so if future graphics cards plan to have voxel based rendering in the hardware then over time it would become a win for voxel but at this time it is not because the hardware isnt processing voxel...correct?
I dont doubt that what I read is accurate. Namely because its easily understood. ALL things, voxel or otherwise, are easier to process now then they were 10 years ago. Is that enough to be the sudden interest in voxel by many developers? I dont know but it does appear to be happening
Most things are easier to process now than 10 years ago, but not necessarily everything. A few years ago, Tom's Hardware tested modern video cards against a card from 1998 in various 2D things--things that modern cards aren't optmized for. Sometimes the modern cards won handily. Sometimes the older card was competitive. In one test, the older card completely destroyed everything else.
Even among modern cards, the results weren't always what one might intuitively expect. Sometimes a high end card was vastly faster than a low end card of the same architecture; other times, there wasn't much difference between the low end and the high end. Sometimes Nvidia completely destroyed AMD or the other way around.
What computer chips do is to implement a handful of instructions directly in silicon, and then emulate everything else. Something integrated directly in silicon will tend to be vastly faster than something emulated from other operations.
For example, if you want to compute the product of two 64-bit integers and then take the result modulo 2^64, a modern desktop or laptop CPU can do this very, very fast. If you want it modulo some odd number slightly less than 2^64, it will take several times as long. Even computing the result modulo 2^63 rather than 2^64 will be slower because there's an extra operation. You can compute the product modulo 3^40 if you want to, but it's much slower.
If CPU designers decided that doing multiplication modulo 3^40 (as opposed to modulo other numbers) was extremely important, they could implement something to speed this particular operation up greatly in future CPUs. There are a lot of cases of something kind of like this actually happening. A 32-bit CPU can do multiplication modulo 2^64, but it's much slower than a 64-bit CPU. In 2010, Intel created AES-NI instructions to do AES encryption very fast, and suddenly their CPUs were about 10 times as fast at AES than before. This made such an enormous difference that a lowly tablet chip with AES-NI will probably be faster at AES than a heavily overclocked Core i7-960 or Phenom II X6 1090T--both still capable desktop gaming processors, even today.
Part of designing a chip is choosing which operations you're going to implement directly in silicon. CPUs have a ton of operations implemented directly, as they have a lot of die space and only need a few cores. The x86 CPU with the most cores on a single die ever made has 15 of them--and pricing starts at over $4000 for a CPU.
But high end GPUs need thousands of shaders to be competitive. Modern AMD integrated graphics has as many as 512 shaders; both AMD and Nvidia will sell you a GPU with more than 2800. That means vastly fewer transistors available per "core"--which necessarily means far fewer instructions in each core. GPUs can only implement a handful of things in every single shader, and other instructions need to be either emulated or only available in a relative handful of shaders.
I haven't implemented voxels myself, so I don't know exactly what sort of instructions they tend to need, nor how SIMD-friendly the code is or how much it needs branching. GPUs are very, very heavily optimized for 32-bit floating point FMA done in a SIMD faction with no branching and no memory accesses. Multiplying very large matrices of 32-bit floating point numbers is perhaps the ideal use case that GPUs will fly at. Change 32-bit to 64-bit, floating point to integer, FMA to transcendentals, do something not SIMD-friendly, or rely on heavy branching and performance drops off in a hurry.
Now, that's not to say that you can't do the other stuff. You can do a little bit of the other things without completely killing your performance, and games do. But adding more instructions means bigger shaders, and that means you can have fewer of them--which harms performance in everything that doesn't use the new instructions. If there were some instruction that would double performance in voxel games at the expense of everything else being 5% slower, would you add it? (There probably isn't any particular instruction that critical to voxels that could be added.)
But it's not just about shader instructions. GPUs have a bunch of different types of things, with TMUs, ROPs, and memory controllers the other main units that you have more of in a high end GPU. The relative number of these things is one of the design choices in making GPUs; for example, Radeon HD 4000 series cards went with about 20 shaders per TMU while GeForce 9000 series cards went with about 2. This meant that AMD would win handily in games that relied heavily on shader computations as opposed to texture access, while Nvidia would win handily in the opposite scenario. Games ended up going toward the former, which meant AMD won the generation and Nvidia subsequently had to focus on more shaders rather than more TMUs.
There are also wires to move data from one unit to another as efficiently as possible. And the way things are wired is very much optimized for pushing things through the standard graphics pipeline as used for rasterization. Notably, it's exactly the same pipeline for OpenGL as for DirectX; the different APIs just have different names for the same thing at some places.
Most voxel games probably cram things into the traditional graphics pipeline. If the game is using OpenGL or Direct3D, it absolutely has to do this. I know that Minecraft does, for example. The only real alternative that lets you use the GPU at all is OpenCL--at least if you don't consider CUDA a serious alternative, which I don't. But that means you give up a lot of graphics optimization in silicon.
There has been a general positive trend towards solo-centric game play in mmo's over the last decade or so. You are no longer required to spend long minutes putting call-outs on general chat to complete content, or to socialise unnecessarily in order to achieve the game's goals. You can simply solo your way through content, and if a group is required you can just jump onto a group finder and allow the game to do the socialising on your behalf.
For me this stream-lining of group content towards solo-play has had a positive affect on the mmo genre. In order for the genre to remain healthy, I would argue that the natural evolution would be the removal of other players from the game entirely. Only by doing this can you prevent other players from interrupting the levelling process. In fact I would argue that the removal of other players from mmo's is entirely necessary to keep the mmo alive as a genre.
Please share your thoughts.
to me this is everything wrong with mmo gamers and mmo games now
Playing: Smite, Marvel Heroes Played: Nexus:Kingdom of the Winds, Everquest, DAoC, Everquest 2, WoW, Matrix Online, Vangaurd, SWG, DDO, EVE, Fallen Earth, LoTRo, CoX, Champions Online, WAR, Darkfall, Mortal Online, Guild Wars, Rift, Tera, Aion, AoC, Gods and Heroes, DCUO, FF14, TSW, SWTOR, GW2, Wildstar, ESO, ArcheAge Waiting On: Nothing. Mmorpg's are dead.
I believe sandbox + procedurally generated content. MMORPG's engines that are more module to allow for more flexibility and sharing. Getting those tools out will change how things are done.
Originally posted by FoomerangI can see level based progression being phased out for more achievement based progression.
It would make a lot more sense to build your game like that. There would be so many advantages and any real negative is already in the current system.
Mmos are so achievement oriented anyways especially at endgame. Its getting to the point that levels are just a barrier to what people really want to accomplish.
I think you struck gold here Foomerang...
Just what do people really want to accomplish? I suspect it's not what they currently do in games as that is more or less your only choice. Kill boss. Get ranked. Whatever. These are all things the developer trains us to want to accomplish. If given a world with zero direction whatsoever, chaotic as it may seem, would they "choose" to do any of those things normally spoon fed to them in other games?
Originally posted by Vermillion_Raventhal I believe sandbox + procedurally generated content. MMORPG's engines that are more module to allow for more flexibility and sharing. Getting those tools out will change how things are done.
I was kind of surprised that we hit 2014 without those being a lot more common than they are. One of the biggest obstacles is the fear of peen. I'm serious. There isn't a single brainstorming meeting or discussion that I have been in on the topic where Time to Peen (TTP) - not if, but when - isn't brought up as a concern.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein "Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
Originally posted by FoomerangI can see level based progression being phased out for more achievement based progression.
It would make a lot more sense to build your game like that. There would be so many advantages and any real negative is already in the current system.
Mmos are so achievement oriented anyways especially at endgame. Its getting to the point that levels are just a barrier to what people really want to accomplish.
I think you struck gold here Foomerang...
Just what do people really want to accomplish?
One example would be PVP, which is why some games have detached the PVP progression system from the PvE system. Some examples of different ways it has been done can be seen in Guild Wars (yes... yes... it's not an MMO), LOTRO, Guild Wars 2, and Elder Scrolls Online.
Some really like the raiding aspect of MMOs, and the sooner they get up to the level of the raid content the better. Leveling becomes even more of an unwanted barrier when it comes to creating alts or rerolls to try a different role in the raid content. RIFT took a very interesting approach to that, and newer MMOs also try to make their classes flexible enough to let people switch between two or more roles without having to level up a whole new character to do so. Wildstar is an example of that, where you can swap out gear, AMPS (role bonuses) and other aspects of your character two switch relatively quickly between two different roles.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein "Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
2 has been so busy chasing yellow markers that does not pay attention to what is actually happening.
1 is obvious,if you want to remove other players and solo,don'tr bother playing a mmo and wasting your money on internet.
2 If you pay attention at all,you would have noticed you WASTE a LOT of time running around looking for that next yellow marker and running back n forth turning them in.That time in total probably surpasses any time setting up a group.
There is one other factor,just because developers are too dumb to create better grouping mechanics,does not mean it is a waste of time system.We have already seen ideas that help like mentoring or ques ues to auto group.There are other ideas that can speed this up as well and i mentioned one many years ago.
soloing or grouping is NOT an evolution in gaming it is just a simplistic LAZY way for developers to just make use of single player gaming without the added effort of making a true MMORPG.All they do is make the single player game add internet and create co-op play to take down Raids,really a slack effort to calling yourself a MMORPG.
BTW the next evolution is probably going to involve a few things we are already seeing,added ways to bring 3d into the game with headsets and other peripherals.Another evolution would be to try and eliminate the need to make a low end game to cater to a bigger audience by utilizing Cloud structure gaming.The third and more obvious evolution will be player created content example sort of what EQ Landmark is doing.One other evolution is still slow in taking shape and that is advanced physics,developers are still making very low end games in the rpg market,that is where CLOUD gaming off of master computers can make a difference.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
Originally posted by Vermillion_Raventhal I believe sandbox + procedurally generated content. MMORPG's engines that are more module to allow for more flexibility and sharing. Getting those tools out will change how things are done.
I was kind of surprised that we hit 2014 without those being a lot more common than they are. One of the biggest obstacles is the fear of peen. I'm serious. There isn't a single brainstorming meeting or discussion that I have been in on the topic where Time to Peen (TTP) - not if, but when - isn't brought up as a concern.
That's one of those things dependent upon programmer cleverness (and perhaps studio willing to take risks) rather than hardware capabilities. If you want to do procedurally generated graphics, then tessellation is a huge help, as it basically amounts to procedurally generated vertex data done on the GPU. But for procedurally generated anything else (maps, mob placement, mob strength/skills, loot, AI, quests, etc.), is there anything that can be done today that couldn't be done ten years ago? Is there anything even meaningfully easier to do today than it was ten years ago?
There has been a general positive trend towards solo-centric game play in mmo's over the last decade or so. You are no longer required to spend long minutes putting call-outs on general chat to complete content, or to socialise unnecessarily in order to achieve the game's goals. You can simply solo your way through content, and if a group is required you can just jump onto a group finder and allow the game to do the socialising on your behalf.
For me this stream-lining of group content towards solo-play has had a positive affect on the mmo genre. In order for the genre to remain healthy, I would argue that the natural evolution would be the removal of other players from the game entirely. Only by doing this can you prevent other players from interrupting the levelling process. In fact I would argue that the removal of other players from mmo's is entirely necessary to keep the mmo alive as a genre.
Please share your thoughts.
The next evolution of MMOs are already here. People are just too closed-minded to accept them yet.
Hybridization is the new status quo of MMO gaming. We are quickly moving away from purist MMO designs (like the pure themepark, or the pure sandbox, or the pure RPG, etc etc.) The lines are getting blurred, and with it what constitutes an MMO. We have things like MOBAs, we have FPS-MMOs, we have sandpark and themebox. We have mixed business models, and a variety of themes from traditional fantasy to sci-fi, to sports.
In short, 'MMO' is moving away from being its own genre, and being treated more like a technological evolution of gaming. We will still have virtual worlds, but they won't all be trying to emulate EQ.
Originally posted by Foobarx Originally posted by FoomerangOriginally posted by DamonVileOriginally posted by FoomerangI can see level based progression being phased out for more achievement based progression.
It would make a lot more sense to build your game like that. There would be so many advantages and any real negative is already in the current system.Mmos are so achievement oriented anyways especially at endgame. Its getting to the point that levels are just a barrier to what people really want to accomplish.I think you struck gold here Foomerang...
Just what do people really want to accomplish? I suspect it's not what they currently do in games as that is more or less your only choice. Kill boss. Get ranked. Whatever. These are all things the developer trains us to want to accomplish. If given a world with zero direction whatsoever, chaotic as it may seem, would they "choose" to do any of those things normally spoon fed to them in other games?
I think an mmo's core function is to create a shared experience that everyone around you is both a witness to, and responsible for. And the vessel for that shared experience is a character that we venture through the various types of content that the developers create. The more varied and involved the content is, the more opportunities for us to interact, create a history, and have something we can take away from a video game that we feel has value on a more intrinsic level.
Originally posted by FoomerangI can see level based progression being phased out for more achievement based progression.
It would make a lot more sense to build your game like that. There would be so many advantages and any real negative is already in the current system.
Mmos are so achievement oriented anyways especially at endgame. Its getting to the point that levels are just a barrier to what people really want to accomplish.
I think you struck gold here Foomerang...
Just what do people really want to accomplish? I suspect it's not what they currently do in games as that is more or less your only choice. Kill boss. Get ranked. Whatever. These are all things the developer trains us to want to accomplish. If given a world with zero direction whatsoever, chaotic as it may seem, would they "choose" to do any of those things normally spoon fed to them in other games?
I think an mmo's core function is to create a shared experience that everyone around you is both a witness to, and responsible for. And the vessel for that shared experience is a character that we venture through the various types of content that the developers create. The more varied and involved the content is, the more opportunities for us to interact, create a history, and have something we can take away from a video game that we feel has value on a more intrinsic level.
But thats just me.
I like where you went with that. +1
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein "Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
I think voxels bring some unique design concepts to video games. But there are way more impacting game designs that will push the genre forward that have nothing to do with graphics. Voxel games may play host to innovative game designs just like any other graphical vehicle.
Xenoblade is a single player rpg that would have made a wonderful MMO. If you want to play a single player good MMO, play it.
Still ridiculous...
Playing an MMO has NEVER meant grouping. This is proven. But still we see this garbage.Solo play has NEVER hurt an MMO. Except in the eyes of fragile little snowflakes that think we all have to be in groups.
Playing an MMO might not mean grouping but playing a good MMO means grouping.
Solo play in an MMO is just ridiculous........get a bunch of people in a single world to play alone. Ridiculous. And Absurd.
"good" is subjective.
So I just played 15 min of Marvel Heroes solo ... "ridiculous" to you .. fun for me. Is there a reason I should stop just because some random dude on the internet disagree on how I should use an entertainment product? Now THAT is ridiculous.
Just because something is subjective is no argument for or against it.
There is nothing ridiculous about playing 15 minutes of Marvel Heroes solo. Don't put words in my mouth.
Xenoblade is a single player rpg that would have made a wonderful MMO. If you want to play a single player good MMO, play it.
Still ridiculous...
Playing an MMO has NEVER meant grouping. This is proven. But still we see this garbage.Solo play has NEVER hurt an MMO. Except in the eyes of fragile little snowflakes that think we all have to be in groups.
Playing an MMO might not mean grouping but playing a good MMO means grouping.
Solo play in an MMO is just ridiculous........get a bunch of people in a single world to play alone. Ridiculous. And Absurd.
"good" is subjective.
So I just played 15 min of Marvel Heroes solo ... "ridiculous" to you .. fun for me. Is there a reason I should stop just because some random dude on the internet disagree on how I should use an entertainment product? Now THAT is ridiculous.
Just because something is subjective is no argument for or against it.
There is nothing ridiculous about playing 15 minutes of Marvel Heroes solo. Don't put words in my mouth.
I can't address the rest of what you said.
Wait .. you said "solo play is an MMO is just ridiculous" and now "there is nothing ridiculous about play 15 min of Marvel heroes solo".
Since MH is a MMO, you are contradicting yourself. Are you taking back your earlier statement or you are just content with being inconsistent?
Fantastical stories in realistic (as in consistent within the desired construct) and interactive environments filled with NPC's and other people that are indistinguishable.
I see EQN being a big step in the right direction and really hope the future of MMORPG's keeps heading that way.
Xenoblade is a single player rpg that would have made a wonderful MMO. If you want to play a single player good MMO, play it.
Still ridiculous...
Playing an MMO has NEVER meant grouping. This is proven. But still we see this garbage.Solo play has NEVER hurt an MMO. Except in the eyes of fragile little snowflakes that think we all have to be in groups.
Playing an MMO might not mean grouping but playing a good MMO means grouping.
Solo play in an MMO is just ridiculous........get a bunch of people in a single world to play alone. Ridiculous. And Absurd.
"good" is subjective.
So I just played 15 min of Marvel Heroes solo ... "ridiculous" to you .. fun for me. Is there a reason I should stop just because some random dude on the internet disagree on how I should use an entertainment product? Now THAT is ridiculous.
Just because something is subjective is no argument for or against it.
There is nothing ridiculous about playing 15 minutes of Marvel Heroes solo. Don't put words in my mouth.
I can't address the rest of what you said.
Wait .. you said "solo play is an MMO is just ridiculous" and now "there is nothing ridiculous about play 15 min of Marvel heroes solo".
Since MH is a MMO, you are contradicting yourself. Are you taking back your earlier statement or you are just content with being inconsistent?
Originally posted by Datawarlock Next big trend after this current single player MMO stuff will be people getting even lazier and paying subs to login and read an update of how the game played itself that day.
Obviously you haven't seen Farmville, as this already happens. People log in, check out how their farm is doing, pick grown vegetables, plant some more, then log off and go back the next day to see if their new plants have grown. And some people pay money for this so they can have a better looking farm. So much entertainment...
Originally posted by Datawarlock Next big trend after this current single player MMO stuff will be people getting even lazier and paying subs to login and read an update of how the game played itself that day.
Obviously you haven't seen Farmville, as this already happens. People log in, check out how their farm is doing, pick grown vegetables, plant some more, then log off and go back the next day to see if their new plants have grown. And some people pay money for this so they can have a better looking farm. So much entertainment...
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein "Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
I think voxels bring some unique design concepts to video games. But there are way more impacting game designs that will push the genre forward that have nothing to do with graphics. Voxel games may play host to innovative game designs just like any other graphical vehicle.
could be true.
what I was struggling with yesterday was to find a 'feature list' (lack of a better word) of voxel compared to traditional approaches.
I mean just because most voxel games are build and destroyable doesnt mean traditional approaches arent either so I was trying to find that kind of information and I couldnt
Another trend that I think COULD be very helpful for game devs as well as us is cross gaming. Like DUST is to EvE.
Please do not respond to me, even if I ask you a question, its rhetorical.
I think the future will be a blurring of the lines of different types of mmo's. You'll have al sorts of different systems meshed into one game, such as systems from MMO-fps, MMO-RPG, MMO-Sims etc.. I also think there will be greater choice, as all of these different MMO's come out, lose half the player base in 3 months, I think there will be another push to make games that will actually grab players attention for longer, so a larger return on dev/publishers investments.
I think that with the blurring of the lines, you will see a lot of games that don't really play like any other game while you see other games very similar. I think some games will come out with actual grouping as the main progression. Some that will have soloing the main progression, some with crafting etc etc. I think that the genre will turn more niche, and provide a lot of very different style games.
Although, when did MOBA's become MMO's? They are completely different, I don't think they should be considered MMO's at all, but just my opinion.
I think voxels bring some unique design concepts to video games. But there are way more impacting game designs that will push the genre forward that have nothing to do with graphics. Voxel games may play host to innovative game designs just like any other graphical vehicle. could be true.
what I was struggling with yesterday was to find a 'feature list' (lack of a better word) of voxel compared to traditional approaches.
I mean just because most voxel games are build and destroyable doesnt mean traditional approaches arent either so I was trying to find that kind of information and I couldnt
Another trend that I think COULD be very helpful for game devs as well as us is cross gaming. Like DUST is to EvE.
The Division is going to have players on a tablet doing aerial support while pc/console players are on the ground. Could be interesting.
Comments
Most things are easier to process now than 10 years ago, but not necessarily everything. A few years ago, Tom's Hardware tested modern video cards against a card from 1998 in various 2D things--things that modern cards aren't optmized for. Sometimes the modern cards won handily. Sometimes the older card was competitive. In one test, the older card completely destroyed everything else.
Even among modern cards, the results weren't always what one might intuitively expect. Sometimes a high end card was vastly faster than a low end card of the same architecture; other times, there wasn't much difference between the low end and the high end. Sometimes Nvidia completely destroyed AMD or the other way around.
What computer chips do is to implement a handful of instructions directly in silicon, and then emulate everything else. Something integrated directly in silicon will tend to be vastly faster than something emulated from other operations.
For example, if you want to compute the product of two 64-bit integers and then take the result modulo 2^64, a modern desktop or laptop CPU can do this very, very fast. If you want it modulo some odd number slightly less than 2^64, it will take several times as long. Even computing the result modulo 2^63 rather than 2^64 will be slower because there's an extra operation. You can compute the product modulo 3^40 if you want to, but it's much slower.
If CPU designers decided that doing multiplication modulo 3^40 (as opposed to modulo other numbers) was extremely important, they could implement something to speed this particular operation up greatly in future CPUs. There are a lot of cases of something kind of like this actually happening. A 32-bit CPU can do multiplication modulo 2^64, but it's much slower than a 64-bit CPU. In 2010, Intel created AES-NI instructions to do AES encryption very fast, and suddenly their CPUs were about 10 times as fast at AES than before. This made such an enormous difference that a lowly tablet chip with AES-NI will probably be faster at AES than a heavily overclocked Core i7-960 or Phenom II X6 1090T--both still capable desktop gaming processors, even today.
Part of designing a chip is choosing which operations you're going to implement directly in silicon. CPUs have a ton of operations implemented directly, as they have a lot of die space and only need a few cores. The x86 CPU with the most cores on a single die ever made has 15 of them--and pricing starts at over $4000 for a CPU.
But high end GPUs need thousands of shaders to be competitive. Modern AMD integrated graphics has as many as 512 shaders; both AMD and Nvidia will sell you a GPU with more than 2800. That means vastly fewer transistors available per "core"--which necessarily means far fewer instructions in each core. GPUs can only implement a handful of things in every single shader, and other instructions need to be either emulated or only available in a relative handful of shaders.
I haven't implemented voxels myself, so I don't know exactly what sort of instructions they tend to need, nor how SIMD-friendly the code is or how much it needs branching. GPUs are very, very heavily optimized for 32-bit floating point FMA done in a SIMD faction with no branching and no memory accesses. Multiplying very large matrices of 32-bit floating point numbers is perhaps the ideal use case that GPUs will fly at. Change 32-bit to 64-bit, floating point to integer, FMA to transcendentals, do something not SIMD-friendly, or rely on heavy branching and performance drops off in a hurry.
Now, that's not to say that you can't do the other stuff. You can do a little bit of the other things without completely killing your performance, and games do. But adding more instructions means bigger shaders, and that means you can have fewer of them--which harms performance in everything that doesn't use the new instructions. If there were some instruction that would double performance in voxel games at the expense of everything else being 5% slower, would you add it? (There probably isn't any particular instruction that critical to voxels that could be added.)
But it's not just about shader instructions. GPUs have a bunch of different types of things, with TMUs, ROPs, and memory controllers the other main units that you have more of in a high end GPU. The relative number of these things is one of the design choices in making GPUs; for example, Radeon HD 4000 series cards went with about 20 shaders per TMU while GeForce 9000 series cards went with about 2. This meant that AMD would win handily in games that relied heavily on shader computations as opposed to texture access, while Nvidia would win handily in the opposite scenario. Games ended up going toward the former, which meant AMD won the generation and Nvidia subsequently had to focus on more shaders rather than more TMUs.
There are also wires to move data from one unit to another as efficiently as possible. And the way things are wired is very much optimized for pushing things through the standard graphics pipeline as used for rasterization. Notably, it's exactly the same pipeline for OpenGL as for DirectX; the different APIs just have different names for the same thing at some places.
Most voxel games probably cram things into the traditional graphics pipeline. If the game is using OpenGL or Direct3D, it absolutely has to do this. I know that Minecraft does, for example. The only real alternative that lets you use the GPU at all is OpenCL--at least if you don't consider CUDA a serious alternative, which I don't. But that means you give up a lot of graphics optimization in silicon.
to me this is everything wrong with mmo gamers and mmo games now
Playing: Smite, Marvel Heroes
Played: Nexus:Kingdom of the Winds, Everquest, DAoC, Everquest 2, WoW, Matrix Online, Vangaurd, SWG, DDO, EVE, Fallen Earth, LoTRo, CoX, Champions Online, WAR, Darkfall, Mortal Online, Guild Wars, Rift, Tera, Aion, AoC, Gods and Heroes, DCUO, FF14, TSW, SWTOR, GW2, Wildstar, ESO, ArcheAge
Waiting On: Nothing. Mmorpg's are dead.
I think you struck gold here Foomerang...
Just what do people really want to accomplish? I suspect it's not what they currently do in games as that is more or less your only choice. Kill boss. Get ranked. Whatever. These are all things the developer trains us to want to accomplish. If given a world with zero direction whatsoever, chaotic as it may seem, would they "choose" to do any of those things normally spoon fed to them in other games?
I was kind of surprised that we hit 2014 without those being a lot more common than they are. One of the biggest obstacles is the fear of peen. I'm serious. There isn't a single brainstorming meeting or discussion that I have been in on the topic where Time to Peen (TTP) - not if, but when - isn't brought up as a concern.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
One example would be PVP, which is why some games have detached the PVP progression system from the PvE system. Some examples of different ways it has been done can be seen in Guild Wars (yes... yes... it's not an MMO), LOTRO, Guild Wars 2, and Elder Scrolls Online.
Some really like the raiding aspect of MMOs, and the sooner they get up to the level of the raid content the better. Leveling becomes even more of an unwanted barrier when it comes to creating alts or rerolls to try a different role in the raid content. RIFT took a very interesting approach to that, and newer MMOs also try to make their classes flexible enough to let people switch between two or more roles without having to level up a whole new character to do so. Wildstar is an example of that, where you can swap out gear, AMPS (role bonuses) and other aspects of your character two switch relatively quickly between two different roles.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
I would say this....
Anyone who thinks soloing is better ..
1 misses the point of a MMO
2 has been so busy chasing yellow markers that does not pay attention to what is actually happening.
1 is obvious,if you want to remove other players and solo,don'tr bother playing a mmo and wasting your money on internet.
2 If you pay attention at all,you would have noticed you WASTE a LOT of time running around looking for that next yellow marker and running back n forth turning them in.That time in total probably surpasses any time setting up a group.
There is one other factor,just because developers are too dumb to create better grouping mechanics,does not mean it is a waste of time system.We have already seen ideas that help like mentoring or ques ues to auto group.There are other ideas that can speed this up as well and i mentioned one many years ago.
soloing or grouping is NOT an evolution in gaming it is just a simplistic LAZY way for developers to just make use of single player gaming without the added effort of making a true MMORPG.All they do is make the single player game add internet and create co-op play to take down Raids,really a slack effort to calling yourself a MMORPG.
BTW the next evolution is probably going to involve a few things we are already seeing,added ways to bring 3d into the game with headsets and other peripherals.Another evolution would be to try and eliminate the need to make a low end game to cater to a bigger audience by utilizing Cloud structure gaming.The third and more obvious evolution will be player created content example sort of what EQ Landmark is doing.One other evolution is still slow in taking shape and that is advanced physics,developers are still making very low end games in the rpg market,that is where CLOUD gaming off of master computers can make a difference.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
That's one of those things dependent upon programmer cleverness (and perhaps studio willing to take risks) rather than hardware capabilities. If you want to do procedurally generated graphics, then tessellation is a huge help, as it basically amounts to procedurally generated vertex data done on the GPU. But for procedurally generated anything else (maps, mob placement, mob strength/skills, loot, AI, quests, etc.), is there anything that can be done today that couldn't be done ten years ago? Is there anything even meaningfully easier to do today than it was ten years ago?
The next evolution of MMOs are already here. People are just too closed-minded to accept them yet.
Hybridization is the new status quo of MMO gaming. We are quickly moving away from purist MMO designs (like the pure themepark, or the pure sandbox, or the pure RPG, etc etc.) The lines are getting blurred, and with it what constitutes an MMO. We have things like MOBAs, we have FPS-MMOs, we have sandpark and themebox. We have mixed business models, and a variety of themes from traditional fantasy to sci-fi, to sports.
In short, 'MMO' is moving away from being its own genre, and being treated more like a technological evolution of gaming. We will still have virtual worlds, but they won't all be trying to emulate EQ.
Mmos are so achievement oriented anyways especially at endgame. Its getting to the point that levels are just a barrier to what people really want to accomplish.
I think you struck gold here Foomerang...
Just what do people really want to accomplish? I suspect it's not what they currently do in games as that is more or less your only choice. Kill boss. Get ranked. Whatever. These are all things the developer trains us to want to accomplish. If given a world with zero direction whatsoever, chaotic as it may seem, would they "choose" to do any of those things normally spoon fed to them in other games?
I think an mmo's core function is to create a shared experience that everyone around you is both a witness to, and responsible for. And the vessel for that shared experience is a character that we venture through the various types of content that the developers create. The more varied and involved the content is, the more opportunities for us to interact, create a history, and have something we can take away from a video game that we feel has value on a more intrinsic level.
But thats just me.
I like where you went with that. +1
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
interesting article about voxel
http://www.ngrain.com/why-voxels-are-the-next-big-thing-in-graphics/
Please do not respond to me, even if I ask you a question, its rhetorical.
Please do not respond to me
I think voxels bring some unique design concepts to video games. But there are way more impacting game designs that will push the genre forward that have nothing to do with graphics. Voxel games may play host to innovative game designs just like any other graphical vehicle.
Just because something is subjective is no argument for or against it.
There is nothing ridiculous about playing 15 minutes of Marvel Heroes solo. Don't put words in my mouth.
I can't address the rest of what you said.
Wait .. you said "solo play is an MMO is just ridiculous" and now "there is nothing ridiculous about play 15 min of Marvel heroes solo".
Since MH is a MMO, you are contradicting yourself. Are you taking back your earlier statement or you are just content with being inconsistent?
Where do I hope MMORPG's are going?
Fantastical stories in realistic (as in consistent within the desired construct) and interactive environments filled with NPC's and other people that are indistinguishable.
I see EQN being a big step in the right direction and really hope the future of MMORPG's keeps heading that way.
It's 15 minutes. Holy Cow. Stop being ridiculous
So logic does not apply here? Did you or did you not contradict yourself? I think that is a very simple question.
Obviously you haven't seen Farmville, as this already happens. People log in, check out how their farm is doing, pick grown vegetables, plant some more, then log off and go back the next day to see if their new plants have grown. And some people pay money for this so they can have a better looking farm. So much entertainment...
Progress Quest was ahead of its time.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
could be true.
what I was struggling with yesterday was to find a 'feature list' (lack of a better word) of voxel compared to traditional approaches.
I mean just because most voxel games are build and destroyable doesnt mean traditional approaches arent either so I was trying to find that kind of information and I couldnt
Another trend that I think COULD be very helpful for game devs as well as us is cross gaming. Like DUST is to EvE.
Please do not respond to me, even if I ask you a question, its rhetorical.
Please do not respond to me
I think the future will be a blurring of the lines of different types of mmo's. You'll have al sorts of different systems meshed into one game, such as systems from MMO-fps, MMO-RPG, MMO-Sims etc.. I also think there will be greater choice, as all of these different MMO's come out, lose half the player base in 3 months, I think there will be another push to make games that will actually grab players attention for longer, so a larger return on dev/publishers investments.
I think that with the blurring of the lines, you will see a lot of games that don't really play like any other game while you see other games very similar. I think some games will come out with actual grouping as the main progression. Some that will have soloing the main progression, some with crafting etc etc. I think that the genre will turn more niche, and provide a lot of very different style games.
Although, when did MOBA's become MMO's? They are completely different, I don't think they should be considered MMO's at all, but just my opinion.
when most industrial research firm put them in the MMO category.
could be true.
what I was struggling with yesterday was to find a 'feature list' (lack of a better word) of voxel compared to traditional approaches.
I mean just because most voxel games are build and destroyable doesnt mean traditional approaches arent either so I was trying to find that kind of information and I couldnt
Another trend that I think COULD be very helpful for game devs as well as us is cross gaming. Like DUST is to EvE.
The Division is going to have players on a tablet doing aerial support while pc/console players are on the ground. Could be interesting.