People are basically trying to simulate what they think is reality, which is the physical universe.
In the old days when computer games started out, there was almost no effort to make a game look and act like it's part of a generalized physics model. There were gross inconsistencies in how things interact and pretty much every interaction was hand-coded or set up as an animation sequence which `seemed to suggest` that there is `realistic` interaction going on. The main player character would have its own control system, detecting the environment and triggering off certain anim sequences or movements based on user input. There was almost no actual real physics calculations and often even gravity was a made up response. Objects in the game interacted just because a special case scenario had been programmed to allow that interaction.
Then over time we are gradually moving away from having to specially hardcode each and every interaction, to coming up with a more fundamental underlying `science` of objects being made of smaller and smaller parts, and interacting according to a set of global rules - ie physics. This way the interactions don't have to be pre thought out or pre animated or have a special set of animations coded for them. Now you can just throw a ball into an arena and see it bounce off whatever it hits, whereas before maybe the ball didn't even have acceleration or gravity or even look like it really was a ball. That trend of moving to a generalized physics system is still underway and it is still early days.
The physical universe is all made up of heaps of tiny particles and it's because everything starts out so tiny that you can have so much variety and so many configurations that are all still governed by the same single set of rules. It's all the same physics, from a very low level upwards. We are still reaching down to smaller and deeper levels of physics simulation in games and bounding rigid bodies/boxes/polygons is still very primitive.
In future I think people will keep moving in this direction, and will start to use ideas such as objects being made of different materials, of having chemical reactions to each other, of there being different kinds of interactions and bonds and even the highly complex yet underlyingly simple foundation of `genetics` and lifeforms. Deformability won't be the latest buzzword once you have `objects` interacting at a particulate level of detail and with more properties than just spacial relations.
The reason I'm talking about this topic, which seems to be about physics and low-level simulations of interactions, is because it is and will be the foundation of an `engine` that would allow for a massive amount of diversity in the creation of player content. It allows a huge variety of possibilities more than just blobby-object modelled unrealistic looking crazy lifeforms with snap-on arms and legs, like some digital barbie doll, which is what spore basically is.
The move they've made with that game is a move toward having a lower-level of interaction based on object parts that can be put together rather than the player only dealing with already full `assembled` objects. It's just a move towards having a game world where the fundamental building blocks are small enough to allow creative variety. And regardless of what they claim for numbers of possibilities, I'm sure there is still a LOT that you cannot create with it because the `resolution` of subtle differences is not high enough.
We're going to see games starting to have physics engines, chemistry engines, material properties, biology, etc. Although physics has the current wow factor it is really the easiest and most obvious of the aspects of physical reality to model. It is much much more complex to push back the barrier of rigid bodies or deformable bodies or mass springs etc to the point where physics begins to blend with chemistry, where interaction spacially has an impact on and is dependent on a whole variety of other interactive factors, which only the much higher level lead to a huge amount of versatility.
The thing is though you can't have the average player with an average amount of awareness and only a small limited control system be responsible for building and maintaining all the limitless nuances of an entire universe. This is where things then start to become limited, not by what you can do in your simulation but by what the user is even capable of controlling or wanting to control. To increase their `potential` would be to ask that they expand as a conscious being and at the moment most people are not into that. They have to be given limitations and boundaries and guidelines and a story and told where to sh** and what to say and when. People are robots with limited control. So while you can give them this wide open universe of possible creation, it's just a huge meaningless canvas without imposing limitation on it or forcing a story or creating obstacles and challenges. That said, maybe such a universe also automatically creates such things. :-)
I'm working on using physics and chemistry simulation in a game, which sounds advanced and is, but even that falls way short as it's a very primitive version of it and I'm still glossing over a whole load of realism, leaving the rest to interpretation. Spore has an `idea` of genetics and growth and creativity, but I still think it has a LONG way to go.
I think what we're also going to see in the future, since creating a universe out of small pieces by hand is far too time consuming and complicated (you'd have to be a scientist!), I think we will begin to see `modelling tools` that are much more advanced than just blobby object modelling. ie growing things with genetics, objects that you pick some characteristics of and it generates the entire structure with fractals, etc, maybe even something holographic. Fun!
In the old days when computer games started out, there was almost no effort to make a game look and act like it's part of a generalized physics model. There were gross inconsistencies in how things interact and pretty much every interaction was hand-coded or set up as an animation sequence which `seemed to suggest` that there is `realistic` interaction going on. The main player character would have its own control system, detecting the environment and triggering off certain anim sequences or movements based on user input. There was almost no actual real physics calculations and often even gravity was a made up response. Objects in the game interacted just because a special case scenario had been programmed to allow that interaction.
Then over time we are gradually moving away from having to specially hardcode each and every interaction, to coming up with a more fundamental underlying `science` of objects being made of smaller and smaller parts, and interacting according to a set of global rules - ie physics. This way the interactions don't have to be pre thought out or pre animated or have a special set of animations coded for them. Now you can just throw a ball into an arena and see it bounce off whatever it hits, whereas before maybe the ball didn't even have acceleration or gravity or even look like it really was a ball. That trend of moving to a generalized physics system is still underway and it is still early days.
The physical universe is all made up of heaps of tiny particles and it's because everything starts out so tiny that you can have so much variety and so many configurations that are all still governed by the same single set of rules. It's all the same physics, from a very low level upwards. We are still reaching down to smaller and deeper levels of physics simulation in games and bounding rigid bodies/boxes/polygons is still very primitive.
In future I think people will keep moving in this direction, and will start to use ideas such as objects being made of different materials, of having chemical reactions to each other, of there being different kinds of interactions and bonds and even the highly complex yet underlyingly simple foundation of `genetics` and lifeforms. Deformability won't be the latest buzzword once you have `objects` interacting at a particulate level of detail and with more properties than just spacial relations.
The reason I'm talking about this topic, which seems to be about physics and low-level simulations of interactions, is because it is and will be the foundation of an `engine` that would allow for a massive amount of diversity in the creation of player content. It allows a huge variety of possibilities more than just blobby-object modelled unrealistic looking crazy lifeforms with snap-on arms and legs, like some digital barbie doll, which is what spore basically is.
The move they've made with that game is a move toward having a lower-level of interaction based on object parts that can be put together rather than the player only dealing with already full `assembled` objects. It's just a move towards having a game world where the fundamental building blocks are small enough to allow creative variety. And regardless of what they claim for numbers of possibilities, I'm sure there is still a LOT that you cannot create with it because the `resolution` of subtle differences is not high enough.
We're going to see games starting to have physics engines, chemistry engines, material properties, biology, etc. Although physics has the current wow factor it is really the easiest and most obvious of the aspects of physical reality to model. It is much much more complex to push back the barrier of rigid bodies or deformable bodies or mass springs etc to the point where physics begins to blend with chemistry, where interaction spacially has an impact on and is dependent on a whole variety of other interactive factors, which only the much higher level lead to a huge amount of versatility.
The thing is though you can't have the average player with an average amount of awareness and only a small limited control system be responsible for building and maintaining all the limitless nuances of an entire universe. This is where things then start to become limited, not by what you can do in your simulation but by what the user is even capable of controlling or wanting to control. To increase their `potential` would be to ask that they expand as a conscious being and at the moment most people are not into that. They have to be given limitations and boundaries and guidelines and a story and told where to sh** and what to say and when. People are robots with limited control. So while you can give them this wide open universe of possible creation, it's just a huge meaningless canvas without imposing limitation on it or forcing a story or creating obstacles and challenges. That said, maybe such a universe also automatically creates such things. :-)
I'm working on using physics and chemistry simulation in a game, which sounds advanced and is, but even that falls way short as it's a very primitive version of it and I'm still glossing over a whole load of realism, leaving the rest to interpretation. Spore has an `idea` of genetics and growth and creativity, but I still think it has a LONG way to go.
I think what we're also going to see in the future, since creating a universe out of small pieces by hand is far too time consuming and complicated (you'd have to be a scientist!), I think we will begin to see `modelling tools` that are much more advanced than just blobby object modelling. ie growing things with genetics, objects that you pick some characteristics of and it generates the entire structure with fractals, etc, maybe even something holographic. Fun!