procedural generation
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Cyberpunk 2077's dialogue was lip-synced by AI
Procedural generation provides accurate animations for 10 languages.
'West of Dead' is a fast-paced shooter starring Ron Perlman
After it popped up in the Microsoft Store perhaps a little earlier than intended, twin-stick shooter West of Dead is available in open beta on Xbox One. You'll play as the Ghost Rider-esque William Mason, who's voiced by Ron Perlman of Hellboy and Sons of Anarchy fame.
E3 2014: No Man's Sky gets a new trailer
Procedurally generated space exploration sandbox No Man's Sky resurfaced at E3 yesterday with a new trailer and a commitment to launching first on the PlayStation 4. The sci-fi title blew us away late last year with its first trailer, and even though it probably won't fit everyone's definition of an MMO, we're keeping tabs on it due to its multiplayer ripple effect and its vast gameplay space. You can watch the new clip after the break!
Roberts praises Oculus-Facebook deal, says Star Citizen will remain independent
Star Citizen topped $41 million in crowdfunding yesterday, and Cloud Imperium boss Chris Roberts penned a new Letter from the Chairman as a result. The latest stretch goal unlocked the procedural generation R&D team, but perhaps more notably it served as an opportunity for Roberts to weigh in on the Oculus-Facebook debate and reassure Star Citizen fans of the game's independence. Roberts explained how Facebook's investment will help defer the obscene manufacturing and supply chain costs involved in bringing new hardware to the mass market. He also pointed out that Star Citizen features none of those costs, so there's no desire to sell to a larger firm. "We don't need to go to anyone with deep pockets to make our dream a reality," Roberts wrote. "Luckily our ships are digital so we have hardly any cost of goods, just the cost of developing the universe of Star Citizen and running servers that Star Citizen's universe will be simulated on. Thanks to the generosity of the Star Citizen community we have these two things covered."
EVE Evolved: Designing EVE Onland, part 2
When it comes to living sandbox MMOs, there really isn't a bigger name than EVE Online. Throughout its decade-long history, EVE has produced some huge gaming headlines, delivered record-breaking in-game thefts and heists, and played host to the complex political machinations of dozens of warring alliances. EVE's sandbox design has even made it remarkably resistant to changes in the market, with subscription numbers remaining relatively stable in the face of new releases and the free to play phenomenon. It comes as no surprise then that the sandbox genre is seeing a triple-A revival, with games like Star Citizen, EverQuest Next Landmark, and Camelot Unchained on the way. With the sandbox genre due to explode back onto the fantasy scene, I've been left wondering how much of the core gameplay that makes EVE tick could be easily adapted for an avatar-based game on land. Even features such as EVE Online's trademark territorial warfare and player-run economy have roots in classic fantasy MMOs like Ultima Online, so they should be easy to convert to modern fantasy equivalents. Last week I started this game design thought experiment with a territorial warfare system and free-for-all PvP with harsh consequences for attackers, but there's a lot more to a good sandbox than smashing people's heads in. In this week's EVE Evolved, I delve into the hypothetical world of EVE Onland again and tackle issues of realistic world scale, exploration, economics, and the evils of global banking.
No Man's Sky might not be an MMO, but it's certainly a close cousin
Science fiction has always been about a sense of wonder, but a lot of the time that sense of wonder takes a back seat to enormous spaceships blowing one another to pieces. That's all well and good, but it's not what No Man's Sky is aiming for. The game is meant to be about exploring a strange and vast universe of procedurally generated planets. In a move that should excite MMO fans, the game will apparently include a shared playing space for everyone. The game at its heart features a shared space for all players, with the impact of one person's actions having a ripple effect. What form of interactions you'll be able to have remains to be seen, but the developers behind the game want to offer the idea that pure exploration is a dangerous and hostile affair in environments that may not welcome you. As the game progresses through development, we'll be keeping an eye on it, since the idea of a pseudo-MMO allowing you to trek across the endless darkness of space and interact with others is a heady once -- even if your interactions are only through the consequences of the other person's passing. [We've now added the trailer after the cut.]
MMO sandbox TUG launches its Kickstarter
If you're the sort of sandbox aficionado who's more into crafting and exploration than griefing, then this post is for you. Brand-new to Kickstarter today is an MMO called, well, The Untitled Game, or TUG for short. Inspired by the likes of Minecraft, Zelda, and EVE Online, TUG promises an immersion-driven, "massive procedurally generated world to explore" along with such features as combat, crafting, building, an organic UI, modding tools, hidden civilizations, animal taming, "logic engineering," day/season cycles, realistic weights, support for roleplayers, and no DRM. Like rival Shroud of the Avatar, TUG will be playable solo, on a private server, and on the official MMO server. Developer Nerd Kingdom styles itself as "a collective of scientists, researchers, technologists, economists, content creators, artists, modders, and gamers from a variety of disciplines and backgrounds" with a "deep passion for the nerdery of academic sciences, art, and technology," but in spite of its academic background, the studio promises a survival sandbox/multiplayer RPG hybrid without all the associated spreadsheets and number-crunching. The game is targeting 2015 for launch with an alpha this coming July; the digital download edition of the game can be secured for as little as 10 bucks on Kickstarter now. See whether the videos behind the break don't convince you.
Infinity update talks 2012 progress, Battlescape Kickstarter
The Infinity website has updated with a lengthy blog post detailing the state of the project. It also fleshes out some details on its upcoming crowdfunding drive. What's Infinity? It's a vast sci-fi sandbox with seamless planetary-to-space transitions and a persistent, procedurally generated universe, among other things. The indie dev team has been working on the project for a number of years now, and it has managed to release a well-received tech demo and a rather spectacular atmospheric flight test. The lack of news updates throughout most of 2012 was apparently due to a substantial amount of work being done on under-the-hood quality and performance issues. As for an Infinity Kickstarter, it's coming (but not before mid-2013). The preliminary details include a standalone called Infinity: Battlescape which is basically a successor to Infinity's 2007 combat prototype. The game will focus on multiplayer combat, it will feature the seamless planetary engine, and it will likely take place in a single solar system. While some in the Infinity community have expressed indifference with crowdfunding a game that isn't the full Infinity project, I-Novae Studios says that Battlescape is more like "a first step to the whole MMO that will be marketed independently even though it shares a lot of content and code."
David Braben is kickstarting a new multiplayer Elite sequel
Elite and its sequel Frontier: Elite II were arguably two of the most influential early space games ever made. They dropped the player into an immense sci-fi sandbox with just a tiny ship and a handful of credits. You could work your way up to larger and larger hauling ships, fight off pirates intent on taking your loot, travel the stars in search of lucrative deals or just wormhole into deep space. If that sounds familiar, it's because Elite was part of the inspiration for sci-fi MMO EVE Online. Space in Frontier was especially deep, with a full-scale galaxy containing 100 billion stars and several empires with their own legal systems and trading outposts. Players could choose to raid other ships or play it straight, mining moons, scooping fuel from gas giants, and landing on planets to survey them for materials. The magic that made this colossal universe possible was procedural generation and some incredibly good programming by developer David Braben. Today David took to Kickstarter to launch possibly the most anticipated sequel in the history of sci-fi sandbox games. Elite: Dangerous promises a Frontier-style sandbox with modern 3D graphics, a ton more content, and a seamless peer-to-peer multiplayer experience with no lobbies. Whether this will qualify as an MMO or not remains to be seen, but the project promises to blur the line between what is and isn't massively multiplayer.
EVE Evolved: Graphical upgrades for EVE Online
Some time ago, I looked at the different graphical updates EVE Online has received over the years and what was to come. The ship graphics were renovated years ago with the Trinity expansion and much of the rest of the game was left looking dated in comparison. The Apocrypha expansion picked up on the upgrades where Trinity left off, with re-developments of asteroid graphics and most of the game's special effects. Future updates were planned, with promises of bringing new life to planets and everything else that hasn't been improved. With the Dominion expansion on the horizon, it now seems that those promises are being fulfilled. We've seen new planet graphics and even shiny new starfields on the test server but are there other parts of the game that could benefit more from a graphical overhaul?In this short opinion piece, I take a quick look at the graphical overhauls that are coming with the Dominion expansion and ask which other aspects of EVE's graphics are long overdue for an upgrade.
Anti-Aliased: What is Love?
So what is love? That's certainly the metaphysical question of the ages, isn't it? Is it simply an attraction to another gender, or is it a deep bond between two people that goes beyond mere friendship, and more into the realm of headbanging, suit and sunglasses wearing pride? Do I have the authority to take on questions such as this in my editorial column?Heck no! That's why we're going to spend this week talking about Eskil Steenberg's indie-MMO, Love! We've been covering Love extensively this week, announcing that the alpha was available and showing off some really beautiful in-game footage. But, even with all of that, we never got into the meat of the game. What is Love about? What do you do in it? Why is it so special to us on the Massively staff?Those questions and more will be answered in this week's edition. So come on in, the Love is great!
LOVE creator Eskil Steenberg on how his game differs from other MMOs
It would be an understatement to say we're excited about the upcoming massively multiplayer online game titled LOVE, and we've certainly given the title some mention here in the past. It's an MMO being developed by one person, Eskil Steenberg, featuring a rather unique art style and some interesting gameplay elements. We're always looking out for more info about the title and came across an interview with Steenberg conducted by Phill Cameron from Gamasutra, just before the LOVE creator's Independent Games Summit lecture at GDC 2009. Steenberg discusses his choice to adopt procedural generation for LOVE, which was actually the only way forward on this project. "Working alone, you simply just can't build a massive world all by yourself, so you need to do something smarter," he says. "Given that I am forced to solve this problem, I get some added bonuses like being able to constantly generate new content while the game is running." Steenberg points out another benefit to this type of game design."As it turns out I think this could be the key to gaming in the future, as the game is able to develop and change in response to the player's actions," he says. "Rather then having a few binary plot choices, the world becomes far more dynamic and responsive to your actions."
XBLA 50MB limit inspires innovation
What the geek raised an interesting question yesterday: is the 50MB size limit for Xbox Live Arcade games a bad thing? The first and obvious answer is yes. After all, more space equates to bigger, better games, right? Conventionally, the idea makes sense. Look deeper though, and the question isn't quite so cut and dry. Yes, developers can do more with more space, but constraining their space forces them to find ways around it. Look at a game like RoboBlitz. It runs on the Unreal Engine and squeezes in under 50MB. What the Geek cites procedural generation as the next big thing in game design, and we have to agree. Honestly, it's something we've put some thought into recently.
