The future of models and textures (maybe)

[shadowkiller]

http://nintendo.about.com/library/procedural/blprocedural1.htm <--- interesting read, imagine being able to update the look of older games to next gen.

[WormSlayer]

Spore is a great example of elite procedural systems.

I believe Will Wright hired a lot of talent from the European demo scene, on the strength of code like that 84k game

[Iron Brain]

fapp this. The idea could have many benefits. In fact I am working on something with randomized assets and I could see how it would be very useful. But the drive for nothing other than new graphics has got to stop. Updated old games are fine. But the only reason they ever lost their luster was because they were seen with an eye for new graphics in the first place. Retexturing Zelda isnt going to make it any more fun that it was when it was new. It might make me more likely to replay it witch is fine. Zelda is the game that made me want to make games. I wanted to recreate the feeling I had while playing it for other people. Its some thing sacred to me. Putting new textures on the Forest Temple is going to change the way I feel about it. Its never going to be better than it was the first time. The fact that the game could have looked better 10 years latter when it was new didnt change my opinion of it nor did it make it any less fun then. Video games today with all of their shaders are no better than they were when I was playing Mario Cart with point sprites.

I cant even begin to describe to you what it was about Z:OOT that captivated me so damn much. Maybe part of it was getting to experience Hyrule in 3D, a way that i never had before. Im sorry but adding new textures to that formula doesn't really improve on it all that much.

There is a major flaw with the way about.com describes it. It assumes that graphics=game play witch is completely wrong. I have about the same amount of fun playing Crysis as i ever did playing the lowest budget games on the Super Nintendo. Better graphics have never made anything more fun, they just make me feel like less of a fool for spending so much on a computer. It is this exact misconception that has led to the retardation in game development we now have. This kind of thinking is the bane of real progression in actual game play. Unfortunately new graphics sell games and as long as thats true publishers arent going to front the capitol on untried ideas. Its a fapping rose by any other name.

[KorJax]

Yeah the demoscene (aka the underground animation style that involves coders creating procedurally generated animations, and in some cases games), it's pretty cool stuff.  I read in a magazine that Will Wright even had it as inspiration for Spore.

In any case, it's practility is questionable.  If you noticed when you start up a demoscene, it takes several minutes to load the animation up and generate it in the CPU/RAM.  It's kind of cool to have fully HD and amazing looking animations in EXTREMELY small file sizes and the likes, but it just isn't as practical as it sounds.  The only benefits procedurally generated visuals have over non-procedurally generated ones is that they can have extremely small filesizes for very good quality (at the price of a substantually long loading time while it generates it).  These small file sizes don't make anything run better... it still has to load the full texture and stuff up inside the RAM/v-Ram when it's actually being used on screen.

Of course then we have things like spore, which involves an almost MMO-style approach to single player gaming and needs to be able to send and store millions of pieces of data that is all user-generated.  In this case, procedural generation is extremely helpful (it's first practical use in the game industry!) as it allows computers to effortlessly send extremely small filesizes to other computers to generate content on the screen.

[TimoBlastem]

Really interesting perspectives on the idea.  I agree with Iron Brain in that it will not change the gameplay of titles, but think about RPGs for a minute.  I think many more people would have stayed with Everquest had it been able to compete with WoWs graphics.  WoW didn't add all that much to the genre, and relied on it's new graphics to get costumers.  So if Everquest had ever-evolving, brilliant graphics, WoW would have to be a truly amazing game to pull away it's costumers, leading to better games and further advancement of the genre.

And Korjax, with dual and quad core processors and gigs of ram for very little money compared to even two years ago, is load time that big of an issue?

[Askis]

I don't think WoW sold as good as it did because of it's graphics, but rather because of it's appeal to every type of MMO player.
Especially for casuals (the majority of WoW players apparently), cause it's easy to get into, thanks to rested status you're even encouraged to go offline and the small instances can be cleared in one sitting.
I never played the first Everquest, started with DAoC and loved WoW when it came out.
Not because of the graphics, I was sick and tired of endless grinding and WoWs quests and fast leveling were like a breath of fresh air for me...
And tbh WoW only looks good because it uses cartoony graphics.

Although many games would have more replayability if the graphics changed to fit the times, I can't imagine game developers continually patching their games...
Granted, MMOs might benefit from this technique, but I doubt any game that doesn't cost anything to play (apart from the one time you buy it) would get this kind of treatment, as you would need coders everytime you upgrade the game, which would cost way too much, especially for SP-only games like OOT.

[KorJax]

Really interesting perspectives on the idea.  I agree with Iron Brain in that it will not change the gameplay of titles, but think about RPGs for a minute.  I think many more people would have stayed with Everquest had it been able to compete with WoWs graphics.  WoW didn't add all that much to the genre, and relied on it's new graphics to get costumers.  So if Everquest had ever-evolving, brilliant graphics, WoW would have to be a truly amazing game to pull away it's costumers, leading to better games and further advancement of the genre.

And Korjax, with dual and quad core processors and gigs of ram for very little money compared to even two years ago, is load time that big of an issue?

Not really, but it doesn't really do anything other than have small filesizes.  And the loading is longer than you think.  It can take easily up to a minute or more on current-day PC's just to load a 7 minute long proc-gen animation.  Still not bad, but if you think how long it takes Crysis to load a level, and try to make something like that proc-gen'd, then you would have a huge loading time.

[Iron Brain]

Really interesting perspectives on the idea.  I agree with Iron Brain in that it will not change the gameplay of titles, but think about RPGs for a minute.  I think many more people would have stayed with Everquest had it been able to compete with WoWs graphics.  WoW didn't add all that much to the genre, and relied on it's new graphics to get costumers.  So if Everquest had ever-evolving, brilliant graphics, WoW would have to be a truly amazing game to pull away it's costumers, leading to better games and further advancement of the genre.

And Korjax, with dual and quad core processors and gigs of ram for very little money compared to even two years ago, is load time that big of an issue?

Not really, but it doesn't really do anything other than have small filesizes.  And the loading is longer than you think.  It can take easily up to a minute or more on current-day PC's just to load a 7 minute long proc-gen animation.  Still not bad, but if you think how long it takes Crysis to load a level, and try to make something like that proc-gen'd, then you would have a huge loading time.

The load times in Crysis are stupidly fast for me. Long and frequent load screens detract from a game so I would hate for that to be more common. Crysis actually loads faster than allot of older games on my computer.

[KorJax]

Strange.  It takes easily up to 2-3 minutes to load some of the more resource-intensive maps like Assault and Reconing.  Multiplayer maps are not bad.