On Sat, 10 Nov 2007 20:30:07 +0100 Cyrille.Damez@laposte.net wrote:
Some procedural graphics are used in some games.
Have you seen .the.product ?
There's is no better example than the work of Farbrausch Group imho ( .the.product, .kkrieger, .debris). Their first person shooter occupies 97kB without a single bitmap texture, mesh or sampled sound. It's entirely procedural, a true synthetic world with everything generated at runtime as needed. I think some of this demoscene crew then went on to work on Spore.
but I guess I am kind of frustrated that there isn't more widespread use of procedural techniques in computer games than a couple techniques invented in the 80s. Change is coming though, but it is not coming fast enough to my taste ;)
You and me both in our respective fields. The video game business has become really quite conservative, but these things move in cycles.
The advantages of procedural techniques aren't limited to topology issues. The ever increasing size of assets (geometry, textures, etc.) in computer games is becoming very difficult to manage (during development, for distribution, and most of all when playing because of bandwith problems). Procedural techniques offer an elegant solution to these issues.
Exactly. I've mentioned this on numerous occasions in talks and papers. Sound is particularly relevant because it has a high order polynomial (potentially worst case factorial) growth for asset/world size. Procedural audio solves this nicely ;) Another advantage in terms of development is automatic generation of content, freeing the sound designer up to do what their real (human) talents are best at, focussing on key sounds to hand craft.