Re: [fonc] Inspired 3D Worlds
Yikes! I've been lured too far off topic. Putting aside whether graphics or maps are awe-inspiring, or breath taking, or of another rare quality, the relevant issue is shifting the creativity burden over to the computer while: * supporting human direction at whatever level-of-detail the human is concerned with * achieving a quality such that the human doesn't feel the need to be concerned with the lower levels of detail * significantly enhancing productivity - i.e. actual quantity of acceptable-quality elements I personally believe that generative grammars ( http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/node/4012) hold the most promise for these purposes - easy to extend and constrain and abstract. Flexible, like mad-libbing a map. I suspect that grammars would also serve as a useful `genome` for genetic programming models. As note, though, existing technologies are already well proven - e.g. knobs and dials and seeded fractals. Feedback from users was suggested, but doesn't obviate need for a theory to actually utilize this feedback. It might be possible to use `simulated runs` to help select maps. For example, run bots on a shooter map to judge fairness. Does anyone else have suggestions for how we might pursue the goal of `collaborative creativity`? Regards, Dave On Tue, Jan 17, 2012 at 11:47 PM, David Barbour dmbarb...@gmail.com wrote: On Tue, Jan 17, 2012 at 10:02 PM, Julian Leviston jul...@leviston.netwrote: Noted, but not relevant to my point. Oh? You say that without any explanation? Perhaps you need some hand holding to follow my logic. 1) You make an argument about contexts being `awe inspiring to humanity as a whole`. 2) Given the human potential for psychopathy, autism, aspergers, and other psychological classifications, it is impossible to find anything awe-inspiring to all humans. 3) Therefore, your `humanity as a whole` reduces to a statistical argument about a group of humans. 4) I describe your argument as `an anthropocentric statistical metric`. 5) I point out that even such metrics are influenced (subject to) culture. 6) Therefore, my argument is relevant to your point. Indeed, I believe it completely undermines your point. `awe-inspiring` is simply not an objective property. I'd posit that everything is inherently related. I call this inherent relationship context, or is-ness if you will. How is such a position - which doesn't seem to make any distinctions - useful in this context? Actually, how is it useful for anything whatsoever? Sure. Over at http://hof.povray.org/ Sorry I was implying given a technologically-driven only context. (As in... impossible without high technology) All of those works could be theoretically done more or less with an analogue medium, no? Speaking of the theoretically possible is always a fun and fantastic exercise. Theoretically, all the oxygen in your room could just happen to miss your lungs for the few minutes it takes to die. Theoretically, cosmic rays could flip bits into jpeg-encoded pornography on your computer. Theoretically, yes, those images could be generated on an analogue medium. But if we speak in practical terms - of what is `feasible` rather than what is `possible` - then, no, those images would not be created in an analog medium. They are the result of trial and error and tweaking that would be `infeasible` in human time frames without the technology. The precision of light and shadow would similarly be infeasible. long-lasting impacting meaning the impact lasts for a long time not as in the sense that the activity itself is long-lasting. Of the things I've found inspiring that had a long-lasting impact, none inspired `awe`. Regards, Dave ___ fonc mailing list fonc@vpri.org http://vpri.org/mailman/listinfo/fonc
Re: [fonc] Inspired 3D Worlds
There's a trend in architecture schools to offload the form-finding creative burden to computers with the use of shape grammars. Though they're a driving force in many departments, some will admit behind closed doors that they're also a bit of a red herring, and that years in the spotlight have yet to bear fruit. My own observations are that, rather than easing the burden, shape grammars have shifted the focus of labor: students trade their Olfa knives for a keyboard and mouse, and spend hours debugging Rhino scripts instead of erasing lines. Because most grammars are agnostic to physical law, they also generate needlessly inefficient, material-laden architecture, which rightfully sends the building scientists into the streets screaming blasphemy. I've found that I'm most productive in creative endeavors when my goals are specific, resources are constrained, tools are comprehensible and transparent, and my attention is focused. I particularly love the sense of immersion that comes when sketching a scene, writing an essay, repairing a small engine or designing a program (I think it's what Csikszentmihalyi termed flow). I'd be lost if I had to design an entire virtual world, as its far beyond the limits of my imagination, and dissatisfied if I off-loaded the work to a machine, because I'd always know it to be a knock-off of the real thing. Given a lifetime, I might be able to pull off a reasonable virtual vegetable garden. It's much more fun to go out into the real world, ask questions of it, and use tools like pencils, paint, objects or mathematics to help find meaningful answers. One example comes from learning to draw: I remember being fascinated by the ideas behind perspective drawing, and was humbled that such simple principles could have been hidden in plain sight for so long! After playing around with vanishing points, it seemed that there must be some very fundamental relationships between the points on the horizons and lines on the page. This gave way to an exploration of projective geometry, which I was fascinated to discover is an immensely powerful way of describing relationships -- from mechanical linkages to structural loads and conic sections. From here the lines on the page could be mapped to equations of lines, and from equations of lines to linear algebra. Finding these relationships in ordinary things was a great excitement, and though I've never used the knowledge to build a ny large CAD tool, my small experiments on paper and in silico have given me a new perspective that I'll happily hold for the rest of my life. To that end, I'd never want a computer to create a new world to live in, but instead be an aid to understanding the one right in front of me. Finally, a few books worth mentioning: Cliff Reiters Fractals, Visualization and J, which chronicles an exploration of many neat ideas: from chaotic attractors, to celluar automata, fractal terrain generation and projective transformations. It uses J as its teaching language, but the code reads like executable mathematics, and could be put into another form without too much hassle. Reasonably priced print copies are hard to find, but Lulu.com sells the eBook for less than the price of some sandwiches. And though I'm always skeptical of attempts to mathematize art and design, three books worth mentioning are: Point and Line to Plane : Kandinsky Notes on the Synthesis of Form : Christopher Alexander On Growth and Form : Thompson ___ fonc mailing list fonc@vpri.org http://vpri.org/mailman/listinfo/fonc
Re: [fonc] Inspired 3D Worlds
Thanks for this perspective. With respect to building virtual worlds, I have long entertained the notion of `augmented virtuality` - i.e. the converse of augmenting reality with virtual elements is to augment a virtual world with real elements. Consider, for example, taking all the news articles available at cnn.comand turning them algorithmically into flowers in a garden. Each flower could be unique in shape, based on a deterministic relationship to the associated news article. Coloring might be based on classification of the article. Clusters might be based on links between them. Zoom in far enough, you might even follow the links to see the articles. The garden would continue to grow as new articles become available, or die as they are removed from the site. Using that technique, I don't believe I'd experience that sense of disatisfaction - because the virtual world becomes a reflection of the real one (albeit, one twisted liberally through a kaleidoscope) rather than a cheap knock-off. In my hands remain algorithms but not so much artificial control. RE: I'd never want a computer to create a new world to live in, but instead be an aid to understanding the one right in front of me. I grew up with my nose in fantasy books and adventure games. I can totally imagine creating a new world to live in. But my interests also include augmented reality and command and control - not just understanding the world in front of us, but extending human reach to control it. Regards, Dave On Wed, Jan 18, 2012 at 9:19 AM, Devon D Sparks dspa...@mit.edu wrote: There's a trend in architecture schools to offload the form-finding creative burden to computers with the use of shape grammars. Though they're a driving force in many departments, some will admit behind closed doors that they're also a bit of a red herring, and that years in the spotlight have yet to bear fruit. My own observations are that, rather than easing the burden, shape grammars have shifted the focus of labor: students trade their Olfa knives for a keyboard and mouse, and spend hours debugging Rhino scripts instead of erasing lines. Because most grammars are agnostic to physical law, they also generate needlessly inefficient, material-laden architecture, which rightfully sends the building scientists into the streets screaming blasphemy. I've found that I'm most productive in creative endeavors when my goals are specific, resources are constrained, tools are comprehensible and transparent, and my attention is focused. I particularly love the sense of immersion that comes when sketching a scene, writing an essay, repairing a small engine or designing a program (I think it's what Csikszentmihalyi termed flow). I'd be lost if I had to design an entire virtual world, as its far beyond the limits of my imagination, and dissatisfied if I off-loaded the work to a machine, because I'd always know it to be a knock-off of the real thing. Given a lifetime, I might be able to pull off a reasonable virtual vegetable garden. It's much more fun to go out into the real world, ask questions of it, and use tools like pencils, paint, objects or mathematics to help find meaningful answers. One example comes from learning to draw: I remember being fascinated by the ideas behind perspective drawing, and was humbled that such simple principles could have been hidden in plain sight for so long! After playing around with vanishing points, it seemed that there must be some very fundamental relationships between the points on the horizons and lines on the page. This gave way to an exploration of projective geometry, which I was fascinated to discover is an immensely powerful way of describing relationships -- from mechanical linkages to structural loads and conic sections. From here the lines on the page could be mapped to equations of lines, and from equations of lines to linear algebra. Finding these relationships in ordinary things was a great excitement, and though I've never used the knowledge to build a ny large CAD tool, my small experiments on paper and in silico have given me a new perspective that I'll happily hold for the rest of my life. To that end, I'd never want a computer to create a new world to live in, but instead be an aid to understanding the one right in front of me. Finally, a few books worth mentioning: Cliff Reiters Fractals, Visualization and J, which chronicles an exploration of many neat ideas: from chaotic attractors, to celluar automata, fractal terrain generation and projective transformations. It uses J as its teaching language, but the code reads like executable mathematics, and could be put into another form without too much hassle. Reasonably priced print copies are hard to find, but Lulu.com sells the eBook for less than the price of some sandwiches. And though I'm always skeptical of attempts to mathematize art and design, three books worth mentioning are: Point and Line to Plane
Re: [fonc] Inspired 3D Worlds
On Tue, Jan 17, 2012 at 4:31 AM, BGB cr88...@gmail.com wrote: On 1/16/2012 6:47 PM, Casey Ransberger wrote: Top post. Heightmapping can go a really long way. Probably not news though:) I am still not certain, since a lot of this has a lot more to do with my own project than with general issues in computing. I had messed with a few technologies already. height-maps (long ago, not much used since then, generally randomized). the issue was mostly one of being not terribly interesting, but it makes sense if one wants terrain (and is fairly cheap in terms of memory use and performance impact). a more advanced variety would be to combine a height-map with a tile-map, where the terrain generator would also vary the texture-map to give a little more interest. I have considered this as a possibility. also tried randomly generated voxel terrain (similar to Minecraft, using perlin noise). issues were of being difficult to integrate well with my existing technology, and being very expensive in terms of both rendering and memory usage (particularly for storing intermediate meshes). one may need to devote about 500MB-1GB of RAM to the problem to have a moderately sized world with (with similar specifics to those in Minecraft). I suspect that, apart from making something like Minecraft, the technology is a bit too expensive and limited to really be all that generally useful at this point in time and on current hardware (I suspect, however, it will probably be much more relevant on future HW). I also tried randomly generated grid-based areas (basically, stuff is built from pre-made parts and randomly-chosen parts are put on a grid). I had also tried combining this with maze-generation algorithms. the results were functional but also nothing to get excited about. the big drawback was that I couldn't really think of any way to make the results of such a grid based generator particularly interesting (this is I think more so with a first-person viewpoint: such a structure is far less visually interesting from the inside than with a top-down or isometric view). it could work if one were sufficiently desperate, but I doubt it would be able to hold interest of players for all that long absent something else of redeeming value. the main maps in my case mostly use a Quake/Doom3/... style maps, composed mostly of entities (defined in terms of collections of key/value pairs representing a given object), brushes (convex polyhedra), patches (Bezier Surfaces), and meshes (mostly unstructured polygonal meshes). these would generally be created manually, by placing every object and piece of geometry visible in the world, but this is fairly effort-intensive, and simply running head first into it tends to quickly drain my motivation (resulting in me producing worlds which look like big boxes with some random crap in them). sadly, random generation not on a grid of some sort is a much more complex problem (nor random generation directly in terms of unstructured or loosely-structured geometry). fractals exist and work well on things like rocks or trees or terrain, but I haven't found a good way to apply them to general map generation problem (such as generating an interesting place to run around in and battle enemies, and get to the exit). the problem domain is potentially best suited to some sort of maze algorithm, but in my own tests, this fairly quickly stopped being all that interesting. the upper end I think for this sort of thing was likely the .Hack series games (which had a lot of apparently randomly generated dungeons). it is sad that I can't seem to pull off maps even half as interesting as those (generally created by hand) in commercial games from well over a decade ago. I can have a 3D engine which is technically much more advanced (or, at least, runs considerably slower on much faster hardware with moderately more features), but apart from reusing maps made by other people for other games, I can't make it even a small amount nearly as interesting or inspiring. I don't think you can do this project without a understanding of art. It's a fine gridded mesh that make us pick between practically similar artifacts with ease and that make the engineer baffled. From a engineering standpoint there is not much difference between a random splash of paint and a painting by Jackson Pollock. You can get far with surprisingly little resources if done correctly. Karl On Jan 16, 2012, at 8:45 AM, David Barbour dmbarb...@gmail.com wrote: Consider offloading some of your creativity burden onto your computer. The idea is: It's easier to recognize and refine something interesting than to create it. So turn it into a search, recognition, and refinement problem, and automate creation. There are various techniques, which certainly can be combined: * constraint programming * generative grammar programming * genetic programming *
Re: [fonc] Inspired 3D Worlds
David Barbour wrote: On Tue, Jan 17, 2012 at 12:30 AM, karl ramberg karlramb...@gmail.com mailto:karlramb...@gmail.com wrote: I don't think you can do this project without a understanding of art. It's a fine gridded mesh that make us pick between practically similar artifacts with ease and that make the engineer baffled. From a engineering standpoint there is not much difference between a random splash of paint and a painting by Jackson Pollock. You can get far with surprisingly little resources if done correctly. Karl I think, even with an understanding of art and several art history classes in university, it is difficult to tell the difference between a random splash of paint and a painting by Jackson Pollock. Regards, Dave If I recall correctly, there is a method: zoom in. Pollock's paintings are remarkable in that they tend to display the same amount of entropy no matter how much you zoom in (well, up to 100, actually). Like a fractal. (Warning: this is a distant memory, so don't count me as a reliable source.) Loup. ___ fonc mailing list fonc@vpri.org http://vpri.org/mailman/listinfo/fonc
Re: [fonc] Inspired 3D Worlds
Check out Ken Musgrave. He makes whole planets with fractals. It's cool. Twisting knobs is a lot less work than manual 3D modeling and such. http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1558608486 On Jan 16, 2012, at 7:31 PM, BGB cr88...@gmail.com wrote: On 1/16/2012 6:47 PM, Casey Ransberger wrote: Top post. Heightmapping can go a really long way. Probably not news though:) I am still not certain, since a lot of this has a lot more to do with my own project than with general issues in computing. I had messed with a few technologies already. height-maps (long ago, not much used since then, generally randomized). the issue was mostly one of being not terribly interesting, but it makes sense if one wants terrain (and is fairly cheap in terms of memory use and performance impact). a more advanced variety would be to combine a height-map with a tile-map, where the terrain generator would also vary the texture-map to give a little more interest. I have considered this as a possibility. also tried randomly generated voxel terrain (similar to Minecraft, using perlin noise). issues were of being difficult to integrate well with my existing technology, and being very expensive in terms of both rendering and memory usage (particularly for storing intermediate meshes). one may need to devote about 500MB-1GB of RAM to the problem to have a moderately sized world with (with similar specifics to those in Minecraft). I suspect that, apart from making something like Minecraft, the technology is a bit too expensive and limited to really be all that generally useful at this point in time and on current hardware (I suspect, however, it will probably be much more relevant on future HW). I also tried randomly generated grid-based areas (basically, stuff is built from pre-made parts and randomly-chosen parts are put on a grid). I had also tried combining this with maze-generation algorithms. the results were functional but also nothing to get excited about. the big drawback was that I couldn't really think of any way to make the results of such a grid based generator particularly interesting (this is I think more so with a first-person viewpoint: such a structure is far less visually interesting from the inside than with a top-down or isometric view). it could work if one were sufficiently desperate, but I doubt it would be able to hold interest of players for all that long absent something else of redeeming value. the main maps in my case mostly use a Quake/Doom3/... style maps, composed mostly of entities (defined in terms of collections of key/value pairs representing a given object), brushes (convex polyhedra), patches (Bezier Surfaces), and meshes (mostly unstructured polygonal meshes). these would generally be created manually, by placing every object and piece of geometry visible in the world, but this is fairly effort-intensive, and simply running head first into it tends to quickly drain my motivation (resulting in me producing worlds which look like big boxes with some random crap in them). sadly, random generation not on a grid of some sort is a much more complex problem (nor random generation directly in terms of unstructured or loosely-structured geometry). fractals exist and work well on things like rocks or trees or terrain, but I haven't found a good way to apply them to general map generation problem (such as generating an interesting place to run around in and battle enemies, and get to the exit). the problem domain is potentially best suited to some sort of maze algorithm, but in my own tests, this fairly quickly stopped being all that interesting. the upper end I think for this sort of thing was likely the .Hack series games (which had a lot of apparently randomly generated dungeons). it is sad that I can't seem to pull off maps even half as interesting as those (generally created by hand) in commercial games from well over a decade ago. I can have a 3D engine which is technically much more advanced (or, at least, runs considerably slower on much faster hardware with moderately more features), but apart from reusing maps made by other people for other games, I can't make it even a small amount nearly as interesting or inspiring. On Jan 16, 2012, at 8:45 AM, David Barbour dmbarb...@gmail.com wrote: Consider offloading some of your creativity burden onto your computer. The idea is: It's easier to recognize and refine something interesting than to create it. So turn it into a search, recognition, and refinement problem, and automate creation. There are various techniques, which certainly can be combined: * constraint programming * generative grammar programming * genetic programming * seeded fractals You might be surprised about how much of a world can be easily written with code rather than mapping. A map can be simplified by marking regions
Re: [fonc] Inspired 3D Worlds
Le 1/17/2012 6:58 PM, karl ramberg a écrit : On Tue, Jan 17, 2012 at 5:43 PM, Loup Vaillant l...@loup-vaillant.fr mailto:l...@loup-vaillant.fr wrote: David Barbour wrote: On Tue, Jan 17, 2012 at 12:30 AM, karl ramberg karlramb...@gmail.com mailto:karlramb...@gmail.com mailto:karlramb...@gmail.com mailto:karlramb...@gmail.com__ wrote: I don't think you can do this project without a understanding of art. It's a fine gridded mesh that make us pick between practically similar artifacts with ease and that make the engineer baffled. From a engineering standpoint there is not much difference between a random splash of paint and a painting by Jackson Pollock. You can get far with surprisingly little resources if done correctly. Karl I think, even with an understanding of art and several art history classes in university, it is difficult to tell the difference between a random splash of paint and a painting by Jackson Pollock. Regards, Dave If I recall correctly, there is a method: zoom in. Pollock's paintings are remarkable in that they tend to display the same amount of entropy no matter how much you zoom in (well, up to 100, actually). Like a fractal. (Warning: this is a distant memory, so don't count me as a reliable source.) Loup. My point here was not to argue about a specific artist or genere but that the domain of art is very different from that of engineer. What makes some music lifeless and some the most awe-inspiring you heard in your whole life ? Karl Oh, sorry, I do hear you. I singled out this example for 2 reasons : - Showing off (I just couldn't resist). - I actually have hope that we eventually get to the point where we can actually understand what makes good art with mathematical precision (if we choose to). Of course, I agree that this question is far from solved. It probably won't be before we fully understand the human brain. Loup. ___ fonc mailing list fonc@vpri.org http://vpri.org/mailman/listinfo/fonc
Re: [fonc] Inspired 3D Worlds
On 1/17/2012 10:58 AM, karl ramberg wrote: On Tue, Jan 17, 2012 at 5:43 PM, Loup Vaillant l...@loup-vaillant.fr mailto:l...@loup-vaillant.fr wrote: David Barbour wrote: On Tue, Jan 17, 2012 at 12:30 AM, karl ramberg karlramb...@gmail.com mailto:karlramb...@gmail.com mailto:karlramb...@gmail.com mailto:karlramb...@gmail.com wrote: I don't think you can do this project without a understanding of art. It's a fine gridded mesh that make us pick between practically similar artifacts with ease and that make the engineer baffled. From a engineering standpoint there is not much difference between a random splash of paint and a painting by Jackson Pollock. You can get far with surprisingly little resources if done correctly. Karl I think, even with an understanding of art and several art history classes in university, it is difficult to tell the difference between a random splash of paint and a painting by Jackson Pollock. Regards, Dave If I recall correctly, there is a method: zoom in. Pollock's paintings are remarkable in that they tend to display the same amount of entropy no matter how much you zoom in (well, up to 100, actually). Like a fractal. (Warning: this is a distant memory, so don't count me as a reliable source.) Loup. My point here was not to argue about a specific artist or genere but that the domain of art is very different from that of engineer. What makes some music lifeless and some the most awe-inspiring you heard in your whole life ? game art doesn't need to be particularly awe inspiring, so much as basically works and is not total crap. for example, if the game map is just: spawn near the start; kill a few guys standing in the way; hit the exit. pretty much no one will be impressed. in much a similar way, music need not be the best thing possible, but if it generally sounds terrible or is just a repeating drum loop, this isn't so good either. the issue, though, is that the level of effort needed to reach mediocre is often itself still a good deal of effort, as maybe one is comparing themselves against a mountain of other people, many trying to do the minimal they can get away with, and many others actually trying to make something decent. it is more so a problem when ones' effort is already spread fairly thin: between all of the coding, graphics and sound creation, 3D modeling and map creation, ... it can all add up fairly quickly (even if one cuts many corners in many places). what all I have thus far technically sort of works, but still falls a bit short of what was the norm in commercial games in the late-90s / early-2000s era. it is also going on a much longer development time-frame as well. many commercial games get from concept to release in 6 months to 1 year, rather than requiring years, but then again, most companies don't have to build everything from the ground up (they have their own base of general art assets, will often license the engine from someone else, ...), as well as having a team of people on the project (vs being a single-handed effort), ... a lot of this is still true of the 3D engine as well, for example my Scripting VM is still sort of lame (I am using a interpreter, rather than a JIT, ...), my renderer architecture kind of sucks and doesn't perform as well as could be hoped (ideally, things would be more modular and cleanly written, ...), ... note: mostly I am using an interpreter as JITs are a lot more effort to develop and maintain IME, and the interpreter is fast enough... the interpreter is mostly using indirect threaded code (as this is a little faster and more flexible than directly dispatching bytecode via a switch(), although the code is a little bigger given each opcode handler needs its own function). likewise, after the Doom3 source code came out, I was left to realize just how drastically the engines differed internally (I had sort of assumed that Carmack was doing similar stuff with the internals). the issue is mostly that my engine pulls off worse framerates on current hardware using the stock Doom3 maps than the Doom3 engine does (and leads to uncertainty regarding if scenes can be sufficiently large/complex while performing adequately). for example: my engine uses a mostly object-based scene-graph, where objects are roughly split into static objects (brushes, patches, meshes, ...) and dynamic objects (3D models for characters and entities, brush-models, ...); it then does basic (dynamic) visibility culling (frustum and occlusion checks) and makes use of a dynamically-built BSP-tree; most of the rendering is done (fairly directly) via a thin layer of wrappers over OpenGL (the shader system); many rendering operations are implemented via
Re: [fonc] Inspired 3D Worlds
On Tue, Jan 17, 2012 at 2:57 PM, BGB cr88...@gmail.com wrote: game art doesn't need to be particularly awe inspiring, so much as basically works and is not total crap. It can't be awe inspiring all the time, anyway. Humans would quickly become jaded to that sort of stimulation. The quality of a game map depends on many properties other than visual appeal. A program that creates maps for a first-person shooter should probably have concepts such as defensible positions, ambush positions, snipe positions and visual occlusion, reachable areas, path-generation for AIs. One might express `constraints` such as: * a spawn zone should not be accessible from a snipe position. * a capture-the-flag map should ensure that every path from the enemy flag to the base moves past at least one good snipe position and one good ambush position. * there should be some `fairness` in quality and quantity of defensible-position resources for the different teams. * the map needs to occlude enough that we never have more than K lights/triangles/objects/etc. in view at any given instant. But, in my practical understanding, these issues are not so distinct from visual appeal. It's all subject to the same search, recognition, and refinement aspects I described initially. the issue is mostly that my engine pulls off worse framerates on current hardware using the stock Doom3 maps than the Doom3 engine does Doom 3 engine is hardly an obsolete technology (even used in Brink in 2011), and its developers have a lot of expertise. There are certainly metrics by which a new engine could compete for performance - eliminating load-zones, dynamic and runtime-extensible environments, moving water, etc. - but I'd be surprised if you beat the Doom 3 engines at Doom 3's own maps! Anyhow, you go into a lot of interesting specifics about your engine which seem a bit off-topic for this subject line. I might e-mail you to discuss them externally. Regards, Dave ___ fonc mailing list fonc@vpri.org http://vpri.org/mailman/listinfo/fonc
Re: [fonc] Inspired 3D Worlds
I guess this depends what you mean by awe-inspiring. David this sentence somewhat disturbs me, though. I grew up in Tasmania - a little island at the bottom of Australia... with some of the most picturesque (and as you say here awe-inspiring) countryside in Australia. I can tell you for sure that humans don't become Jaded to it. It changes us, and vivifies us. I feel the same way about my balcony that overlooks the valley where I live, and also about the beautiful user interfaces that I use daily... these things impact me in a wonderful way, reminding me of the things and people I love. It doesn't make me jaded! Quite the opposite. Just my two cents. On 18/01/2012, at 11:10 AM, David Barbour wrote: It can't be awe inspiring all the time, anyway. Humans would quickly become jaded to that sort of stimulation. ___ fonc mailing list fonc@vpri.org http://vpri.org/mailman/listinfo/fonc
Re: [fonc] Inspired 3D Worlds
On Tue, Jan 17, 2012 at 4:17 PM, Julian Leviston jul...@leviston.netwrote: I guess this depends what you mean by awe-inspiring. David this sentence somewhat disturbs me, though. I grew up in Tasmania - a little island at the bottom of Australia... with some of the most picturesque (and as you say here awe-inspiring) countryside in Australia. I can tell you for sure that humans don't become Jaded to it. It changes us, and vivifies us. You don't find it awe-inspiring all the time. (If you do, you're certainly dysfunctional.) But I readily believe you still find it inspiring some of the time - and that is enough to be an enriching experience. As far as it changes us - I don't deny that. What is `becoming jaded` if not one more change in us? I feel the same way about my balcony that overlooks the valley where I live, and also about the beautiful user interfaces that I use daily... these things impact me in a wonderful way, reminding me of the things and people I love. It doesn't make me jaded! Quite the opposite. It is difficult to recognize you've become `jaded` until you've tried something different, or lost what you had, or return to it after acclimating to another environment. We measure our experiences in relative terms, not absolute terms. Regards, Dave On 18/01/2012, at 11:10 AM, David Barbour wrote: It can't be awe inspiring all the time, anyway. Humans would quickly become jaded to that sort of stimulation. ___ fonc mailing list fonc@vpri.org http://vpri.org/mailman/listinfo/fonc ___ fonc mailing list fonc@vpri.org http://vpri.org/mailman/listinfo/fonc
Re: [fonc] Inspired 3D Worlds
On 1/17/2012 5:10 PM, David Barbour wrote: On Tue, Jan 17, 2012 at 2:57 PM, BGB cr88...@gmail.com mailto:cr88...@gmail.com wrote: game art doesn't need to be particularly awe inspiring, so much as basically works and is not total crap. It can't be awe inspiring all the time, anyway. Humans would quickly become jaded to that sort of stimulation. partly agreed (although, maybe not jaded, but more like what is awe inspiring one year becomes mundane/mandatory the next). actually, it is also an issue with many classic map generation technologies: people become used to them, and used to seeing more impressive things being generated by hand (often with uninteresting aspects increasingly subtly offloaded to tools). once something better takes hold, it is harder to keep interest in the older/simpler/more-mundane technologies. so, now many people take for granted technologies which were novelties 10 years ago (real-time rigid-body physics / ragdoll / ..., the ability to have light-sources move around in real-time, ability to have dynamic shadows, ...), and possibly unimaginable 15 or 20 years ago. if a person went directly from being exposed to games like, say, Wolfenstein 3D and Sonic The Hedgehog, ... to seeing games like Portal 2 and Rage, what would their response be? but, to those who have lived though it, it seems like nothing particularly noteworthy. 15 years ago, the big new things were having 3D modeled characters, colored lighting, and maybe translucent geometry. 20 years ago, it was having any sort of real-time 3D at all (well, that and FMV). The quality of a game map depends on many properties other than visual appeal. A program that creates maps for a first-person shooter should probably have concepts such as defensible positions, ambush positions, snipe positions and visual occlusion, reachable areas, path-generation for AIs. yeah. path-finding data can be built after the fact, just it tends to be fairly expensive to rebuild. One might express `constraints` such as: * a spawn zone should not be accessible from a snipe position. * a capture-the-flag map should ensure that every path from the enemy flag to the base moves past at least one good snipe position and one good ambush position. * there should be some `fairness` in quality and quantity of defensible-position resources for the different teams. * the map needs to occlude enough that we never have more than K lights/triangles/objects/etc. in view at any given instant. yep. actually, the bigger issue regarding performance isn't really how many lights/polygons/... are visible, but more like the total screen-space taken by everything which needs to be drawn. a single large polygon with a whole bunch of light sources right next to it, could be a much nastier problem than a much larger number of light-sources and a large number of tiny polygons. it is stuff right up near the camera which seems to actually eat up the vast majority of rendering time, whereas the same complexity model some distance away may be much cheaper (although LOD and similar may help, although interestingly, LOD helps much more with reducing the computational costs of animating character models than it does with renderer performance per-se). also, using fragment shaders can be fairly expensive (kind of a problem in my case, as most of my lighting involves the use of fragment shaders). currently, there are multiple such shaders in my case (for per-pixel phong lighting): one which uses the OpenGL lighting model (not used much); one which uses a Quake-style lighting model (for attenuation), but is otherwise like the above; one which uses a Quake-style lighting model (like the above), but adds support for normal and specular map textures (renderer avoids using this one where possible... as it is expensive); one which uses a Doom3 style lighting model (box + falloff + projection textures) in addition to normal and specular maps (not currently used, considered possible reintroduction as a special effect feature). the issue is mostly that when one has a shader pulling from around 6 textures (the falloff texture needs to be accessed twice), the shader is a bit expensive. note that the normal is actually a bump+normal map (bump in alpha), and the specular map is a specular+exponent map (specular color, with exponent-scale in alpha). in all cases, these are combined with the normal material properties (ambient/diffuse/specular/emission/...). for related reasons: adding a normal or specular map to a texture can make it nicer looking, but adding a normal map also makes it slower (and a possible performance feature would be to essentially disable the use of normal and specular maps). there also seems to be a relation between texture size and performance as well (smaller resolution == faster). it is also a non-linear tradeoff: a large increase in texture resolution or use of
Re: [fonc] Inspired 3D Worlds
No, I find it IS awe-inspiring all of the time. I may not necessarily be full of awe or actually be inspired at any particular one time... however, this doesn't change the fact that certain things or people themselves are awe-inspiring all of the time to me. In other words, if I'm in a bad mood, this is in itself not necessarily any fault, consequence or relationship of or to the fact that Alan Kay is still an amazing person. Even in my bad mood, I recognise he is awe-inspiring. Guess this depends what you mean by awe-inspiring (as I originally said). If you re-read the original context, he was talking about inherent breathtaking beauty being required or not. I think to make something inherently beautiful or to construct it with detailed thought is actually very worthwhile. Without something being awe-inspiring, there's no possibility for awe to be inspired when the conditions are right. When something is awe inspiring, it doesn't necessarily always follow that awe will be inspired, though ;-) :P Julian On 18/01/2012, at 11:34 AM, David Barbour wrote: You don't find it awe-inspiring all the time. (If you do, you're certainly dysfunctional.) But I readily believe you still find it inspiring some of the time - and that is enough to be an enriching experience. ___ fonc mailing list fonc@vpri.org http://vpri.org/mailman/listinfo/fonc
Re: [fonc] Inspired 3D Worlds
I understand `awe inspiring` to be subjective - hence, subject to changes in the observer, such as ephemeral mood or loss of a sensory organ. You seem to treat it as a heuristic or statistical property - i.e. it's awe inspiring because people have felt awe in the past and you expect people to feel awe in the future. I suppose I can understand either position. But it's silly to say that awe inspiring is just a property of the object - i.e. you say without something being awe-inspiring, there's no possibility for awe to be inspired when the conditions are right. That's just too egocentric. People find all sorts of funny things awe-inspiring. Like football. Or grocery bags in the wind. ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKg6OJ6zhhc) Regards, Dave On Tue, Jan 17, 2012 at 6:35 PM, Julian Leviston jul...@leviston.netwrote: No, I find it IS awe-inspiring all of the time. I may not necessarily be full of awe or actually be inspired at any particular one time... however, this doesn't change the fact that certain things or people themselves are awe-inspiring all of the time to me. In other words, if I'm in a bad mood, this is in itself not necessarily any fault, consequence or relationship of or to the fact that Alan Kay is still an amazing person. Even in my bad mood, I recognise he is awe-inspiring. Guess this depends what you mean by awe-inspiring (as I originally said). If you re-read the original context, he was talking about inherent breathtaking beauty being required or not. I think to make something inherently beautiful or to construct it with detailed thought is actually very worthwhile. Without something being awe-inspiring, there's no possibility for awe to be inspired when the conditions are right. When something is awe inspiring, it doesn't necessarily always follow that awe will be inspired, though ;-) :P Julian On 18/01/2012, at 11:34 AM, David Barbour wrote: You don't find it awe-inspiring all the time. (If you do, you're certainly dysfunctional.) But I readily believe you still find it inspiring some of the time - and that is enough to be an enriching experience. ___ fonc mailing list fonc@vpri.org http://vpri.org/mailman/listinfo/fonc ___ fonc mailing list fonc@vpri.org http://vpri.org/mailman/listinfo/fonc
Re: [fonc] Inspired 3D Worlds
There are different kinds of art, just like there are different qualities of everything. I think you may find on closer inspection that there can be things that are intrinsically beautiful, or intrinsically awe-inspiring to humanity as a whole. I don't think that's silly, and I'm perfectly ok with the fact that you might think it's silly, but I feel the need to let you (all) know this. I'm told, for example, that the Sistine Chapel is one such thing... or the great canyon. I know of a few things in Sydney where I live that seem to have a common effect on most people... (some of the churches, or architecture we have here, for example - even though we have such a young culture, the effect is still there). It doesn't strike me as being that there is anything different in computer art or architecture than other art or architecture in this regard. While I agree that computer game art doesn't *have* to be awe-inspiring (in an absolute, non-relative, non-subjective, objective sense) in order to be computer game art, or qualify as being of a standard which is enough to be acceptable to most people as being computer game art (ie qualifying for the title), I think it nonetheless matters in a general sense to aspire to such a high standard of quality in everything, irrespective of whether it's computer game art, or ordinary art, architecture of buildings, or architecture of information systems. This is, after all, why we attempt anything at its root, isn't it? or is it simply to satisfy some form of mediocre whimsy? or to get by so to speak? Contrast things that last with things that don't last. I personally don't hold that good graphics from a technical standpoint are inherently or necessarily awe-inspiring, because usually the context of technology yields little meaning compared to the context of culture, but good graphics from a technical standpoint are able, obviously, to transmit a message that *is* awe-inspiring (ie the media / conduit / accessibility channel). In other words, the technology of quadrupling memory capacity and processor speed provides little impact on the kinds of meanings I can make from a social cultural perspective. If I print my book on a different type of paper, it doesn't change the message of the book, but rather perhaps the accessibility of it. That is, except, perhaps for the cases such as the recently new Superman movie, where providing a similar visual and feel context to the previous movies provides more meaning to the message BECAUSE of current fashions of style in direction/production in movies. It actually adds to the world and meaning in this case - but this is a case of feedback, which IMHO is an exception to prove the rule. This segues rather neatly to the question of content being contained within a context that simultaneously holds it and gives it meaning. The semantic content and context in contrast to those the content and context of the accessibility / conduit / media. This brings the question Where is the semantic value held? to bear on the situation. If the point (ie meaning) of a game and therefore its visual design is not to impact the senses in some form of objective visual art, but rather to provide a conduit of accessibility to impact the mind in some form of objective mental art, then I would agree that visual art need not be very impressive or awe inspiring in order to achieve its aim. Perhaps, however, the entire point of the game is simply to make money in which case none of my comments hold value. :) Also, a question that springs to mind is... do you find any of the popularly impressive movies or graphics of the current day awe-inspiring? I find them quite cool... impressive in a technical sense, but not in a long-lasting impacting sense... obviously ( - to me, at least, and my friends - ) technology is inherently and constantly subject to fashion and incredibly time-sensitive, therefore there is little meaning contained in the special effects or technological advancements that are possible. I think we long ago passed the point where technology allowed us to build anything we can fantasise about... for example, I find inception, or the godfather, or even games like wizard of wor to be far more entertaining from the point of view of what they do to me in totality, than I do with something like transformers 2, for example. This is a very interesting conversation, so I'd like to thank you, David, for your participation in it. :) Julian On 18/01/2012, at 3:06 PM, David Barbour wrote: I understand `awe inspiring` to be subjective - hence, subject to changes in the observer, such as ephemeral mood or loss of a sensory organ. You seem to treat it as a heuristic or statistical property - i.e. it's awe inspiring because people have felt awe in the past and you expect people to feel awe in the future. I suppose I can understand either position. But it's silly to say that awe inspiring
Re: [fonc] Inspired 3D Worlds
I would note my topic line is `inspired 3D worlds`, not `inspiring 3D worlds`. There is a rather vast difference in meaning. ;) On Tue, Jan 17, 2012 at 8:50 PM, Julian Leviston jul...@leviston.netwrote: you may find on closer inspection that there can be things that are intrinsically beautiful, or intrinsically awe-inspiring to humanity as a whole. Even an anthropocentric statistical metric will be subject to cultural influence. I do grant that humans are likely to find `great heights` and `big explosions` and `loud music` and other such things awe-inspiring on a very primitive level, but I imagine that cultural exposure to them would suppress the feeling in a statistically measurable way. it nonetheless matters in a general sense to aspire to such a high standard of quality in everything Do keep in mind the fallacy of the beard. There is a significant relationship between quantity and quality, even if it isn't an obvious one. There are also relationships between costs and quality - e.g. flat pay-per-text can completely undermine various story or data distribution models. Given limited resources and limited control over our environment, it does not always make sense to aspire to high standards of quality. Also, a question that springs to mind is... do you find any of the popularly impressive movies or graphics of the current day awe-inspiring? Sure. Over at http://hof.povray.org/ I find them quite cool... impressive in a technical sense, but not in a long-lasting impacting sense... I do not believe awe-inspiring connotes long-lasting. Ever seen an awe-inspiring thermite fire? judo throw? belch? live theatrical play? Regards, Dave On 18/01/2012, at 3:06 PM, David Barbour wrote: I understand `awe inspiring` to be subjective - hence, subject to changes in the observer, such as ephemeral mood or loss of a sensory organ. You seem to treat it as a heuristic or statistical property - i.e. it's awe inspiring because people have felt awe in the past and you expect people to feel awe in the future. I suppose I can understand either position. But it's silly to say that awe inspiring is just a property of the object - i.e. you say without something being awe-inspiring, there's no possibility for awe to be inspired when the conditions are right. That's just too egocentric. People find all sorts of funny things awe-inspiring. Like football. Or grocery bags in the wind. ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKg6OJ6zhhc) Regards, Dave On Tue, Jan 17, 2012 at 6:35 PM, Julian Leviston jul...@leviston.netwrote: No, I find it IS awe-inspiring all of the time. I may not necessarily be full of awe or actually be inspired at any particular one time... however, this doesn't change the fact that certain things or people themselves are awe-inspiring all of the time to me. In other words, if I'm in a bad mood, this is in itself not necessarily any fault, consequence or relationship of or to the fact that Alan Kay is still an amazing person. Even in my bad mood, I recognise he is awe-inspiring. Guess this depends what you mean by awe-inspiring (as I originally said). If you re-read the original context, he was talking about inherent breathtaking beauty being required or not. I think to make something inherently beautiful or to construct it with detailed thought is actually very worthwhile. Without something being awe-inspiring, there's no possibility for awe to be inspired when the conditions are right. When something is awe inspiring, it doesn't necessarily always follow that awe will be inspired, though ;-) :P Julian On 18/01/2012, at 11:34 AM, David Barbour wrote: You don't find it awe-inspiring all the time. (If you do, you're certainly dysfunctional.) But I readily believe you still find it inspiring some of the time - and that is enough to be an enriching experience. ___ fonc mailing list fonc@vpri.org http://vpri.org/mailman/listinfo/fonc ___ fonc mailing list fonc@vpri.org http://vpri.org/mailman/listinfo/fonc ___ fonc mailing list fonc@vpri.org http://vpri.org/mailman/listinfo/fonc ___ fonc mailing list fonc@vpri.org http://vpri.org/mailman/listinfo/fonc
Re: [fonc] Inspired 3D Worlds
On 1/17/2012 9:50 PM, Julian Leviston wrote: There are different kinds of art, just like there are different qualities of everything. I think you may find on closer inspection that there can be things that are intrinsically beautiful, or intrinsically awe-inspiring to humanity as a whole. I don't think that's silly, and I'm perfectly ok with the fact that you might think it's silly, but I feel the need to let you (all) know this. I'm told, for example, that the Sistine Chapel is one such thing... or the great canyon. I know of a few things in Sydney where I live that seem to have a common effect on most people... (some of the churches, or architecture we have here, for example - even though we have such a young culture, the effect is still there). It doesn't strike me as being that there is anything different in computer art or architecture than other art or architecture in this regard. While I agree that computer game art doesn't *have* to be awe-inspiring (in an absolute, non-relative, non-subjective, objective sense) in order to be computer game art, or qualify as being of a standard which is enough to be acceptable to most people as being computer game art (ie qualifying for the title), I think it nonetheless matters in a general sense to aspire to such a high standard of quality in everything, irrespective of whether it's computer game art, or ordinary art, architecture of buildings, or architecture of information systems. This is, after all, why we attempt anything at its root, isn't it? or is it simply to satisfy some form of mediocre whimsy? or to get by so to speak? Contrast things that last with things that don't last. I personally don't hold that good graphics from a technical standpoint are inherently or necessarily awe-inspiring, because usually the context of technology yields little meaning compared to the context of culture, but good graphics from a technical standpoint are able, obviously, to transmit a message that *is* awe-inspiring (ie the media / conduit / accessibility channel). In other words, the technology of quadrupling memory capacity and processor speed provides little impact on the kinds of meanings I can make from a social cultural perspective. If I print my book on a different type of paper, it doesn't change the message of the book, but rather perhaps the accessibility of it. That is, except, perhaps for the cases such as the recently new Superman movie, where providing a similar visual and feel context to the previous movies provides more meaning to the message BECAUSE of current fashions of style in direction/production in movies. It actually adds to the world and meaning in this case - but this is a case of feedback, which IMHO is an exception to prove the rule. This segues rather neatly to the question of content being contained within a context that simultaneously holds it and gives it meaning. The semantic content and context in contrast to those the content and context of the accessibility / conduit / media. This brings the question Where is the semantic value held? to bear on the situation. If the point (ie meaning) of a game and therefore its visual design is not to impact the senses in some form of objective visual art, but rather to provide a conduit of accessibility to impact the mind in some form of objective mental art, then I would agree that visual art need not be very impressive or awe inspiring in order to achieve its aim. Perhaps, however, the entire point of the game is simply to make money in which case none of my comments hold value. :) Also, a question that springs to mind is... do you find any of the popularly impressive movies or graphics of the current day awe-inspiring? I find them quite cool... impressive in a technical sense, but not in a long-lasting impacting sense... obviously ( - to me, at least, and my friends - ) technology is inherently and constantly subject to fashion and incredibly time-sensitive, therefore there is little meaning contained in the special effects or technological advancements that are possible. I think we long ago passed the point where technology allowed us to build anything we can fantasise about... for example, I find inception, or the godfather, or even games like wizard of wor to be far more entertaining from the point of view of what they do to me in totality, than I do with something like transformers 2, for example. interesting thoughts, albeit admittedly a bit outside my area... I actually liked the Transformers movies (except: too much humans, not enough robot-on-robot battle), and admittedly sort of like Transformers in general (have watched through most of the shows, ...), and have taken some influence from the franchise (although, I also have many other things I liked / borrowed ideas from: Ghost In The Shell, Macross, Zone Of The Enders, Gundam, ...). in general, it was still better in many regards than Cowboys
Re: [fonc] Inspired 3D Worlds
On Tue, Jan 17, 2012 at 10:02 PM, Julian Leviston jul...@leviston.netwrote: Noted, but not relevant to my point. Oh? You say that without any explanation? Perhaps you need some hand holding to follow my logic. 1) You make an argument about contexts being `awe inspiring to humanity as a whole`. 2) Given the human potential for psychopathy, autism, aspergers, and other psychological classifications, it is impossible to find anything awe-inspiring to all humans. 3) Therefore, your `humanity as a whole` reduces to a statistical argument about a group of humans. 4) I describe your argument as `an anthropocentric statistical metric`. 5) I point out that even such metrics are influenced (subject to) culture. 6) Therefore, my argument is relevant to your point. Indeed, I believe it completely undermines your point. `awe-inspiring` is simply not an objective property. I'd posit that everything is inherently related. I call this inherent relationship context, or is-ness if you will. How is such a position - which doesn't seem to make any distinctions - useful in this context? Actually, how is it useful for anything whatsoever? Sure. Over at http://hof.povray.org/ Sorry I was implying given a technologically-driven only context. (As in... impossible without high technology) All of those works could be theoretically done more or less with an analogue medium, no? Speaking of the theoretically possible is always a fun and fantastic exercise. Theoretically, all the oxygen in your room could just happen to miss your lungs for the few minutes it takes to die. Theoretically, cosmic rays could flip bits into jpeg-encoded pornography on your computer. Theoretically, yes, those images could be generated on an analogue medium. But if we speak in practical terms - of what is `feasible` rather than what is `possible` - then, no, those images would not be created in an analog medium. They are the result of trial and error and tweaking that would be `infeasible` in human time frames without the technology. The precision of light and shadow would similarly be infeasible. long-lasting impacting meaning the impact lasts for a long time not as in the sense that the activity itself is long-lasting. Of the things I've found inspiring that had a long-lasting impact, none inspired `awe`. Regards, Dave ___ fonc mailing list fonc@vpri.org http://vpri.org/mailman/listinfo/fonc
Re: [fonc] Inspired 3D Worlds
Top post. Heightmapping can go a really long way. Probably not news though:) On Jan 16, 2012, at 8:45 AM, David Barbour dmbarb...@gmail.com wrote: Consider offloading some of your creativity burden onto your computer. The idea is: It's easier to recognize and refine something interesting than to create it. So turn it into a search, recognition, and refinement problem, and automate creation. There are various techniques, which certainly can be combined: * constraint programming * generative grammar programming * genetic programming * seeded fractals You might be surprised about how much of a world can be easily written with code rather than mapping. A map can be simplified by marking regions up with code and using libraries of procedures. Code can sometimes be simplified by having it read a simple map or image. Remember, the basic role of programming is to automate that which bores you. Regards, Dave On Sun, Jan 15, 2012 at 4:18 PM, BGB cr88...@gmail.com wrote: I am generally personally stuck on the issue of how to make interesting 3D worlds for a game-style project while lacking in both personal creativity and either artistic skill or a team of artists to do it (creating decent-looking 3D worlds generally requires a fair amount of effort, and is in-fact I suspect somewhat bigger than the effort required to make a passable 3D model of an object in a 3D modeling app, since at least generally the model is smaller and well-defined). it seems some that creativity (or what little of it exists) is stifled by it requiring a large amount of effort (all at once) for the activity needed to express said creativity (vs things which are either easy to do all at once, or can be easily decomposed into lots of incremental activities spread over a large period of time). trying to build a non-trivial scene (something which would be passable in a modern 3D game) at the level of dragging around and placing/resizing/... cubes and/or messing with individual polygon-faces in a mapper-tool is sort of a motivation killer (one can wish for some sort of higher level way to express the scene). meanwhile, writing code, despite (in the grand scale) requiring far more time and effort, seems to be a lot more enjoyable (but, one can't really build a world in code, as this is more the mapper-tool's domain). ___ fonc mailing list fonc@vpri.org http://vpri.org/mailman/listinfo/fonc ___ fonc mailing list fonc@vpri.org http://vpri.org/mailman/listinfo/fonc
Re: [fonc] Inspired 3D Worlds
I like minecraft's take on this. Julian On 17/01/2012, at 2:31 PM, BGB wrote: On 1/16/2012 6:47 PM, Casey Ransberger wrote: Top post. Heightmapping can go a really long way. Probably not news though:) I am still not certain, since a lot of this has a lot more to do with my own project than with general issues in computing. I had messed with a few technologies already. height-maps (long ago, not much used since then, generally randomized). the issue was mostly one of being not terribly interesting, but it makes sense if one wants terrain (and is fairly cheap in terms of memory use and performance impact). a more advanced variety would be to combine a height-map with a tile-map, where the terrain generator would also vary the texture-map to give a little more interest. I have considered this as a possibility. also tried randomly generated voxel terrain (similar to Minecraft, using perlin noise). issues were of being difficult to integrate well with my existing technology, and being very expensive in terms of both rendering and memory usage (particularly for storing intermediate meshes). one may need to devote about 500MB-1GB of RAM to the problem to have a moderately sized world with (with similar specifics to those in Minecraft). I suspect that, apart from making something like Minecraft, the technology is a bit too expensive and limited to really be all that generally useful at this point in time and on current hardware (I suspect, however, it will probably be much more relevant on future HW). I also tried randomly generated grid-based areas (basically, stuff is built from pre-made parts and randomly-chosen parts are put on a grid). I had also tried combining this with maze-generation algorithms. the results were functional but also nothing to get excited about. the big drawback was that I couldn't really think of any way to make the results of such a grid based generator particularly interesting (this is I think more so with a first-person viewpoint: such a structure is far less visually interesting from the inside than with a top-down or isometric view). it could work if one were sufficiently desperate, but I doubt it would be able to hold interest of players for all that long absent something else of redeeming value. the main maps in my case mostly use a Quake/Doom3/... style maps, composed mostly of entities (defined in terms of collections of key/value pairs representing a given object), brushes (convex polyhedra), patches (Bezier Surfaces), and meshes (mostly unstructured polygonal meshes). these would generally be created manually, by placing every object and piece of geometry visible in the world, but this is fairly effort-intensive, and simply running head first into it tends to quickly drain my motivation (resulting in me producing worlds which look like big boxes with some random crap in them). sadly, random generation not on a grid of some sort is a much more complex problem (nor random generation directly in terms of unstructured or loosely-structured geometry). fractals exist and work well on things like rocks or trees or terrain, but I haven't found a good way to apply them to general map generation problem (such as generating an interesting place to run around in and battle enemies, and get to the exit). the problem domain is potentially best suited to some sort of maze algorithm, but in my own tests, this fairly quickly stopped being all that interesting. the upper end I think for this sort of thing was likely the .Hack series games (which had a lot of apparently randomly generated dungeons). it is sad that I can't seem to pull off maps even half as interesting as those (generally created by hand) in commercial games from well over a decade ago. I can have a 3D engine which is technically much more advanced (or, at least, runs considerably slower on much faster hardware with moderately more features), but apart from reusing maps made by other people for other games, I can't make it even a small amount nearly as interesting or inspiring. On Jan 16, 2012, at 8:45 AM, David Barbour dmbarb...@gmail.com wrote: Consider offloading some of your creativity burden onto your computer. The idea is: It's easier to recognize and refine something interesting than to create it. So turn it into a search, recognition, and refinement problem, and automate creation. There are various techniques, which certainly can be combined: * constraint programming * generative grammar programming * genetic programming * seeded fractals You might be surprised about how much of a world can be easily written with code rather than mapping. A map can be simplified by marking regions up with code and using libraries of procedures. Code can sometimes be simplified by having it read a simple map or image. Remember, the basic role of
Re: [fonc] Inspired 3D Worlds
The original topic was about getting the computer to create 3d worlds. That was what I was referring to when I said I like minecraft's taken on it. They use a seed to generate the world. Julian On 17/01/2012, at 3:26 PM, BGB wrote: On 1/16/2012 8:36 PM, Julian Leviston wrote: I like minecraft's take on this. Julian in which particular way?... well, Minecraft is a fairly interesting game, and allows a lot of room for people building stuff, ... the downside is: how well does the technology work for considerably different gameplay styles? (not based on mining and building) what about world voxel density? ... for example, making voxels 1/2 the size would lead (very likely) to an 8x memory-requirement increase, and 1/4 (250cm) could require 64x the memory. a similarly sized world-space with a 1.5 inch (~ 3.75cm) voxel size would require around 18963x as much memory. some people have tried fundamentally different ways of dealing with voxels (namely Sparse Voxel Octtrees and ray-casting), but these in turn have different tradeoffs (on current HW there are significant problems regarding resolution and performance). I suspect it may be a few years before this strategy really becomes practical. a big issue though is that it probably still wont make creating of compelling worlds all that much easier (so, probably a lot more random-generation and similar, with its inherent pros and cons). I guess it may ultimately be a bit of a wait and see thing. On 17/01/2012, at 2:31 PM, BGB wrote: On 1/16/2012 6:47 PM, Casey Ransberger wrote: Top post. Heightmapping can go a really long way. Probably not news though:) I am still not certain, since a lot of this has a lot more to do with my own project than with general issues in computing. I had messed with a few technologies already. height-maps (long ago, not much used since then, generally randomized). the issue was mostly one of being not terribly interesting, but it makes sense if one wants terrain (and is fairly cheap in terms of memory use and performance impact). a more advanced variety would be to combine a height-map with a tile-map, where the terrain generator would also vary the texture-map to give a little more interest. I have considered this as a possibility. also tried randomly generated voxel terrain (similar to Minecraft, using perlin noise). issues were of being difficult to integrate well with my existing technology, and being very expensive in terms of both rendering and memory usage (particularly for storing intermediate meshes). one may need to devote about 500MB-1GB of RAM to the problem to have a moderately sized world with (with similar specifics to those in Minecraft). I suspect that, apart from making something like Minecraft, the technology is a bit too expensive and limited to really be all that generally useful at this point in time and on current hardware (I suspect, however, it will probably be much more relevant on future HW). I also tried randomly generated grid-based areas (basically, stuff is built from pre-made parts and randomly-chosen parts are put on a grid). I had also tried combining this with maze-generation algorithms. the results were functional but also nothing to get excited about. the big drawback was that I couldn't really think of any way to make the results of such a grid based generator particularly interesting (this is I think more so with a first-person viewpoint: such a structure is far less visually interesting from the inside than with a top-down or isometric view). it could work if one were sufficiently desperate, but I doubt it would be able to hold interest of players for all that long absent something else of redeeming value. the main maps in my case mostly use a Quake/Doom3/... style maps, composed mostly of entities (defined in terms of collections of key/value pairs representing a given object), brushes (convex polyhedra), patches (Bezier Surfaces), and meshes (mostly unstructured polygonal meshes). these would generally be created manually, by placing every object and piece of geometry visible in the world, but this is fairly effort-intensive, and simply running head first into it tends to quickly drain my motivation (resulting in me producing worlds which look like big boxes with some random crap in them). sadly, random generation not on a grid of some sort is a much more complex problem (nor random generation directly in terms of unstructured or loosely-structured geometry). fractals exist and work well on things like rocks or trees or terrain, but I haven't found a good way to apply them to general map generation problem (such as generating an interesting place to run around in and battle enemies, and get to the exit). the problem domain is potentially best suited to some sort of maze algorithm, but in my own
Re: [fonc] Inspired 3D Worlds
There are commercial big boxes with some random crap in them game worlds now and have been since the 8-bit era. The games that stood out by immersing us despite the limitations of technology were usually the ones which were lovingly crafted. From: BGB cr88...@gmail.com To: Fundamentals of New Computing fonc@vpri.org Sent: Tuesday, 17 January 2012, 3:31 Subject: Re: [fonc] Inspired 3D Worlds 8 these would generally be created manually, by placing every object and piece of geometry visible in the world, but this is fairly effort-intensive, and simply running head first into it tends to quickly drain my motivation (resulting in me producing worlds which look like big boxes with some random crap in them). 8 ___ fonc mailing list fonc@vpri.org http://vpri.org/mailman/listinfo/fonc
Re: [fonc] Inspired 3D Worlds
You seem to be ignoring the search, recognition, and refinement aspects. You need some way to tell the computer what is interesting so you can refine those portions (reducing variation, tweaking constraints or parameters or other code, selecting `preferred` samples on a grid as a human fitness function for genetic algorithms, etc.) while continuing to search on the other aspects. Think of this as a collaborative effort between computer and human, where you're reducing the burden of hand-crafting the world but not taking yourself out of the picture entirely. The wonderful, interesting vistas created by POV-Ray are not created by randomly seeding a world, but are also not created by hand-crafting the maps. Why should you expect different for creating deep, inspired 3D worlds? Regards, Dave On Mon, Jan 16, 2012 at 7:31 PM, BGB cr88...@gmail.com wrote: the problem domain is potentially best suited to some sort of maze algorithm, but in my own tests, this fairly quickly stopped being all that interesting. the upper end I think for this sort of thing was likely the .Hack series games (which had a lot of apparently randomly generated dungeons). it is sad that I can't seem to pull off maps even half as interesting as those (generally created by hand) in commercial games from well over a decade ago. I can have a 3D engine which is technically much more advanced (or, at least, runs considerably slower on much faster hardware with moderately more features), but apart from reusing maps made by other people for other games, I can't make it even a small amount nearly as interesting or inspiring. On Jan 16, 2012, at 8:45 AM, David Barbour dmbarb...@gmail.com wrote: Consider offloading some of your creativity burden onto your computer. The idea is: It's easier to recognize and refine something interesting than to create it. So turn it into a search, recognition, and refinement problem, and automate creation. There are various techniques, which certainly can be combined: * constraint programming * generative grammar programming * genetic programming * seeded fractals You might be surprised about how much of a world can be easily written with code rather than mapping. A map can be simplified by marking regions up with code and using libraries of procedures. Code can sometimes be simplified by having it read a simple map or image. Remember, the basic role of programming is to automate that which bores you. Regards, Dave On Sun, Jan 15, 2012 at 4:18 PM, BGB cr88...@gmail.com wrote: I am generally personally stuck on the issue of how to make interesting 3D worlds for a game-style project while lacking in both personal creativity and either artistic skill or a team of artists to do it (creating decent-looking 3D worlds generally requires a fair amount of effort, and is in-fact I suspect somewhat bigger than the effort required to make a passable 3D model of an object in a 3D modeling app, since at least generally the model is smaller and well-defined). it seems some that creativity (or what little of it exists) is stifled by it requiring a large amount of effort (all at once) for the activity needed to express said creativity (vs things which are either easy to do all at once, or can be easily decomposed into lots of incremental activities spread over a large period of time). trying to build a non-trivial scene (something which would be passable in a modern 3D game) at the level of dragging around and placing/resizing/... cubes and/or messing with individual polygon-faces in a mapper-tool is sort of a motivation killer (one can wish for some sort of higher level way to express the scene). meanwhile, writing code, despite (in the grand scale) requiring far more time and effort, seems to be a lot more enjoyable (but, one can't really build a world in code, as this is more the mapper-tool's domain). ___ fonc mailing list fonc@vpri.org http://vpri.org/mailman/listinfo/fonc ___ fonc mailing listfonc@vpri.orghttp://vpri.org/mailman/listinfo/fonc ___ fonc mailing list fonc@vpri.org http://vpri.org/mailman/listinfo/fonc ___ fonc mailing list fonc@vpri.org http://vpri.org/mailman/listinfo/fonc
Re: [fonc] Inspired 3D Worlds
On 1/16/2012 10:26 PM, Neu Xue wrote: There are commercial big boxes with some random crap in them game worlds now and have been since the 8-bit era. The games that stood out by immersing us despite the limitations of technology were usually the ones which were lovingly crafted. very possibly. time and effort makes a good product quick and dirty makes a poor product, despite the availability of more advanced technologies. like, many old games did fairly well even with few pixels to work with, and even a fairly high-resolution texture can still look terrible. say, a 512x512 canvas doesn't mean some quick-and-dirty passes with an airbrush and paint-can tool and throwing some emboss at it will look good. with some time and practice though, it gets a little easier to start making artwork that looks more passable. otherwise: I was left idly imagining the possibility of using a good old scripting language (probably BGBScript in my case) to assist in building worlds. say, higher level API commands can be added to the mapper, so I can issue commands like build a room here with these textures and dimensions or generate some terrain over there as API calls or similar. loops or functions could also generate things like stairs and similar, ... then, it can partly be a process of writing scripts, invoking them in the mapper, and optionally saving out the results if it looks about like what was being hoping for (maybe followed by some amount of manual fine tuning...). similarly, the commands would probably be usable from the console as well (as-is, BGBScript code can already be entered interactively at the console), in addition to the existing GUI-based mapping interface. probably the underlying world structure would remain being built out of entities, convex polyhedrons (brushes), Bezier patches, and polygon meshes. (unlike some other ideas, this wouldn't drastically change how my engine works, or even require redesigning/recreating my tools...). sorry if all this is a bother to anyone, being solidly not really about programming per-se... From: BGBcr88...@gmail.com To: Fundamentals of New Computingfonc@vpri.org Sent: Tuesday, 17 January 2012, 3:31 Subject: Re: [fonc] Inspired 3D Worlds 8 these would generally be created manually, by placing every object and piece of geometry visible in the world, but this is fairly effort-intensive, and simply running head first into it tends to quickly drain my motivation (resulting in me producing worlds which look like big boxes with some random crap in them). 8 ___ fonc mailing list fonc@vpri.org http://vpri.org/mailman/listinfo/fonc ___ fonc mailing list fonc@vpri.org http://vpri.org/mailman/listinfo/fonc
