On 8/24/2011 7:47 AM, David Barbour wrote:
FWIW, the notion of 'game engine as platform' for UI is certainly
worth exploring. And a lot of good UI concepts can be taken from games.
I like the idea of users having an 'inventory' of objects that
determine the context for context-menus, for example. Sort of: if you
see a door, the options you have to interact with it depend on whether
you carry the key. But users should be able to 'pick up' any concept
they encounter, not just items of a game world. They could pick up the
door, for example, then open it later when they find the key. The
inventory is simply full of object references.
This is similar to the 'Hand vs. Pointer' concept. A hand can pick
things up. We can modify our hand by picking up 'tools'. Rather than
drag-and-drop, we can have grab-and-apply. We could cycle through a
few hands for basic multi-tasking (as opposed to losing the mouse
'selection' every time we change tasks).
I do not believe a rich, game-like 3D world is the right way to
present a UI. 3D tends to be sparse of useful information, and tends
to occlude, unless that information is a 3D model of an actual
artifact or location. But it may be a useful concept for arranging
artifacts, or browsing objects, with automatic layouts (from queries
and searches) supporting dense information in a predictable way. I am
very interested in zoomable UIs.
well, granted, I wasn't thinking of a 3D engine as a "OS-like platform
for managing ones' files and emails", but more like if there were a
semi-unified, and freely available, platform for the development of 3D
worlds (say, if there were something sort of like "second-life" but not
owned by anyone, but more like an open-source platform).
there would not be any centralized source or content-provider, and
doesn't mandate distributing both the engine and game contents as a
single package (common practice at this point). so, effectively, "a
game" and "a mod" are not all that different (potentially, they would be
distributed as "packages", sort of like is common with OS's like Linux).
better yet if it allows both commercial and non-commercial usage (more
like a generic browser or OS), rather than mandating particular
licensing terms (GPL or similar would itself restrict freedom of usage).
assuming the availability of freely-available content, then the barrier
to entry can also be likely much reduced, so that the "freedom of
expression" is more freely available to everyone (rather than having a
presently very large barrier to entry, in the form of a general lack of
freely usable contents, such as 3D models, "stock characters",
sound-effects, artwork, ...).
also, ideally, content shouldn't be "pushed in ones' face" either, as is
generally the case in things like traditional MMOs, ...
maybe also sort of like Valve's Source/Steam system, but also all
open-source.
but, what prompted this was partly this paper:
http://www.quaddicted.com/quake/Tronyn-QuakeTalk.pdf
which led to some looking around and thinking, and then the original
post went over really badly...
granted, yes, even for all it has done, Quake has still fallen short,
and lacks much "common content" beyond its original (and still
technically proprietary) game data. most later open-source efforts have
thus been very fragmentary, still often have to recreate all their data
from the ground up, ...
but, granted, maybe none of this is really relevant here...
Regards,
Dave
On Wed, Aug 24, 2011 at 1:17 AM, BGB <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
On 8/24/2011 1:00 AM, Julian Leviston wrote:
Hi,
On 24/08/2011, at 5:36 PM, BGB wrote:
ok, yeah, this is a little awkward, as my way of seeing things I
think tends to be a little more "here and now", like the "pink
plane" in the video linked to with Alan talking about things
(started trying to write a response about this video before, but
came to the opinion that my response was lame, so didn't bother
sending it, but it was still an interesting video).
The pink plane is a plane of understanding as far as I'm aware.
As in, pink thoughts are thoughts that are qualitatively
different (ie in a different dimension) from the every day run of
the mill "ordinary" blue plane thoughts. Perhaps I've
misunderstood this idea. I don't specifically know what you're
talking about, but pink plane vs blue plane - I'm fairly sure -
is the same idea that I'm referencing (it is, after all, in the
VPRI logo).
well, I meant in the video, but in the video I think it was the
pink plane which was "run of the mill" / "here and now" and "blue
plane" which was novel/innovative.
either way, which color is which is probably not a critical issue...
but, I think this was a reference to Apple, which AFAIK had done
things like this:
Blue=features which can be done now;
Pink=features which may take a little later (I think this imploded
in their ill-fated "Copeland" project);
Red="pie in the sky" ideas.
If you were talking about gaming engines that managed to allow
you to build entirely new worlds in a fundamental way (ie
platforms or worlds), this would indubitably be the domain of
this work, IMHO.
I sort of meant the original topic as in the context of "game
engines as platforms", but more in the sense that, to some extent,
the Quake engine is looking like it may just be such a "platform",
considering the original game was sold in 1996, and 15 years
later, there is still a reasonably alive community of people
building new games on it.
granted, yes, it hasn't really (yet?) reached the level of what
such a platform would ideally be (essentially, being free of
borders or ownership, and essentially ubiquitous and similar...).
like, an open gaming platform free of vendor lock-in and licensing
fees (so it is more like an OS and less like an application), or
similar...
The pink plane isn't really about here and now aside from the
fact that the understanding has to occur here and now in order
for the "future" to manifest... like a flash of understanding -
it never comes out of some mechanistic or inevitably mechanical
process. It usually comes from a combining of things from other
domains to allow a flash-understanding that was not previously
possible given the "meanderings" one had had before.
fair enough...
For example, the idea of simply building a cruft-free "everything
in its place" base level operating system and object system using
the "obvious" choice of mathematics as the base language... the
idea of - rather than fight the programming language "wars" -
embracing ALL languages as possible and valid (because it's more
real), and continuing along that path - and seeing where it takes
us... of experimenting with very powerful ideas... and finding
out just what is possible... how far these ideas can take us...
THIS is the domain of the FONC project, IMHO.
yes, ok, makes sense...
so, one could instead deal with more conceptual/hypothetical
matters like, say, "what if I had a microchip in my hat that
allowed be to watch youtube videos while still looking like I
was watching the teacher?..." well, maybe, never-mind the
ethical question of trying to look like one is paying attention
when really they are watching "teh ponies" or reading posts on
4chan or similar, vs the more honest option of just pulling out
a laptop and headphones, or trying to pay attention.
Erm, no this is not "right", not as far as I'm aware.
FUNDAMENTALS/FOUNDATIONS is an important idea here.
I was trying here to come up with an example of being
novel/original, but sort of failed at it...
I just sort of pulled a few random ideas from the air and tried to
put them together as an example of being novel (hence the
disclaimer that it was for illustration purposes only).
as noted, creativity isn't really my strong area...
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