What would signify the arrival of the next games gen 4 you?

[Kronos]

ok ok i know im new here and all that and respect to any coders especially the ones who pushed wot hardware we had in the old days (sprites in the border on vic-II imposable?? he he )

about making things realistic, depends what you mean, games are meant to take u to fantasy worlds to do unreal things, if yak's games were developed by the suits at all the big companies now we'd end up with lama breeding simulators with bump mapped and reactive fur on the lama's and not revenge etc.....soooooooo i dont think realism is the key except in certain types of games (ie private detective adventure in 50s new york or soldier in a war). i dont want a carbon copy of my own shopping mall rendered perfectly with particle effects for the escalotors i want a world filled with dragons that i cant get on the bus to go and experience myself in town otherwise wots the point, people forget the fun and the wacky gameworlds now that we all have 3D power.

AI...we need a massive leap in AI technology for controlling and interacting with game characters in a game world... even something as simple as a formula 1 game cant reproduce the driving style of Senna, so if i cant drive a formula one car against what is a digital version of Senna (and any other driver) then im not really achieving anything other than playing dodgems+qualifying laps. so yes people or beings in games must act in an intelligent and believable way. if i speak to a character in a game i want basic intelligence to show and not just some conditions and codes executed on the state of those conditions, not much better than old vic20 games really is it? (same principle just a hell of a lot more gfx/sound/data arrays nowadays having algos applied to them)

Graphics....i dont really care how many pixels are shifted and how many colours, i want something approaching reality not approaching a DVD copy of sport replays or films shown on a 2d flat screen. this is not where we all wanted to be as kids when we were playing wacky games in blocky 16 colour screens is it?. i want a headset or something so i can sit on the camel in revenge and when i look around i see a world where me and my camel are existing in, i want the daydreams and whacky thoughts of jeff which inspired him to write that game brought to life. anyone who argues this is not neccessary isnt really a fanatic about games. ive been to imax and those places in theme parks where they play a clip of the helicopter view of the empire state building and its circiling it on huge screens that cover your entire field of vision, the same clip on a nex gen system must make me feel just as afraid of heights or nauseous as the copter spins round. infact imagine choplifter remade?

sound is critical, dynamic soundtracks i can live without, who cares, as long as its moody and suitable as a film soundtrack then great but if anything game soundtracks arent real world events, except maybe elevator music in the shopping centre/mall. sound effects tho is critical, but in a way with AC3 realtime sound effects on XBOX and high end SFX cards its pretty much there, given the right kind of surround sound playback to put over your ears (not sure how well this technology has progressed) would be plenty good enough to render every sound in a 3d spacial manner in a game world which when couple with a few bears and some realisticly workin headset would pull you into the game. forget about touch and smell...sound and vision will do me for now, i want to feel like im in a real castle and sound and vision can go a long way to doing that if its immersive.

a joystick in my hand aint gonna cut it with all of the above so some way of translating your input to the game is essential, i want to talk to the characters not press the blue button to continue the convo with them, and i want to use my hands to do things, again dont know how well VR glove technology has come along but it must literally be a glove, i dont want to feel like im wearing a plastic gauntlet!!

imagine wot it would be like if there was such a version of jet set radio future remade on nex gen hardware, thats not a real world but you could populate it with intelligent characters anyway, you could really feel like you were skatin on them flyovers in the market square with the right inputs, and audio visual gear to convey your actions in the game world, and thats what its all about, an alternate reality where you can have fun, not staring at a lightbox peepshow view of some gameworld, thats like living your whole life with binoculars superglued to your eyes....bad!!!

many people are going off games, because its basically the same shit different resolution going on, whoopee doo colin mcrea 4 is great but it doesnt even have a widescreen mode and im still lookin at a box.....this is not an escape to an alternate reality where i am the world rally champion, just a new toy to pass the time with when the g/f pisses me off ;o) i want the next jump...we had colour and sound (from mono) then animated action in 2d to various levels of sophistication, then we had the 3d rendered worlds and now nothing is on the horizon, the next step is i want to be IN the game not watching from the outside like a voyuer, and reality sucks thats why we play games anyway so i dont want simcity nex gen games either thankyou. but as someone has said allready the money involved in making just one game on this level will kill the individuality which made 8-bit gaming special, a game made from a team of 1000 people and project managed to billions of pounds/dollars will have no soul so maybe the best has come to pass and gaming life is just evolutionary in gradual insignificant steps

a company once did try to change things to increase the reality slightly, look at it came from the dessert by cinemaware on the amiga then get a look at the pc-engine CD version, and that was nearly 16 years ago now!! i dont really care if its rendered or streamed if its on a monitor its not real end of story, best we can hope for then is fifa 2008 will look identical to euro 2008 transmitted on your telly, so wot who cares by then ill find somethin else to pass the time with ;o) maybe the nex gen is setting fire to my consoles and getting a decent sports car rather than playing outrun4 eh??

but i bet not even PS6 or Xbox5 will have anything like the input or output peripherals needed to make gameing truelly submersive its all about profit not so much fun or breaking technology barriers in the way we play games as opposed to wot we see or hear on our lightboxes

imagine gaming as ive described, with 100s of people wordwide sharing your gameworld too, but its so advance you cant tell the real people from the game world generated characters on your console...thats the utopian dream of gaming

respect

[Anders]

'imagine gaming as ive described, with 100s of people wordwide sharing your gameworld too, but its so advance you cant tell the real people from the game world generated characters on your console...'

Oh, but I think the real people would be very easy to spot. They would be the ones cheating, team killing, spamming, insulting each other, and generally trying to ruin the game for everyone else.

We tend to have this dreamy vision of massive multiplayer games where everyone plays nice together like a big happy online family, but the problem is that a lot of people don't want to do that. I've played in a couple of MMORPG's and you'd be surprised at the number of people who don't want to play with others and when they do, have enormous difficulties getting along and interacting.

The problem with multiplayer isn't graphics, connection speeds, revenue systems or anything like that, it's the players themselves.

[NoVisAnima]

One problem i can see in complete immersion gaming is not being able to tell the game world from the real world. If you really are that immersed you wouldn't be able to tell surely. Especially if you can interact with it in the same way as you can in the real world. Regarding abilities to be able to interact using your own muscles and so on, which would be proper immersion, surely that's heading off slightly too much towards the matrix.

Anyway i can get my hands to play games well right now, it might be nice to be able to use more of me to get into a game but that would require use of lazier limbs gaming doesn't have to be an exercise does it.

So long as the old gaming ideas can still work in future generations. Top down shooty games just wouldn't work with "full immersion"

[gravy]

The problem with adding lots of realistic destructable content is that it needs a lot more effort in both programming and artistic effort, which then makes more expensive to do.

I did a presentation today about meta-generation of models for dosimetry as these are getting more and more complex, whilst the implementation gets harder and harder. We only have a limited programming staff, and we are already too busy

Having the software create not only the data but also the code based on a specification of what results are required means that the time required for implementation is less, as instead of building it, you only build a plan, and then the computer does what you tell it to do.

The same technology is used for poly model generation in a way with curved surfaces being used to develop poly meshes. The program decides where the best place to subdivide the model and generate what is required, rather than tweaking every last detail..

[EDIT] I have a routine that builds a tower block from an outline. The outline is fitted using parametric functions to a bitmap of the letter X, so it can be scaled. If you can specify some data about rooms, doors, windows, number of floors etc..and some random elements..you could probably build an entire city from some fairly random shapes that was realistic, but without needing lots of tweaking.

This is the other biggie.

Consoles are finite systems with limits, all artwork and content have to be carefully crafted to work within constraints that allow them to fit within memory and render at a reasonable speed. Too many polys or too high a texture resolution means it won't fit it or will draw very slowly.

A large amount of environment destructability controlled by the player is like giving the player a 3d modelling package without any of the colntent creation constraints. They can make worlds that are very hard / impossible to render becuase of too many polys or too much visible.

And it's getting worse. Modern render engines (Doom3, Unreal3) rely heavily in preprocessing models that are millions of polys into ones thousands in size that look very similar to the its high detail original. This is stunning looking stufff but it means if you want dynamically destroy or damage parts of a model you have to re-reference the million poly model and recreate a new lower poly version. Right now that wouldn't be practical.

Hard stuff but worth the effort. Another holy grail.

[koworld]

This is all good stuff chaps. Lets not get too bogged down in graphics though. I'd like to know, almost from a non-tech perspective, what the actual thing is that makes you say 'christ I've got to have an Xbox7 or a PlayStation5'?

Improvements in graphics is a given.

What will designers have to do with those improvements to make you say 'fuck this is to Half-Life as Star Wars was to Space Invaders'

[Tmuk]

This is all good stuff chaps. Lets not get too bogged down in graphics though. I'd like to know, almost from a non-tech perspective, what the actual thing is that makes you say 'christ I've got to have an Xbox7 or a PlayStation5'?

Improvements in graphics is a given.

What will designers have to do with those improvements to make you say 'fuck this is to Half-Life as Star Wars was to Space Invaders'

I want to see another leap like the one from Snes, MD, Amiga - PlayStation, Saturn, 3DO, N64. The sudden ability to go from 2D (or very rudimentary 3D) to full on lighting fast 3D was more than just an aesthtic change. It brought about whole new genres which weren't possible before (platform games changed forever, a whole new level of parameters for shoot 'em ups).
That's what I want to see - technology which opens up the possibilities again and gives developers a chance to do something really radical. I know it's a bit of a stigma these days, but I wish someone would do something more with VR...

[Anders]

A random thought,

A lot of what we are discussing here would (perhaps) make games even more complex and daunting for new gamers and thus a dead end.

Maybe. Perhaps. Wtf do I know?

Isn't the future of gaming all about reaching out to those who are not yet convinced and more importantly, sticking our hands in their wallets..? How do we best do that?

[koworld]

A random thought,

A lot of what we are discussing here would (perhaps) make games even more complex and daunting for new gamers and thus a dead end.

I think that's a strong point. Personally, I'd like to see more 'five-minute' game fixes. A satisfying short burst of play before going off to do something else.

Ely is writing an article on exactly these at the minute.

[limb_clock]

the future is mind controller. So will be games.

[Ely]

A random thought,

A lot of what we are discussing here would (perhaps) make games even more complex and daunting for new gamers and thus a dead end.

I think that's a strong point. Personally, I'd like to see more 'five-minute' game fixes. A satisfying short burst of play before going off to do something else.

Ely is writing an article on exactly these at the minute.

Thanks for the reminder

[gravy]

This is all good stuff chaps. Lets not get too bogged down in graphics though. I'd like to know, almost from a non-tech perspective, what the actual thing is that makes you say 'christ I've got to have an Xbox7 or a PlayStation5'?

Improvements in graphics is a given.

What will designers have to do with those improvements to make you say 'fuck this is to Half-Life as Star Wars was to Space Invaders'

Let's not get bogged down in creating editorial for WotR as well

[koworld]

This is all good stuff chaps. Lets not get too bogged down in graphics though. I'd like to know, almost from a non-tech perspective, what the actual thing is that makes you say 'christ I've got to have an Xbox7 or a PlayStation5'?

Improvements in graphics is a given.

What will designers have to do with those improvements to make you say 'fuck this is to Half-Life as Star Wars was to Space Invaders'

Let's not get bogged down in creating editorial for WotR as well

Ha! Rumbled.

Nah - I just want to hear some more-interesting stuff. The technical debate is fine but the curve that technical innovation is following appears to be a) predicatble and b) broadly dependent on Moore's law. I want to understand what the technical can provide in terms of changes to the way a game feels, or plays. What will it deliver that makes the punter go 'this is something i never expected'.

The posts here that have talked in those 'feel' terms have been the most interesting imho.

[gravy]

And the production value stuff that people are looking for is more interesting to me as that's something I'm working on right now

[koworld]

And the production value stuff that people are looking for is more interesting to me as that's something I'm working on right now

Ahhh! The invoice for moderating the focus-group is in the post

Fair-enough, lets continue to use this thread for both good and evil...

Personal opinion follows. Production values do make a huge difference to me when I've paid £40, but there seems to be a direct relationship between the glitz and the price I'm prepared to pay. Bruno Marcos got a fiver out of me for Battle for Yavin, and he'll get another fiver when I complete Battle for Endor. That's what it feels like those are worth. I'd love to see more of the quick-fix stuff though. A fiver here, a fiver there - chunks of fun. To an extent back-catalogue stuff can do this but often those games are stiull highly complex just old. That's not what I want, I want adrenalin to complement the emersive stuff.

On graphics and stuff - I reckon people are on the right lines when the talk about 'cinematics' as opposed to 'graphics quality'. I'd love to see more variance in the way a game is shot, lit and scored. I'm sure that's why Far Cry has sold so well - the external on-island stuff looks so different (and sounds different too - the ambient bird noises, waves breaking etc) when compared with other fps games. With respect to Sickers, Far Cry is just a good FPS its nice sure but it's the look and feel that take it up the sales charts. Just compare the Far Cry box to the ones for Painkiller, Manhunt or Deus Ex:IW and only one game stands out.

The other thing that will make me feel games have hit the next generation: when the story-line in something thats supposed to immerse me is truely cinematic in quality. Deus Ex? Sixth-form paranioa. Max Payne? Sub-Chandler 1950s slush-pile rejection leftovers. Far Cry? Oh dear, you just couldn't resist the mutants could you? A good script is fucking expensive - but when a game project is a multi-millon-pound play there has to be logic in creating a story that people will actually want to be a part of. And the better the story/scenario relationship, the more possible true freedom-within game is. But more important - the strength of the story will provide the free-player with a wider range of more intersting options and choices. That sort of complete world can still incorporate the essential game-rules that Jimaroid is so right about but can do so without the visible seams.

[Jimaroid]

I just want to have fun.

A big `Goonies' adventure type of fun.