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Re: Are games art?

benblo — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 13:33:34 -0000

I think the debate is exactly the same with movies: how is Fast & Furious (or countless other cash-movies) art? It isn't, it's just entertainment with pretty graphics. Same with music: are the pussycat dolls artists?
I've heard this "games are not art" theme for years, and to be honest was never decided one way or the other, because obviously many commercial games are just entertainment, and even the guys who make them don't consider them art and don't put any soul (or even creativity) into it.

It's only recently that the answer was clear to me, when I finished Portal. The game starts in a classic way, with its very gamy tricks to be learnt, its level-after-level design, its scifi setting that reminded me a lot of Cube (the movie). Then it took me by surprise, did something that Cube never did: it immersed me. I was the one being trapped, having to fight for my life, and the immersion became total, short of a trance, I just couldn't leave the desk until I beat the game in the wee hours of the morning, then dreamt about it, and woke up still in shock. I don't remember getting such a big slap in the face since Fight Club (10 years ago!).
I don't see the point in trying to define art, to put up a set of rules. I'll remember the feeling, the stress, the imploring voice of the dying computer (that *I* was killing!), the song at the end, for years to come. The game changed me, how can it not be art?? And how could this have been achieved with another medium? I too think gaming is the highest form of art, *because* of the player's participation.

Since then, World of Goo gave me a similar feeling (less adrenaline-intense but more disturbing), and a few other indie games here and there are really starting to surprise me... I think the pace is accelerating, we haven't seen anything yet, we're the cavemen of gaming.

I've watched Play Value recently, and the episode about Miyamoto blew me away. The guy is the Mozart of gaming, it just took a while for the world to realize it, because its craft was so primitive. (BTW, just found out that France knighted him a "lord of art" in 2006... so I guess they've settled! and let me tell you, our art institutions are about as conservative as it gets.)

I'm convinced that in 5 or 10 years the "is it art" question will be moot. This is our generation's culture, period. The medium was just waiting to mature: back in the days, only geeks fascinated by blinking lights and bleeping sounds would get into it; now pure designers (that don't need to be tech geniuses anymore), with very different backgrounds & aspirations, are jumping in because they see it as the ideal medium to express themselves.

Guys like Tales of Tales are even wishing they'd push the tech out of the picture, which I think is misunderstanding the medium: The Graveyard bored me out of my mind, they forgot that in a game, you have to play. This is why I think Portal is so great, it didn't choose between tech & art: it's a lot of fun, has innovative mechanics and puzzles, *and* has a story to tell & feelings to convey.
But I think the fact that Tales of Tales exist is indicative: new blood is coming, it's just a matter of finding a balance. True innovators don't ride around in high horses, they get their hands dirty without shame of being geeky; artists have always been into technique (the first caveman that decided he was sick of painting in black, and invented the red, was also the first chemist), and it's never so important than in gaming: we just have to reconcile the tools and the designers.

Re: Are games art?

benblo — Sun, 11 Jan 2009 06:22:52 -0000

Hu, I didn't know you could do that, I just joined Disqus... it's like blogging away from home then. Finally, fame & glory are at my grasp :) !

Re: Overgrowth Alpha 12

benblo — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 18:22:29 -0000

I don't know if this really qualifies as a bug tracker but check out Uservoice: http://uservoice.com
Very webtwopointoh-esque.

Re: Overgrowth Alpha 17

benblo — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 13:18:45 -0000

Chrome UI, and now Javascript V8? You guys flat out amaze me, most of your decisions are in the "so clever that it's obvious yet I never thought of it before" category.

I'm beta-testing a game engine ATM, which is just awesome, but they're struggling like hell because (like everyone else but you) they're reinventing the GUI wheel, which they use in-game and in-editor. It's such a difficult task that it's a time black hole, never works as well as system GUIs (obviously: those have been in development for decades), and ends up being frustrating for end-users.

Apparently their GUI is super fast, so I have no idea what kind of performance you get from Chrome, but the fact that you don't have to do the grunt work and that it will just continue to get better on its own at no cost for you, probably makes it worth it no matter what.

On the other side, they chose to use .NET (well Mono actually) as their scripting engine, which is an incredibly awesome decision. C# has industry professional wetting their panties (ok, maybe just me). Being able to script in Visual Studio is just orgasmic, and Intellisense makes you learn as you type: modding heaven.
They also made their own CLR-javascript (actually based on Boo) for noobs (not their best decision IMO but never mind).

I know it's probably out there, but before you get too far along I'd suggest you give Javascript a second thought. It may be great for now, mod-friendly and all, but if you ever want to grow/license your engine you may regret it. You'll be plagued with users saying "hey I've googled 'javascript' and can't understand why href.location doesn't wokr?1?", and billion other problems.

Re: Overgrowth Alpha 17

benblo — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 16:42:53 -0000

LOL, what does it do?
Anyway, if you've ever coded in "javascript" outside of a browser, you'll know what I mean: every time one looks for info, it's buried under kilotons of web stuff, usually very bad advice too since lots of webdev are amateurs.

One dirty fix is to advertise your engine as supporting javascript to attract coders (or repel them, depending ;), but name your subset PhoenixScript or something, this way it's much easier to Google all the fan-made blogs etc.

Re: Free Resources for Game Development

benblo — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 02:31:05 -0000

+1 on Visual Studio Express... certainly not open source, but you have XCode on the list. Plus, Visual Studio is quite simply the best text editor on the face of the earth. Intellisense is insanely useful for learning.

Re: Modular map making

benblo — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 05:18:30 -0000

"The disadvantage is that it is slightly less efficient than if everything was painstakingly created from scratch and hand tuned."
Would you care to elaborate on that? Is it only a matter of polycount (obviously 2 cubes side-by-side > 1 bigger cube), or are there others factors to consider?
Brad mentions something about VBOs and batching that I don't quite get, I'd really be glad to have some input on all this, or maybe pointers to online resources (for dummies ;)).

The engine we use has this motto "one big mesh is better than multiple small ones, because this reduce the number of draw calls", obviously you (and Project Offset, and Far Cry 2 from the looks of the level editor, and probably almost all moddable games), are going quite the opposite direction!

Re: How’s Our Blogging?

benblo — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 05:42:19 -0000

By order of preference:
* Design Tours; I discovered your blog through the World of Goo tour (via TIGSource), then came back for Aquaria, then decided to subscribe... no more tours since then, was it all a PR stunt ;) ? If so, a pretty clever and efficient one IMO.
* The Overgrowth Fighting System, especially the animation system and its ragdollish aspects
* Hardcore Technical Posts
* Tech Demonstration Videos

Re: Modular map making

benblo — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 06:29:13 -0000

Thanks Brad! Batching indeed sounds interesting, so does geometry instancing... and now to figure out how our engine handles it! Black-box systems are starting to piss me off, slowly but surely.
If you can spare some time to give me more details privately (benoit at gamepulp dot com), I'd love to hear it!
BTW, what are those "established lines"? censorship on Wolfire ;) ?

Re: Why ninja rabbits?

benblo — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 17:36:23 -0000

"Another advantage of this setting is that it allows us to avoid showing violence against humans, while using human-like martial arts. If we want to make a very violent game without trivializing human violence, using non-human characters is a good first step."
I think that's very wrong, in fact I think it may be the contrary: if you're trying to educate your players, telling them it more/less OK to be violent towards an enemy depending on *what* he is seems like bad karma to me.
What matters is the other's actions, and what difference your violence will make... all very tricky questions! are you sure you want to tackle them?
Your characters are conscious beings, obviously anthropomorphized, you're giving them a culture, a background, making them into attaching individuals: trying to justify violence against them by making them seem less valuable is a complete paradox.

However, if you're concentrating so much on blood shaders and combat systems, it's because of how fun it is... which is probably one of the best reason to show violence! A movie like Day of the Dead is more fun than scary because it's so outrageously gore and unreal. If any, this is the point you should try to emphasize IMO: video game violence is fun because it's not real.

Animals or humans, clean or gory, doesn't matter, it's just the paint job. Violence is not in the visuals, it's in the intent. Make up your mind about what you want to convey with Overgrowth, do it for reasons that you believe in, and don't make excuses or hide behind political correctness BS.

... now go, ninja rabbits! :)

Re: OffTheGrid revisited

benblo — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 20:33:26 -0000

How expensive is the computation? Haven't read the paper so I don't know if this makes sense, but could you recompute a specific portion? maybe giving it more vertex density (think decals for terrain geometry), or dynamically modifying it at runtime (terrain deformation à la Fracture): feasible or not?
Also, how do you manage collision with the terrain, is it one huge collider (what's your vertex count BTW?), or do you somehow optimize it to only account for relevant portions? (ie stream around the player, wherever there are objects, etc.)

Re: OffTheGrid revisited

benblo — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 05:21:30 -0000

I understand this is not your focus for Overgrowth, and that your terrain implementation is very linked to your game, but do you think this technique would be realistic in theory?
Terrain deformation is easy with heightmaps, but as you've demonstrated adaptive tessellation is much better-looking (and efficient polycount-wise)... it'd nice to have the best of both!

Also, +1 on the LOD question: can you do it? how?

Re: OffTheGrid revisited

benblo — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 08:55:22 -0000

You should check out Blade's new terrain editor: it's jaw-dropping. Not only does it do adaptive tessellation while you paint the heightmap (something you don't care about since you already have your raw data), you can then paint different materials (not just splats), and the editor will cut holes in the main mesh, and create new meshes for each particular material/patch, with seams and everything. So then adding physics to that is no problem.
Oh and since it's adaptive, you can make overhangs or holes in the heightmap-edit phase just by pulling/pushing the mesh.
I'm pretty sure they do some kind of LOD too, at any rate you can have heightmap details in the 10cm-range on a multiple-km² terrain.

Re: Decals editor ~ part three

benblo — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 06:21:38 -0000

So each decals draws itself using the generated normalmap? Which vertices do you use? I never really understood decals, do they exist as separate objects? or are they additional shaders onto the objects they touch?... strange cookies!

Can you combine them, or do you get a draw call per decal? Overall, how expensive are they? In your previous posts, you had a dozen decals on one rock, was that a realistic use or just for testing?

I guess you've seen the Project Offset modular building + decals video (which totally blew me away: http://www.projectoffset.co... they have tens of decals (maybe hundreds) on a single building...

Re: How to project decals

benblo — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 05:40:59 -0000

First of all thanks David for this article! it answers a lot of the questions I asked in the previous decal post.

I'd also like more clarification on this: do you have any kind of baking for your static modular assets?
And most of all I'd still love to know how you organize your draw calls. Adding 100 bullet decals to a flat wall may add only 100 x 2-3 polys, which is peanuts, but if that means 100 draw calls then it's a big deal... and then if you add a dozen decals to a complex rock mesh, the poly count must explode!?

I personally wouldn't be too interested by a post about vectors & transformation, it seems too basic and is covered extensively on other sources (although explained by you it'd probably be enlightening anyway!)... IMO this blog is more suited for your particular tech, your own challenges and answers.

Re: How to project decals

benblo — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 05:41:48 -0000

+1 on the z-fighting question!

Re: Linear algebra for game developers ~ part 1

benblo — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 15:18:42 -0000

Too slow... but I guess you're training your future modders eh ;) ?

Re: Starting Grass

benblo — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 07:20:13 -0000

First step: random color. Using Perlin noise (I think), you get patches of differents colors (blobs of grass).
Then animate those color in synch with your "waving in the wind" effect: 1 + 1 = 3!

Re: Creating the illusion of accomplishment

benblo — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 07:30:09 -0000

Hollow games may be legal, but not being wrong doesn't make you right. I don't really follow when you say "it kept someone from jumping off a cliff". We live in a society of entertainment, so beware what you entertain people with... ancient Rome used to have gladiators, but who says bland TV or games don't do more damage? Btw, in french the word for entertainment is "distraction": what are we trying to distract people from?
In Brave New World (creepyest book ever!), there's this drug called soma, physically harmless, that makes everyone perpetually happy... perpetually distracted... perpetually controlable.

Anyway, I'm 100% with you team Wolfire, once again kudos for asking yourselves questions that other developers don't!

Re: Wolfire Speaking at GDC Austin

benblo — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 09:27:00 -0000

Heard of you through your design tours (via TIGSource); came back 2 or 3 times, then I subscribed to the RSS (often once is not enough, only when I find myself coming back to a site (even better if it's from different sources) I deem it worthy of attention).
Btw I felt robbed ever since that you didn't do more tours ;) !

Re: Sky and lighting editing ~ part 1

benblo — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 14:49:14 -0000

+1 on the shadow question! I thought they were dynamic, or are they baked only when you move the sun?

Re: Howdy From Austin

benblo — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 06:51:34 -0000

Even if you can't put up a public video, can you at least give us the link to the GDC Vault when it's ready, for those that have a GDC account?

Re: More Magical Meebo Memories

benblo — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 04:37:07 -0000

What's "moo cow"?

Re: Why we are not using Euphoria

benblo — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 20:14:27 -0000

This post is quite similar to one on AIGameDev: http://aigamedev.com/open/e... (more techy details). This article was pointed out to me by Rune, who made Unity's locomotion system, which goes to show what you can do with "just" kick-ass blending, no physics (see http://runevision.com/blog/... "what the locomotion system is NOT").

NaturalMotion actually has 2 (3?) different "products", Euphoria & Endorphin, and Morpheme which aims less high but is also more directly applicable to gaming (and I believe available as a regular middleware). It's basically animation blended (but not driven) by physics, and from the GDC Cologne demo, it's totally usable by a (tech) artist.

Different goals, different tech, different uses... Overall, I can't say about the business model, but I think dismissing Euphoria's tech as a sham would be way too hasty (I didn't interpret your post that way, but some commenters did).
Making self-balanced characters is quite a feat, and even though the "nervous system" name is pure marketing, the reactivity is there. Will your rabbits ever do the "step back when pushed" thing?
Also worth checking out is this TED video: http://www.ted.com/index.ph....

IMO, current game productions just haven't caught up to the tech and its possibilities (and the on-site engineers thing probably isn't helping), they're not designed in ways where using Euphoria is interesting. Future will tell...

Re: Volumetric heat diffusion skinning

benblo — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 07:30:52 -0000

You say you want to offload the computation on the GPU: just to clarify, this weight computation is offline, not realtime, right? You do it once when you setup the bones, then use the weights in a traditionnal way...?