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[sharplittleteeth]

I'm not much of a computer gamer.

This surprises some people. I guess I fit the profile - male, roleplayer, works in IT. But I don't have the reflexes for first-person-shooters, and I don't have the spare time for RPGs.

So when Sony shows technical demonstrations for their next generation Playstation, I don't start kidnapping and selling small children into slavery so I can afford it.

That said, the latest tech demo is kinda interesting: they've remade the opening sequence of Final Fantasy VII. Not only are the graphics realistic, but they're being rendered in real time. Impressive.

And speaking of impressive games: Will Wright, inventor of the Sims, presented his upcoming game at E3. The game is called Spore.

The idea is, you start out as a single celled organism, eating other single celled organisms and trying not to be eaten. Then after a while, you evolve into a fish. Then you evolve into a land-based creature. Then you evolve intelligence, and the game shifts from controlling a single creature to controlling a tribe. Then you meet other tribes. Then you invent a UFO, and can fly out to explore other planets.

Which all sounds kinda fun. But what makes it impressive is how it handles the problem of content.

See, computer games are getting hideously expensive to make because you need warehouses full of designers to produce all the little animations and graphics. Modern games have hundreds of thousands of these things.

Spore gets around that problem by making the designing part of the game. Everytime your creature evolves, you go into an editor and design what you want it to look like. And the really cool part is: the game then works out, on the fly, how to animate it. Make a three-legged creature, it will work out a three-legged walk. Make a creature with a branching network of legs and two heads, it will work out how it should move.

I don't know if I would ever actually play this game, because as I said before, I don't really play any games. But I can admire the programming nous and lateral thinking behind it.

Comments

[andricongirl.livejournal.com]

ohhh but i want that game :]]]

[ex-delve955.livejournal.com]

When they did demos for the PS2, they had a video of the dance scene from Final Fantasy VIII rendered in realtime. Teasing us. Taunting us. Making us angry. The production of hype for consoles is really quite disturbing in that way, the ease with which companies are able to capitalise and cultivate these obsessions, turning it into something else, new, expensive.

*stops self*