At 2/6/08 11:09 AM, KaynSlamdyke wrote:
A lot of it was based off of this paper from Siggraph, but actually reading through it (or at least attempting to read the L-System algorithm on page three) is one brain destroying moment after another. Even trying to decipher a part of it's giving my non programmer brain a hernia, and I'm sure some of the wunderkunds on the programming forum would have fun trying to make it work...

Isn't it pretty?

Pretty awesome. I can see this technology being of great value for the game industry to quickly create cities, but i can't really see the use of it for architecture and urban planning. Designing a successful urban area is a lot more than having an algorithm generating some masses based on set parameters. I don't think any computer is able to interpret a situation that asks for a new urban plan and to come up with a solution in a creative way. Still fun experiment though

At 2/6/08 10:16 AM, sooperdood4 wrote: By the way lewis you lvl up by voteing not posting.

YOU'VE JUST SHATTERED LUIS'S ENTIRE REALITY.

On TOP of being food poisoned...poor guy.

At 2/6/08 11:45 AM, AloneInTheDark wrote: Pretty awesome. I can see this technology being of great value for the game industry to quickly create cities, but i can't really see the use of it for architecture and urban planning. Designing a successful urban area is a lot more than having an algorithm generating some masses based on set parameters. I don't think any computer is able to interpret a situation that asks for a new urban plan and to come up with a solution in a creative way. Still fun experiment though

I disagree. Any decisions based on straight facts can be reached by a sufficiently encompassing and complex algorithm. The only reason it would fail would be because of some external factor, and if human reasoning is aware of it then it could be incorporated into software.

The place computers fail is in aesthetics and innovation. Still, such a program would be great for creating a starting platform by getting all the mechanical stuff out of the way with as few errors as possible.

Procedural Generation
Procedural Generation is probably the next step in Massive Open World games such as Oblivion and Grand Theft Auto. Not only can the worlds be expanded upon, they can also be expounded. Interiors will be randomly generated based on seeds, whole buildings could be designed. The technique is so powerful the possiblities of it are only limited by the ingenuity of the developer. Imagine an RPG video game where no two NPCs look alike.

If you've never heard of it, following in the footsteps of Eve, and attempting to greatly diverge from it, Infinity: The Quest for Earth is a space game using this technique. It procedurally generates planets, solar systems, and surface cities. You could literally spend gameplay hours just travelling around a single planet. It's so indepth and it's all thanks to this technique.

Pretty much what you have to do is create modular content. What I mean by modular is that you have different pieces, kind of like a puzzle, that fit together in various ways to create a full product. For example, a building would have 4 pieces, 2 floor pieces, a middle piece and a roof piece. Using the procedural generation you could make any number of buildings just by changing the floor piece and the number of midsections. Using base 1 you could have 4 middle pieces and a roof piece to make a building 6 stories high. You could also make a second building just by changing the base allocation. In this way the diversity is based not on how many different models can be modelled, but by how many different types of modular pieces you can piece together.

The same can be said of a city. You could have modular street blocks that have different appearances and piece them together, or you can squeeze more diversity out of it by having modular buildings which are randomly placed throughout the city.

With RPGs you could have so many more NPCs by simply different features. This technique can be used by thinking back on it, character models are very moldable and their features can be set to attributes similar to the character creation process of Oblivion.

Either way around the system can produce diversity with a fraction of the work. Another benefit is you can create a fully fleshed video game in megs rather than gigs. Rather than having models stored for everything, you'd have building blocks that piece together to form the whole. For example, a building takes up 1kb. A city of 1024 of the same buildings will take up 1 mb. With procedural generation you'd take up only 1kb, plus the space required for the coding. For the sake of the argument, even if that file took up 250 kb, that's still only 251 kb. Thats a data savings of 75.5% of the original space it would have taken up modeling the whole city.

The only set back with this method is the actual loading phase. As oppposed to loading one large piece, the system will have to actually run the code and parse all the commands and references, then place each piece in it's appropriate coordinate.

To make a reference to flash though, this technique is similar to the ones where a user stores map information into an array and has the system read the array and paste the appropriate tiles in its position. Imagine having an algorithm that not only assigned tile position, but also generated the array randomly using a set of rules, and also picked which tiles would be used.

Moving forward, as we put more interest into the programming of content, we continually take things out of the artists' hands. If we do that we also reduce the amount of space we need to contain all the art assests. Hopefully this trend will find it's balance. Rather than game storage size decreasing, hopefully it'll stay about the same and game worlds will increase exponentially in not only size but also depth.

Rant ftw.

At 2/6/08 01:29 PM, Paranoia wrote:
I disagree. Any decisions based on straight facts can be reached by a sufficiently encompassing and complex algorithm. The only reason it would fail would be because of some external factor, and if human reasoning is aware of it then it could be incorporated into software.

The place computers fail is in aesthetics and innovation. Still, such a program would be great for creating a starting platform by getting all the mechanical stuff out of the way with as few errors as possible.

But the problem is that an urban plan isn't just a matter of applying straight facts to the location. Every urban plan requires new parameters that are context specific. It is the job of the urban architect to discover what exactly these parameters are, to interpret the history of the area, to research the specific requirements of the inhabitants and to come up with a creative solution for it.
Every urban plan i made as an architecture student differs immensely from another, because every new site and situation asks for a new specific treatment. It is never only a matter of making a composition of masses based on the traffic, light, density etc, like an algorithm does

At 2/6/08 02:08 PM, AloneInTheDark wrote: Every urban plan i made as an architecture student differs immensely from another, because every new site and situation asks for a new specific treatment. It is never only a matter of making a composition of masses based on the traffic, light, density etc, like an algorithm does

You're only thinking in terms of limited algorithms :P Just because nobody's come up with a working algorithm involving thousands of specific factors, doesn't make it impossible.

At 2/6/08 08:47 AM, patu1 wrote:

At 2/5/08 07:04 PM, Luis wrote: If I die i hearby transfer my modship to patu1

LMAO lol luis it took me by surprise.
I thoght you would sugest somthing funny but not about me <3.

There's probably a good reason to why he did pick you for his joke ;)

At 2/6/08 01:52 PM, Deathcon7 wrote: Procedural Generation

There was a game made completely procedurally... and it was about 90-something KB total. I forget the name though, but it was a first person shooter.

It is a really neat concept. Actually one of the things I'd want to figure out is a procedural song or improvisational solo writing algorithm. It'd be a HUGE challenge to get it to work right, because picking the right note is tough. There is not always a right note, and the "wrong" note can be useful and sound right in some situations. For improvising, it's a general rule to avoid the 4th of the key your playing in, however if you hit the 4th, it's possible to mold it into your ideas and melody (as a transition note to the 3rd or even hit it multiple times for contrast). And the rhythm issue too, you want the solo to remain in the rhythm and meter of the song, however there's a number of ways to break out of the pulse and still sound right (such as triplets or syncopation).

There's a lot of issues in writing an algorithm to improvise a musical solo. What sounds good is completely objective, and there's many soloists out there that can make anything sound good, even if the note or time is away from the norm. There's also the question of where to set the limits? Playing an entire solo in 64th notes would probably melt someone's ears, but a stream of 4 in a row could be a nice transition. How fast do you let it play? There's no answer to that as it all depends on the context of the song. How high and low do you let it play? If you define exact limits for these types of things, then it's restricting the possibilities, but if you define no limits, then you might get some really bad sounding stuff.

A procedural city, or landscaping, or face generation can work wonders cause all it needs to do is pick from a set of building blocks, however I think we're far away from letting an algorithm make those building blocks in the first place.

Another example would be artwork. A computer, at the moment, cannot create artwork that compares to human art simply through algorithms. For something like that, if it pulled blocks and stuck them together, then after a few pieces, all the art would look the same. You can't re-use elements in multiple paintings too many times before they start to look old. Imagine if the Mona Lisa was the only person in every painting of a person. Bland, right?

It's good to see procedural programming making things more efficient, but we're far away from letting it create its own art. In fact, once they are able to create art, it will create a lot more problems than it solves. When a computer can create art, what else is left to separate it from a human?

At 2/6/08 03:34 PM, Glaiel-Gamer wrote:

At 2/6/08 01:52 PM, Deathcon7 wrote: Procedural Generation

When a computer can create art, what else is left to separate it from a human?

I believe the game was actually called 97kb or something like that. Anyways, what I was trying to say was not that computers would replace artwork, but that using smaller pieces of pre-made assests you could make a wide variety of things. Imagine the time it takes to fully render a whole planet worth of details. It'd take an extremely long time. Imagine you wanted to make more than one. With the time the artist takes to create the whole planet worth of details, he could have used that time to make such a diverse set of assests to be linked together, the piece really wouldn't really have many repeats.

And even if it did, so what. Most animals of the same species look exactly the same. Yes there are the exceptions of the ones that are of different ages and health, but for the most part they look all the same. The same for trees, for the most part they all look the same.

Procedural generation isn't meant to capture the absolute variety of the real world, but only allow games to emulate it in an extremely more efficient way. I don't care if every other palm tree in XYZ game looks the same, thats not what I'm interested in. I'm more interested in the gameplay and what's happening in the story. Taking it from that context, even just a small number of variety will be enough to satisfy any gamer. The only thing that trully needs to be unique to maintain diversity in the game is cityscapes, characters, important buildings that affect the plot, etc.

Take mass effect for example. The planets for the most part were very similar, a lot of things were just repeated but I didn't care, I was so in love with the game I just wanted to play. And all the main storyline objects were dissimilar so it fell into place properly. This is what I'm talking about. An artist will always be irreplacable. If anything, programmers can stand to be displaced by computers, but never art. Art is drawn from creativity, and abstract idea that no machine, at least currently, can duplicate. And yes, for the purpose of art, if you use the same pieces over again it'll be bland because the art piece is the focus of attention.

That being said PG will be good to fill in video games, but traditionally means will always be best for assests that are too important to make generic.

Look at the canoworms I opened.

At 2/6/08 05:09 PM, Deathcon7 wrote: This is what I'm talking about. An artist will always be irreplacable. If anything, programmers can stand to be displaced by computers, but never art.

Game was called kkrieger. Was trying to find the game in a jpeg version of it but couldn't.

Oh. And while your argument is flowery and intricate, it's drawn the wrong conclusion... or a false one anyway. You'll always need a highly skilled programmer to design you a better graphics shader, a better game engine, a better renderer, or indeed a better procedural landscape generator to save money on landscape artists. Those are hard to come by, so pretty much we're talking people like John Carmack and other lead programmers who, by and large, are American computer science nerds.

Whereas art is easy to reproduce in sweat shops in Shanghai (as is the case with mostly every car model in Need for Speed or Gran Turismo) or to scan in with photo-3d scanners (which is the case with three characters from Guitar Hero III). Animation's becoming a lost discipline with all the conventional photorealistic stuff (I.E., your average triple A title) being done with Motion Capture, with one or two animators being used to clean up the job afterwards.

And as was pointed out earlier in the week, Art does not Gameplay Make.
Programming is more essential than art, and the game industry reflects that. The only place art shines is in 2d or super-unrealistic stuff.

At 2/6/08 05:28 PM, KaynSlamdyke wrote: And as was pointed out earlier in the week, Art does not Gameplay Make.
Programming is more essential than art, and the game industry reflects that. The only place art shines is in 2d or super-unrealistic stuff.

Well we were talking about actual art, and taking it out of the realm of video games. We were talking about actual art, Picaso, etc.

As for programmers not being replaceable, it is possible to create a computer application that programs things for you (take for example all those video game making tools). It's the art though that is original in each piece... or at least should be.

That being said when it comes to ingenuity you'll always need a programmer. The point I was trying to make is that with PG you create a projects on a larger scale than if you had modelers making out all the details themselves. By only creating small objects and using an algorithm to piece it together you reduce the work load and allow for more diversity and efficiency.

Thats what I'm getting at. And I apologize for any misleading statements I might have said but I'm writing too damn much to proof read :P

At 2/6/08 04:22 PM, ImpendingRiot wrote:

At 2/6/08 03:34 PM, Glaiel-Gamer wrote:

At 2/6/08 01:52 PM, Deathcon7 wrote:

than it solves. When a computer can create art, what else is left to separate it from a human?

Numbers and a power a cord.

I'm gonna whip out one of my favorite quotes.

"A computer allows a man to make more mistakes faster than any other invention, with the possible exceptions of handguns and tequila." - Mitch Radcliffe.

At 2/6/08 05:28 PM, KaynSlamdyke wrote: And as was pointed out earlier in the week, Art does not Gameplay Make.
Programming is more essential than art, and the game industry reflects that. The only place art shines is in 2d or super-unrealistic stuff.

I agree with much of what you have to say, however this last statement could not be more untrue. Saying "The ONLY place art shines is here and there..." completely overlooks just about every other type of art form and variations there are out there.

Now, of course I am biased because I am an artist going through art school but I have to have some input here when someone throws something like that out. When talking about video games and which aspect is more important (visuals or schematics) I don't know and I think it greatly depends on what game we are talking about specifically. HOWEVER, art and graphics make a game...tangible (for lack of a better word). So lets take someone firing a gun and shooting someone in a game. Without art or graphics it's not a gun, but a string of code. That string of code fire out a bullet code which hits another piece of code called a victim. Now, with graphics we've completely transformed this world of 0's and 1's into something that resembles a gun firing something that resembles a bullet at something that resembles an unfortunate person. Now we have something we can relate too, and it all makes sense in our minds.

It's kind of a dumb argument whether which is more important because there are so many variables and exceptions. All in all, one cannot exist without the other. edn?

Art or Code?

I can't make a definite choice.

I mean, everyone loves a game that looks sexy.

But, you also need to have a game that people enjoy to play.

So, in the long run, you have to have both, good art and good coding.

One without the other is just shit.

At 2/7/08 02:04 AM, ShirtTurtle wrote:

At 2/6/08 10:45 PM, Kanadian-Keith wrote: there are lots of games that dont have good graphics but are still fun and ill sacrifice graphics for gameplay

which may be why i got a wii

there's nothing wrong with the wii's graphics.

Super Mario Galaxy is an effing beautiful game. I would much rather stare at that game rather then Call of Duty or Bioshock.

I got the wii, ps3 and 360... i didnt even want the ps3...

but anyway, the graphics are awesome on the wii
Galaxy looks beautiful

Also you cant compare the graphics of the wii and the 360 because its a different style. The ps3 and 360 have graphics that look realistic and breathtaking (in things like halo 3) while the wii makes things look beautiful and awesome. That may seem similar but if you look at their games there si a different style when it comes to graphics.

Meaning the wii has good graphics also :D

I dont like the way the ps3 and 360 are so similar. But the 360 is the better.

Oh and completely off topics:

THIS IS JUST SO ****** AWESOME!

Do I get an award to listening to it the most?

How strong is everyones connection with thier grandparents, I talk to mine almost every second day, I am always helping them translate things into english so they can read them, and helping them clear snow and such.

I live with mine. Well my granddad died in 04

My grandma is pretty old now and she cant speak much english.

They're from india.

New sig trend.

So I heard everyone was makin' sigs of thier names spelt with cocks on a grassy feild and I decided to jump onto the bandwagon. :)

Am I doing it right?

ello criminal

Well... ive never heard of this sig trend but...

Newgrounders... cocks... I dont think its any new trend

At 2/7/08 03:10 AM, Evion wrote: ello criminal

Well... ive never heard of this sig trend but...

Newgrounders... cocks... I dont think its any new trend

Not new lol.
Criminal you are sick =]

city thingy buaetyfull
sorry for spelling really sorry =[

Yet More Procedural Gubbins...
Some heavy theory from someone's Master thesis project.
I hope they got honours for it... [link]

While I agree it shouldn't be used for everything, and especially not used for anything VITAL, it can sure as hell speed up the bits you don't want to do. It's an artform in itself - setting up the conditions, tweaking them so they present a 'just so' scenario.

It'd be like Jackson Pollock, if he was able to control time...

At 2/7/08 10:07 AM, KaynSlamdyke wrote: It'd be like Jackson Pollock, if he was able to control time...

There are actually equations made from Pollocks work. It's pretty cool, they use some of the math behind this stuff to spot Pollock fakes. It might seem like anyone can do what he does, but using fractals and chaos theories they are able to decipher real vs. fake. Pretty interesting...

Also...food poisoning seems to have got the better of Luis...where's he been the last couple days?

At 2/7/08 10:34 AM, Senti wrote: Also...food poisoning seems to have got the better of Luis...where's he been the last couple days?

Vomiting totillas into his toilet.

i hear luis suck good artist he vomit fractles!

Pollocks

At 2/7/08 10:34 AM, Senti wrote: There are actually equations made from Pollocks work.

What the hell are these people doing with their lives.

Also...food poisoning seems to have got the better of Luis...where's he been the last couple days?

Who cares, LOL.

in korea jackson pollok called "old gay men'

Pollock

Did you see the movie about him? That movie is more interesting than all his paintings combined.

At 2/7/08 12:45 PM, Kirk-Cocaine wrote: Pollocks

Who cares, LOL.

You should all care, seeing that you won't be able to deny is last wishes. Muahahahaha =] just kidding.

At 2/7/08 01:48 PM, Kanadian-Keith wrote:

At 2/7/08 02:04 AM, ShirtTurtle wrote:

At 2/6/08 10:45 PM, Kanadian-Keith wrote: there are lots of games that dont have good graphics but are still fun and ill sacrifice graphics for gameplay

which may be why i got a wii

there's nothing wrong with the wii's graphics.

oh i know that but the wii is more for gameplay, and the 360 and PS3 go more for graphics

I think that is really the way to go for games at this point, focusing on new concepts and innovative gameplay. I mean games nowadays come close to almost bringing photorealistic graphics, something that 3d renders can already achieve. I really don't see the extra value photorealistic graphics bring to the table. It's almost ironic how the most succesful games on the pc (sims, WoW) are succesful because of other factors than graphics alone.
Ofcourse it is a lot harder for a developer to actually be creative and think out good concepts than to simply hire some artists/coders to create good looking images. The gaming industry is sharing the same fate as the music and movie industry.. Games are becoming nothing more than better looking copies of copies of copies. It's why i stopped playing games on a regular basis a looooong time ago

At 2/7/08 02:34 PM, AloneInTheDark wrote: Stuff

Well i agree.
What i think is that WOW and games like that should have better graphic design.