The Future of Gaming and Hardware
There seems to be a lot of chatter currently going around hardware forums that for the first time in history, computing power has outstripped the pace of computer games. Meaning that games are being able to be run on new computers much easier than they may have been in the past. This is a result of the number of cores of CPU’s increasing rapidly as recently the new 6-core Intel processor is set to be released later this year. So what do all these additional cores actually mean?
Well, by having extra cores, you can technically set one core to be used for physics, one to handle sound, one to handle general computations and one to handle the AI. So we can expect developers to start creating games that will take advantage of these additional cores fully, leading to better games more rapidly, as double the number of cores would logically lead to double the computing power available, right? Well, sort of, whilst an increase in cores does mean that there is more total processing power inside of a computer, unless it can be tapped into by developers, it is useless.
Let me give you an example, the release of the Orange Box from Valve was meant to bring in a new version of the Source game engine that would allow the engine to use multiple CPU cores. However, this is not fully implemented and took Valve a lot longer to perfect, in fact I am sure they are still trying to iron out all of the bugs. Whilst the games can use 2 core and 4 core processors, the benefits from using the additional cores have yet to be seen. Multiple cores are an exciting challenge for game developers and is in fact useful for the actual development of games. The build programs that the Source engine used (VBSP, VRAD and VVIS) can all operate on multiple cores, severely reducing the time it takes to compile a map, very useful for developers like myself. These benefits include better AI, superior particle physics and more realistic physics. These will not be seen until Episode 3, when the game is programmed with multi-cores in mind.
I am wondering if there will be a point that computers will never need to get any more powerful for the purpose of gaming, we are already entering the age of photo-realistic games, they look very close to real life. However, there is still some obvious, more technical issues that still tell us it is only a game. Firstly, getting accurate physics is still an issue and having a fully interactive environment (more so than Crysis) is still a long way off.
There is also the cost of trying to make games look and feel better and better. By trying to use up all of this additional power, by having incredible graphics, realistic physics, smart AI etc. It pushes development costs up and up, which will in turn either effect the companies profits, or more likely, increase the cost of the product for us, the gamers. It will also push away modders from working with the games engine, as it’s complexity increases, so does the knowledge needed to use it to it’s fullest does. Instead, game developers need to take incremental steps, as to prevent a sudden sky rocket in costs, at roughly the same rate as they always have. So don’t expect to see games get more rapidly better with the rapidly increasing technology, but instead expect to be able to play newer games to their fullest with a less than top-end computer.
Spore – An Overly Excited Look
The first time I saw Spore in action was when I stumbled across this video sometime ago on Google Video. The concept of a ‘SimEverything’ was very appealing to me and stirred up memories of playing endlessly on games such as ‘SimCity,’ ‘The Sims ‘and other ‘God’ games, like ‘Black and White.’ The sheer scale is what intrigued me the most and made me excited to play this game, as I’m sure a lot of other people did. I am very excited to see this game released because of it’s not necessarily original idea, but an idea of such scope and scale that it can be considered truly original. If you have not yet heard of Spore, go to that little known website called Google…
The procedural generation that the game uses is something that I actually nerd-illy enough find interesting. The idea of generating a whole world from only a fraction of code than what it would have taken a designer to make the whole planet. Apparently only a little bit of information is needed for the game to make an entire creature, like DNA. One thing that does worry me about all of the procedural generation of content is the unholy torture of CPU’s, trying to compile the various creatures as required (that is to texture, get them to move realistically and pull that together) must surely require only the highest end CPU’s to work fully and speedily without too much compromise in other areas.
The in-game editor is also something I am interested to see and is apparently going to be available before the actual release of the game itself, probably if you pre-order it or will act as some form of a demo. The editor has apparently been designed to be as intuitive as possible to all level of gamers, so all can make their own creatures, buildings, spaceship and vehicles. It has also been designed to that you can just select from a range of templates instead of having to make everything yourself, both a time saver and useful for those kinds of people who simply do not like the idea of sitting around for ages manipulating your society and creatures to look any way you want.
Visually, the cartoon graphics look fantastic, but then again, these images are probably taken on a ridiculous hyper-computer from space, as all pre-release in-game shots generally are. On a much lower power computer, a lot the eye-candy will be turned off and so the graphics may not look that great, something I like to call the ‘Crysis’ effect where where you thought you we’re buying a great looking game, only to get it home and play on your modest rig to find that all settings need to be turned to ‘very low’ and all that pretty-ness has disappeared into a shadowless blocktacular world of low-res textures and models.
One other thing that needs to be mentioned is how players creatures and moved into other players universes as the game is played and vice versa. That is that all creatures, buildings, vehicles etc. are sent to a master server where it is them shared amongst other players as necessity dictates. I have yet to even hear of another game with a similar idea, then again, I doubt there are any other games that are even remotely similar to the scale and scope of Spore.
I have already made cleat that I am very excited to see Spore but the news of the release date being pushed back to September 5, 2008 is simply irritating, though I would argue that when a game gets hyped up like Spore, it is only natural that it gets pushed back as designed try to perfect the game to make it live up to everyone’s expectations (again, Crysis, or HL2 and Duke Nukem Forever if you want). My only fear is that Spore may be too big, I personally have no idea how long it will take to play through the game and get to the final sandbox mode, where your spaceship has all the upgrades and you can nurture planets at your will to form life. Also, even with this procedural generation, how much will space will the game need and how long will it take for it to create all the creatures buildings etc? How can all of these things work together effectively at all the different scales of the game? I suppose these questions will need to wait until the game is finally released and I have enough cash to get my paws on a new computer powerful enough to run it.
If you want to find out more about Spore, go to the website, the Wikipedia article or even the fan site.
