The first thing I found out about today is a game called No Man's Sky. I'll admit, their website doesn't show a whole lot, but they demonstrated their game engine at VGX earlier this month. The premise of the game is exploring a universe. Fairly simple start, but the thing about it is that the entire universe is procedurally-generated, supposedly from the atom all the way up to galaxies. The following video gives a glimpse of the power of this engine and an idea of the gameplay.
And how awesome does that look? Oceans, creatures, plants, terrain, space, everything procedurally generated and waiting to be explored. The creators claim that every star that you see is a real object, complete with the possibility of having planets, moons, and things to discover. Most space games use a skybox (a cube of images) set at a sort of maximum distance from the camera to give the illusion of infinite space. This game actually seems to be able to make the illusion real.
How about that scene near the end where he blasts a hole in that asteroid and flies through? In reference to my post from a few days ago, that is definitely one of the things I would like to be able to do when I play a video game of that particular genre.
The second thing I found from a comment that someone left about No Man's Sky is a tech company called I-Novae, who claim, rather boldly, that "The only boundary is your imagination". Apparently they've been around for a few years developing a game engine to, once again, procedurally generate enormous game environments. Take a gander:
This is their most recent post, but I-Novae has quite a few more videos on their Youtube page. They've been working on this engine for a long time, and they're getting ready to launch a Kickstarter campaign to get funding for their game Infinity: Battlescape. Their goal is to build a persistent universe online, and the game will bring players into this universe. This means that everyone that plays the game will be in the same universe.
I've been looking for something like this for quite some time. One of the things that bothers me about most MMORPGs like World of Warcraft and Lord of the Rings Online is that, especially at the early stages, the game feels like a single-player game. You follow a storyline that contains elements that should be unique, yet every other player is going through the same story. For example, I've played MMOs where you have to go collect the plants to create the medicine for some sick important person. As soon as you do that, he gets better, gives you cool stuff, and you go on your way. If you happen to look back, you'll see another dozen players collecting the same plants for the same sick person and receiving the same thanks and reward. With normal single-player games you know every other player is going through the same story, but at least there's a bit of pretense to try and make you feel like you're the only one. MMOs bother me because, by and large, they haven't been able to let go of the trappings of single-player-ness to fully embrace the possibilities of the medium.
Now, with games like No Man's Sky and Infinity: Battlescape, there will finally be a feeling of truly entering a realistic world where your actions have a unique effect. The ability to explore, find new things, new areas, new regions of space? So cool.
I leave you with some screenshots from I-Novae's game engine. Keep in mind that these images are completely computer-generated from an algorithm, not from a model that someone made manually.
Enjoy!
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