun or a verb (and hence has different pronunciation), where the stress should go on the word, &c.

Speech-to-text is even harder, since the string of sounds will in general be even more ambiguous than a string of letters, and the same contextual information is required to make choices of words -- was that "there", "their" or "they're"?

I don't think we'll see automatic translation until we have hardware neural networks equivalent in power to the human brain, and I think by that stage there'll be more interesting applications for the technology!

[Justin Brimm]

Actually, the US military has military training simulators which can generate voices in real-time, matter of fact, the big thing about it is, except for the graphics (which are actually pretty good), you can't really tell the people aren't real. Everything from the facial animations, how they act and how well they understand things; you can give almost any command in almost any way and the AI knows what your saying and can generate a voice and speech back to you in real time. I remember seeing something to this effect.

Real Soldier talking to a virtual Sergeant: Sergeant!
<Sergeant comes running up>
Virtual Seargeant: Yes Sir!
RS: Sergeant, I need you to send three men down to secure a LZ. We have two civilians up here who need immediate evacuation; make sure they send a chopper up here to retrieve them.
VS: Yes Sir!
<The VS heads towards a group of virtual marines, picks three out of the group and orders them to secure a LZ further down the road. They head down the road to secure the LZ>

If I remember correctly, the soldier in training failed that mission, because he had failed to secure an LZ by the time the chopper arrived, because enemy resistance was tougher than they expected, and they were shot to hell or something of that nature.

I could be wrong though; I don't remember where I saw that (might be TechTV) and I think it was a month or so ago.

[added:] One thing I noticed they mentioned was that the soldiers reacted like real people; they experienced fatique, and in the training, you have to watch the mental condition of your troops, lest one can't handle battle situations.

On an interesting note, I came up with a way to do a much simpler version of this for games. Assign a pre-made personality to NPCs that has variables like bravery and loyalty and such (the different personalities ranging from brave and reckless, to cowardl], add a little randomness to the variables, then let them run their course. They act depending on outside factors, such as enemy numbers, their strength (i.e. What weapons and armor each side has), how many enemies killed, how many friendlies killed, ect.

These outside factors are basically modifiers that affect the personality attributes of the NPC, and depending on what they do to the personality attributes, the NPC makes decisions, like whether they should fall back, disobey orders, or go in guns blazing.

[mark_battista]

excellent points discussed so far. So, is there a discernable or foreseeable trend in the development of games and if so what might this be.
thx
regards
mark battista

[ThrottleMonkey]

Personally, I think all we need to do is push what we have just a bit further. Maybe even combine some stuff that's already been done in the past with stuff just coming out.

Let me explain... no, there isn't much time... let me sum up.

FPS's would rock so much harder in multi-player if you could do something beside shooting. Sure, grab a briefcase here, blow up something there... there are so many bank levels in games now... but you can't even try to crack the safe or take hostages or any number of other things.

Right now, FPS's lean too heavily into HUGE weapons, when all the fun comes from in-your-face fighting. Everyone loves knife fights and pistol whipping... and everyone complains when it comes to shotguns doing too much damage and rockets flying everywhere.

So hey... make a game where there's BRAWLING! A bar level where you can pick up and throw and bash glass bottles and chairs over your buddy's head. Have a grappling system (jedi knight II has a sabre-lock system that just needs a bit of tweaking) where you click fast to overpower the opponent. Throw in some action moves like diving and rolling. It just frustrates me to no end to see a perfectly good FPS get stupid by adding too-powerful weapons, etc.

I'm going to stop now.

[mark_battista]

well this link seems to have died, thank you everyone for your responses there's some amazing ideas and commentds in this thread. You've all been very helpful. Thx

regards
mark battista

[ERaZer]

Originally posted by ThrottleMonkey
Right now, FPS's lean too heavily into HUGE weapons, when all the fun comes from in-your-face fighting. Everyone loves knife fights and pistol whipping... and everyone complains when it comes to shotguns doing too much damage and rockets flying everywhere.

So hey... make a game where there's BRAWLING! A bar level where you can pick up and throw and bash glass bottles and chairs over your buddy's head. Have a grappling system (jedi knight II has a sabre-lock system that just needs a bit of tweaking) where you click fast to overpower the opponent. Throw in some action moves like diving and rolling. It just frustrates me to no end to see a perfectly good FPS get stupid by adding too-powerful weapons, etc.

I'm going to stop now.
Hmm, you are partly right but the FP view isn't good for melee combat and things like that. And besides, nobody likes knife fight, people like when they manage to kill someone with the knife since it sucks. But all this talk about fighting makes me dream about a multiplayer Oni style game... That would rock.

[Feanor]

I have been doing a lot of reading lately about game design issues. I recently saw a talk on the declining importants of graphics (RealVideo at Gamasutra, link from article), and it inspired me to write a new article, looking at the talk from various angles. You can read it here:

http://homepage.mac.com/brentgulanowski/The%20Bored%20Astronaut/Games/E-143197917/index.html

Comments welcome.

[macboy]

Originally posted by ThrottleMonkey
Right now, FPS's lean too heavily into HUGE weapons, when all the fun comes from in-your-face fighting. Everyone loves knife fights and pistol whipping... and everyone complains when it comes to shotguns doing too much damage and rockets flying everywhere.Try David's Black Shades. You can download it in the uDevGame 2002 downloads section. :)

[Carlos Camacho]

Feanor,
I'd love to mirror that article so people can always find it. Send me mail if you are hip.

Cheers

[Najdorf]

The future of games?

Two words:
*Stunnig Graphics*
oh, and stunning music and sounds.
It' s REALLY all you need.
Make the worlds most unplayable (click click) and unoriginal game (Diablo) but give him 5 cd' s full of the greatest graphics and music and, really, the playability comes by itself, and loads of customers.
Make the worlds most addictive and fun game with bad graphics (Zangband rules) and only I will play it.

And the music, oh yes, music to control their minds and their emotions.

This said Zarathustra.