The impossible dream; a possibility?

[Therian]

Hi there, I have a question i want to ask you.

Is it possible to create a game where you can do EVERYTHING you want? I mean having interaction with everything and everyone in the game?

My theory is defining "reality" to a computer and making it work on "logic" of that reality. (I don't really know how to explain it in better way, sorry guys.)
For example; if you kick a wooden wall and your strength is good enough to break it, then logically the computer will show you breaking the wall, but if it is made from steel and its thick and you still kick it - hard - then logically you will break your leg, and this is what will also happen in the game. Now, do you think that it is possible to define reality as a whole for a computer to understand it?
Won't it be nice to have a free will in a game?
Tell me what you think.

[Lenny]

Sorry. I'm on a thread-digging spree, found this, and thought it looked very interesting. Therian may not have posted for two years, but I guess that those of us who are here could have a nice discussion, right?

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Is it possible to create a game where you can do EVERYTHING you want? I mean having interaction with everything and everyone in the game?

I think I'm safe in saying that this could be the Holy Grail of open games. The Ultimate Sandbox.

And with the current generation of hardware and software, then why not?

First of all, let's look at the Physics engines.
We've got Physics engines that reflect real world physics amazingly well - the Havok 5 engine was announced a couple of months ago (however, it's not in use yet), the upcoming PS3 gameLittleBigPlanet is based around a physics engine (in fact, everything about the game revolves around the physics engine), and there's the jaw-dropping Euphoria engine.

Games such as Half Life 2 have made use of these engines superbly. And games due to come out are making even better use of them. The Euphoria engine is being used alongside RAGE (Rockstar Game's in-house engine) in the new Grand Theft Auto game (GTA IV), and it features in the latest Madden [American] Football game.

The physics engine is by far one of, if not the most important part of a game. Without it, and let's take the aforementioned scenario, you couldn't kick the wooden wall and have it break. Your character could jump off a box, and float away into space because there's no virtual gravity. You could shoot a bullet and it would carry on indefinitely because there's no air resistance. And to think, the basis of every physics engine will be a few equations that one learns in A-Level, or even GCSE Physics! Everyone's favourite F=ma, the SUVAT family. And, by some kind of technical wizardry, some of the best programmers in the world turn these mathematical equations into code which then governs every single rule in the virtual world.

It's all very well being able to kick a wall down, but it ain't good if it doesn't look REAL.
Which is where the physics engine works with other things, or may be left alone completely. Graphics engines will feature heavily here.

Two amazing graphics engines that spring to mind are the Unreal Engine, developed by Epic, and Square Enix's in-house engine, the White Engine.

Both engine's are designed to work on multiple platforms, and both do work. The current iteration of the Unreal Engine, number 3, was used to wide acclaim in Epic's highly successful shooter, Gears of War. It has since been optimised for the PS3, and will be the skeleton behind the soon to be released Unreal Tournament 3. If you've played Gears of War then you'll be familiar with the gritty, realistic textures of skin, stone, armour, metal, and the spurts of blood.

The White Engine, in comparison, produces smooth, CGI graphics, rendered in real time. Gone are the days of games opening with pre-rendered CGI cut scenes, showing everything in it's film-like glory... before cutting to jagged, pixelated characters running around on painted backgrounds and flat landscapes. Ho no. None of that for this generation (just a side note - for those who are interested, this generation is the seventh generation of gaming - both the hardware and software sides), thank you very much! These days we get games opening with pre-rendered CGI, showing everything in its better-than-film-like glory... cutting to some of the most amazing, real-time graphics you'll ever see. Hands up who's seen Shrek? Now imagine that... but as you play the game. Now hands up who's heard of Final Fantasy XIII and Final Fantasy Versus XIII? Need I spell it out for you?

Now those are two well-known engines (well, relatively well-known to the geeks who spend their monitor-lit days Googling everything game related under the sun. What? Why the weird looks?), but what of the others? Surely the thousands of games announced for the two next-gen consoles (Sorry Nintendo. You just don't crack it, I'm afraid) don't just run on two engines?! Damn straight. Go to a game studio and ask which engine they're using, and they'll tell you it's either a licensed one such as the Unreal Engine, a mix of a licensed one and their own, or a 100%, developed in-house engine. Insomniac uses their own. Naughty Dog, also. Evolution studios (Motorstorm) licensed Havok for the physics, as did Bethesda in Oblivion. Bungie made use of their own "Halo" engine, and Havok for the physics. Epic used their own Unreal Engine for Gears of War.

Combine these engines with the mastery of something like Euphoria, and you've got you a game that will drop jaws at a hundred paces, and will splinter wooden walls convincingly ('old' engines split the wood in the same place wherever it's kicked, simply because it's easy. Euphoria takes into account the material, and where the force is applied, and splinters it as realistically as possible. The LittleBigPlanet engine takes into account every material used, to make it act realistically when the player interacts with it).

Physics? Yawn! Graphics shmaphics. Who cares about them if the character moves like he's got a plank of wood up his ar
Well yeah. Animations are big. I'm not going to play a game if my character waddles along on legs that move only at the hip, or dances like a robot in desperate need of oil. Surprise, surprise! Neither do the game developers. Whilst by all accounts animators are more numerous than fanboys, they have an important job.

I'll give two examples - the multiplatform game Assassin's Creed, developed by Ubisoft Montreal, and published by Ubisoft (released in two and half weeks, by the way. Get in!!), and the PS3 exclusive, Uncharted: Drake's Fortune, developed by Naughty Dog, and published by Sony Computer Entertainment.

First, Assassin's Creed. In the game you play the Crusades era 'Hashshashin' Altaïr, leaping from wall to wall, scaling minarets, and generally sticking knives in people. The in-house engine (Scimitar Engine) does it's job beautifully - if the building has something sticking out, or sunk in, by two inches, then take a leap and grab hold. Lookit me! Ah'm a Spydur-mahn, mah! The free running is done amazingly well, and people crumple under you when you jump on them as people should crumple when you jump on them. And the graphics... if one could live on graphics alone, rather than this so inefficient "food" and "drink" malarkey, then Assassin's Creed could solve world hunger. Well... to a degree. Rewind to the jumping, and leaping, and flying like an eagle. What would you say if when he jumped, Altaïr pogo'd like a drunk twenty-old year old at a club? Arms locked at his sides, feet straight, back as stiff as a plank of wood, bouncing on flat feet. World hunger? Well... it wasn't too bad a thing, was it? In either case, I'm not playing this rubbish. Animation my friend! Altaïr has around 1,500 of them. And boy, can he move!

"What about Uncharted?" I hear you cry. "It sucks!" reply the Xbots. On the contrary my dear fellows. I'm not going to rattle on about an amazing physics engine or graphics (because I don't know the engine name - it is an in-house one, though, I can tell you that), because that's not the big thing. Rather, Nathan Drake, the protagonist, is host to a few thousand animations (I don't know the actual number, sorry). He's got wrinkle mapping for his face, wrinkle mapping for his clothes, animation overlay for both face and clothes... heck, he's a seething mass of animations. And to get it as realistic as possible, a lot of them pop in automatically... and overlap each other. Say Mr. Drake is running along next to a low wall, holding his gun in his hand, and with a look of grim determination on his face. His jeans and shirt are wrinkling with every step. Suddenly a shot rings out and a bullet glances off the wall just in front of him. Surprise, anger, fear all display themselves on Nathan's face, along with his grim determination. Automatically he'll bend down, creating a smaller target and bring his arms and gun closer to his chest, whilst still running. Abut six things there, which could be a couple of hundred animations.

And the cut scenes? Taking a similar leaf out of Ninja Theory's book, the team at Naughty Dog brought in real actors, to act out the cut scenes. They did these on sets, with objects around them, and wearing special suits covered in nodes and wires that recorded every move. With Heavenly Sword, Ninja Theory did something similar, in that they had actors in (including our favourite Gollum - Andy Serkis) for the facial expressions and actions of characters, recording them in similar ways.

Simply amazing!


But how's it all done? How does it translate into what we play on our consoles?
Using hardware! I won't go into detail, simply because this has exhausted me.

The two next-gen consoles, Microsoft's Xbox 360 and Sony's PlayStation 3, are host to some of the most advanced technology known to man. It's generally agreed that the PS3, with it's Cell processor (eight cores!), RSX graphics processor, and Bu-ray drive, is the more powerful of the two consoles, with more potential, but it's harder to program for, and so for the moment, games on both systems are equal in terms of quality and game play.

Using the hardware available, programmers can create some of the most amazing games that really push the current boundaries. PC's are also becoming more and more powerful (more powerful than consoles - consoles are considered to be about five years behind PCs). With all this, any code can be run, any graphics can be rendered, any engine can be utilised, to create simply brilliant games.

In this current generation, The Ultimate Sandbox is, in my opinion, achievable. Or, at least, something extremely close to this Holy Grail of games can be made... and then be copied for years to come.

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Ouch. My fingers.

Some of the more keen of you will have noticed that I've not mentioned things such as lighting, story, or even actual game play. There are brilliant examples of each out there, but those things don't really make The Ultimate Sandbox possible. They just add to it.

Now then. I wonder how many people will actually read it all.

Sorry for any mistakes (either factual or in my language).

I've tried to bold names and the like, and add links to things that people might like to read up on, but I'll have missed a lot. If you want to know more about certain things, either reply, or start a new thread. I'll be happy to throw my Googled knowledge into the pot, and I'm sure some of the other geeks will be happy to do the same.

Oh, and if anyone has extra links, then feel free to post them.

Let's get this discussion going!

[Fake Vencar]

Wow, i read it all and it was all factual. However, surely a game such as The Ultimate Sandbox will not be released for years? The new Unreal Engine, in UT3, is unbeatable at yet but many of the machines around struggle to play a small map with that much detail: think about a whole world? Now Morrowind with that graphics:

The physics engines would have to be completely new though, but Dark Messiah's physics were a good idea. Could someone upgrade that and use it?

[Lenny]

Originally Posted by Fake Vencar

Wow, i read it all and it was all factual. However, surely a game such as The Ultimate Sandbox will not be released for years? The new Unreal Engine, in UT3, is unbeatable at yet but many of the machines around struggle to play a small map with that much detail: think about a whole world? Now Morrowind with that graphics:

I reckon it can be done. It will need a lot of clever programming to use the resoruces of the console most efficiently, but why not?

The details of maps should be no problem, again if the programmers use clever programming.

Look at FF Versus XIII. Tetsuya Nomura has said that he is going to make the game completely seamless - not a single loading bar in sight. The player can go from inside to out, from map to map, without having to wait for loading. An amazing feat, considering that the game will be running on the White Engine - an engine that, mentioned above, produces near CGI quality graphics rendered in real time. The detail that will go into each map will be massive, simply because it's a Square Enix game, and they're known for it.

Another example of detail will be Assassin's Creed, simply because of the free-running mechanics. For something like that, every single building needs to be created with places to hold. And they've done it. I could probaby guarantee that you will not find a single building in AC that you could not climb. Each city is a separate map, I think, and holds a stupid amount of detail, with jaw-dropping graphics, yet it works on both PS3 and 360.

If not done on the PS3, then why not the PC? They're becoming more and more powerful and at a ludicrous speed. And it's also easier to code for the PC. The prime example would by Crysis, I reckon. I've played the demo, and you can do a lot of things with the environment, including slicing down trees with a spray of bullets, smashing boxes, and destroying buildings.

Can't say I've played Dark Messiah. What's the physics engine like?

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And come on, people! Discuss! I thread-dug this so we could discuss it, because it's a very interesting topic. Surely other people, gamers and non-gamers alike, have their own opinions about it?

[Rahl Windsong]

There is a game I have been following for a few years, titled Ages of Athiria. This game is so radically different from any Massive Multiplayer Online Game, that the developers are actually afraid to engage with any investors. Instead they are attempting to self fund the project to the point where any investors interested would be forced to see the project through to the vision these guys had when they started.

This game features things like permanent death if you murder another player and get caught doing it. It goes well beyond that, even giving the victim some say in if the murderer is executed or not. Not only that but in this game the players can set up their own cities with their own laws, and their own government type ranging from Democracy to Communism and even dictatorship. So if a group of murderer type players accumulate enough wealth they could set up their own city where murder is not against the law.

This would not exclude them from punishment if caught murdering someone from a city where murder is punnishable by death, so if they are caught out of their own territory they may still get the axe.

I want to be perfectly clear on this, you get caught for murder you face the possibility of having to reroll your character. There would be a trial of course.

Here is a link to the site for this game, if you are interested please be aware that this project will not be done before it is ready to be done. I have been following for over 2 years now and the project is not even close to having screenshots yet. Read the entire FAQ and you will see that if this game ever flies it will have almost everything

Another feature of this game is that all servers worldwide will be connected and part of the game world. So as you travel around in the game world you will be also traveling from server to server. If you have friends you game with in the UK you will have to travel to their part of the world to find them. What this does is it allows the developers to play the game with the players, but they will be the gods of the storyline. From that role they will introduce dynamic content for the players to take part in and having all the servers conncected and part of the same world means that they only need to maintain one storyline.

Main site: Welcome to Ages of Athiria!

Forums: myAoA - Ages of Athiria

You will need to register to be able to surf to the forums, I post there under the same name as here.

[Fake Vencar]

Well the physics engine in Dark Messiah was largely dependent on the destructible environment that the game had: you could destroy wooden blocks that then collapsed something else or you could give an Orc a good kick and he'd fall down a chasm. I think an advanced version of that would serve the game well.

As for Ages of Athiria, i'll keep an eye out for that. Sounds like a good game.

[Cayal]

I believe Star Wars: Force Unleashed will have something similar.

Where if you break a plank of wood or glass (for example), it will never shatter the same way every time you do it like you see in games.

[Lenny]

That's the one!

Originally Posted by I, the Ineffable One

Combine these engines with the mastery of something like Euphoria, and you've got you a game that will drop jaws at a hundred paces, and will splinter wooden walls convincingly ('old' engines split the wood in the same place wherever it's kicked, simply because it's easy. Euphoria takes into account the material, and where the force is applied, and splinters it as realistically as possible.

That's the game I was thinking of when I wrote that bit.

I saw the tech video for it months ago, but couldn't remember the game name.

Here's one of the more recent of the videos:
Gametrailers.com - Star Wars: Force Unleashed - Euphoria Engine Tech Demo

And I think this is the original one, or at least part of it:
Gametrailers.com - Star Wars: Force Unleashed - Digital Molecular Matter Tech Demo

And another video of it in action:
Gametrailers.com - Star Wars Forces Powers Tech Demo by Agent89

Have a fourth, for good luck:
Gametrailers.com - Euphoira Physics Engine by facetheglue