Infinity Tech Demo

[Rii]

This is essentially just a cross-post from RPS, but given the sci-fi slant of the board I thought it might be of interest to some folks here:

[yt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h7eREddMjt4[/yt]
[yt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3muhlQYFgLE[/yt]

What's the game about? Who cares.

Hopefully by 2020 Google Earth will look something like this.

 

[Lindley]

Looks pretty, but it gives a very lonely feeling. How about some structures on the surface, some signs of habitation?

 

[O'Dib]

I like what the game engine is able to pull off, but the way they programed landscape doesn't make for very likely formations.

 

[Robert Maxwell]

The landscapes are multi-ridged perlins with some other filters, from the looks of it.

The graphics are cool, and I like how the rings around the planet were done, but there's not enough variation in the landscape--again, due to the reliance on multi-ridged perlins. I don't think we'll have a good procedural landscape system unless it's modeled on actual tectonic processes and then put through climate simulation, including the effects of vegetation and erosion.

If this is meant to be one of those freeform space sim games, I hope they manage to populate the planets better than most games of this type. That's always my biggest gripe--you go out into space and there are all these ships, but if you go down to a planet, there might be a handful of settlements and no real cities like you would find on Earth.

A game that procedurally generates an entire universe, including planets and star systems, and then all the way down to buildings with furnished interiors and inhabitants, would be fucking awesome. It's the game I've always wanted to play--go anywhere, do anything, and there's actually stuff to do. But no one seems to be making that because it's too hard.

 

[Arrqh]

Even if we did have really good procedural terrain, it's only good if it's just eye candy.

We use some procedural tools in our terrain-making pipeline, but it's only part of the process... after tweaking the settings for days to get each bit to look right, we then have to mold lots of it by hand because you can't build scripted gameplay around procedural content. That goes even more so for artificial things like cities and interiors. Even if you could procedurally generate that stuff, you'd have an entire universe that's completely generic. It would make a good backdrop if you don't spend much time examining the content (if it's a space sim and you're just buzzing by alien cities, you won't really care if it looks lived in or not) but if you actually have to interact with content in a meaningful way, procedural is only useful as a starting point for artists and designers to work with by hand.

That's basically what Spore was, right? A procedural galaxy full of procedural solar systems and procedural planets and eventually it all just bleeds together. It's all generic and therefore, eventually, boring.

 

[Robert Maxwell]

Yeah, that's the problem with doing things procedurally--if you use the same procedure over and over, everything develops a certain sameness. It would have to be combined with some good AI to shake things up and actually bring variety into it, but without it looking haphazard.

 

[firehawk12]

There's a gameplay demo as well, although it won't be as impressive as the videos since it's focused on combat and network testing.
http://www.infinity-universe.com/In...com_content&task=blogcategory&id=23&Itemid=51

My understanding though is that the game is meant to simulate the entire Milky Way and that every single star you see in that video is an actual location that you can travel to and explore. The scope is just astounding... so I think I'll forgive them if they end up procedurally generating planet terrain and even solar systems.

It's also meant to be an MMO, so I figure it'll be similar to EVE. The difference is that the plan is to apparently have no leveling system. You're as good as your ability to manipulate the game system. That probably means that the grinding will come in trying to earn money and just explore as many solar systems as possible.

I figure it might get old eventually... but the idea of just picking a star in the sky and just going there is amazing.

 

[Arrqh]

It's not a matter of having to forgive them or anything... what they're doing can only be done procedurally. But the reason this sort of thing generally isn't done often isn't really because its hard (it is, but so is everything else in games) but because it's ultimately unengaging. You can't create any sort of directed player experience in a procedural environment. If the environment is only providing a backdrop, as in EVE where you're exploring for the purposes of grinding your mining lasers, then great. But you're never going to be able to replicate the experience of, say, the exploration aspect of Trek in a fully procedural environment. Not for more then a few hours, at least.

It's not meant as a knock towards the project at all... just being realistic about what sort of content is actually possible without writers, designers and artists creating things. And this last bit is just personal preference, but I'd rather explore a hand crafted single solar system then a procedural galaxy of genericness.

 

[firehawk12]

Yeah, given that they're trying to make what amounts to an MMO, I'm not sure having hand crafted systems matters all to much. They'll probably hand tune Sol system and maybe add in some other special systems that are important and just let players have at it. I look at it like Civ or other 4X games where it ultimately doesn't really matter what the map looks like.


I would think the bigger problem would be populating a galaxy with players. I figure something with Eve's scale and 100k players, you could still get lost and never encounter other players.