[Verse-dev] Update and verse related game development.

[Amir Taaki]

Good luck on this ambitions project! Credit for going for the gold! :D

On 9/9/07, eskil at obsession.se <eskil at obsession.se> wrote:
>
> Hi
>
> Ive been very busy, doing mostly traveling. I want to tank every one
> who made the Siggraph Verse BOF such a great success and also give a
> special thanks to the Crystal space crew for the cool verse demo in
> Lipzig. So for the last year or so I have been working on game
> pipeline related technology using verse, you may have seen the demo I
> did together with Sony at GDC, where we showed verse running on the
> PS3 and the Collada exporter, and later I released the verse export
> tool-kit. So while working in this I have also been working in secret
> on a game using all this technology, and to use as a test platform for
> all kinds of new ideas. Leipzig was the first time it was shown in
> public, and you may have seen the screen shots at quelsolaar.com. The
> entire pipeline for the game is built around verse, and I obviously
> use verse enabled tools to create content for it. The engine can
> connect to a verse server so that you can edit objects WYSIWYG in any
> verse tool and see them in the game engine (much like you can in
> Crystal space).
>
> So a little about the game:
>
> The idea is to create a story based game, but not one where the game
> tells a story but rather on where the game together with the player
> creates a story. Many games today say they are very dynamic and "its
> different every time you play" but this is only in the micro
> perspective, you still have missions, objectives, levels and a story
> and cut scenes. So in a macro perspective it is very structured.
>
> So what we are trying to do is a macro perspective that is much more
> like an RTS game. In a RTS one of your resources may be attacked, and
> then it is up to you to go and defend it or suffer the consequences.
> Imagine building a game and balance it so that the CPU side sometimes
> wins and sometimes looses battles, but neither side ever wins or
> looses the war, then you have an infinite game that ebbs and flows. So
> as a player, the adventure is created by engaging in the events going
> on around the player. You are thrown straight in to the story, and
> what you do will influence the story to come.
>
> The engine has a very novel terrain technology that makes it possible
> to modify the ground simply by pulling it, but rather then just a
> height field you can also build cliffs, dungeons, houses and bridges
> with it. It truly Is a sand box engine, but it is not designed to be a
> sand box game for the players, but rather for the game itself. The
> game can change the environment to constantly give players new things
> to do. The goal is to make players so engaged in the progression of
> events that they wont have time to monkey around. By using procedural
> technology the game can generate dungeons, strong holds, turn cities
> in to ruins, and create endless things for the player to explore.
> Since we can generate as much content as we want, players don't have
> to ever play the same thing twice. Old content will turn in to ruins
> and give the world a sense of history. You may play one day and then
> check in 2 days later only to find that the city you started building
> has grown, a new dam has been built and that the enemy tower is in
> ruins. It is almost like a soap opera that constantly moves forward.
>
> Love is a networked game and you have around 400 players registered to
> each server and maybe around 100 players online at any time. This
> small scale game means that you can get to know most people and make a
> real impact. Say you have a stronghold of the AI enemy that keeps
> sending out enemies and it takes two full days until a player finally
> manages to destroy it (possibly by a series of tasks like finding weak
> spots, gathering right tools, keys and weapons), then the ruins of the
> strong hold will be named after the player and other players who come
> to this place will recognize the significance of the player. In a
> sense we are building characters and story, not threw skill points and
> written story but threw real game play.
>
> The game play will actually be very simple and almost old School
> comprising of first person action and adventuring. All players are on
> the same side and play against AI enemies. Although one idea is lets
> some players act as "Dungeon keepers". One of the key goals is to get
> away form statistics menus and character building. The players should
> rather focus on the environment as that is something that can be
> enjoyed by other players too. While most MMO games are fairly Casual
> in their play style they are very hardcore in the amount of time they
> take to play. Love looks to reverse this and make it more skill based,
> but something that can be enjoyed in short 15 minutes breaks for
> people (like me, I'm sure you have noticed) who don't have a lot of
> time to invest. In the game you don't hut for items, but rather makers
> of items, once a player have gotten the Build-BFG-machine and placed
> in a city, all players in the city can get a BFG. This communal
> sharing is also strengthens the collaborative side of the game and
> means that players who only play occasionally have access to the same
> things as the people who invest more time. Also the player who can
> bring in the cool stuff becomes more significant story wise.
>
> The goal is not just to explore new game play, but also make some
> radical changes to how games are developed. In fact this entire
> project is kind of ridiculous in terms of development: I'm trying to
> develop a AAA game (Who knows what AAA, means but its a FPS with
> impressive graphics, and that usually does it), with no real staff,
> in-house engine, with a full in-house pipeline (Modeling is done in
> Loq Airou) and with a quicker turnaround compared to other games. So
> how is this done? Most things are procedurally generated, but they are
> augmented by hand edited details. These hand edited details are
> automatically added to the the environment. So by modeling a tree and
> giving it to the engine the engine can take that tree, randomize it
> and merge it in to the environment to build entire forests form a
> single tree mesh.
>
> The current state of the development, is that many of the basic
> systems are completed, like networking, user database, terrain
> generation, terrain management, collision detection, animated time of
> day, wind simulation, cloth simulation, Physics simulation, ray
> casting and much more. Currently I'm working on the character
> generation and animation system. It is fully procedural system car can
> create all kinds of characters and creatures and animate them. Some of
> the advantages of using a procedural IK character system is that
> characters can interact better with the environment, like placing a
> foot on terrain, grabbing things and transition between many different
> movements. This system is roughly 60% complete, The goal is to begin a
> closed on-line beta test late this year.
>
> If you have questions about the game that is verse related, you may
> ask them here, but please if you just want to ask something about the
> game, try to keep the non verse related stuff off the list, Thanks
>
> Cheers
>
> E
>
>
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