Okay, I don't know if anybody here knows about this, but a company called Ageia (http://ageia), formerly responsible for making 3dfx cards, is currently working on technology that will revolutionize the world of gaming: physics cards. Now, before anyone has a fit ("Graphics and physics don't matter. It's the gameplay that counts!"), I would like you to consider what a physics card can do. If you think hard enough, you'd realize that a physics card can do a lot more than just blow up boxes and airplanes. A physics card can simulate a key unlocking a door, a hand picking up an object, a crowbar breaking into a car, and virtually just about anything possible. But what's the catch? We've obviously been able to do that in games before, right? Well, the difference is this: the physics card simulates a game's possiblities based on physical attributes of its objects, rather than its pre-scripted programming. That means you spend less time programming obvious outcomes, and more time working on aspects such as behavorial outcomes. Most of us may recall how Fate of Atlantis allowed Indy to take 3 seperate paths (fists, wits, or team up.) New physics card would allow adventure gaming to take place on a much higher level... where the possiblities are endless.
Now some of you may say, well... what if I didn't want a key to turn the door? What if I wanted that key to fly away? Easy. You would give the key attributes of a bird, for instance, and then you would determine its behavior as a bird-like object. Some of you may argue that the idea sounds far-fetched, and that the physics card alone will not offer such powerful features, but I can tell you this: in time, the physics card will offer adventure gamers just about everything they ever dreamed of. With the right software and a just little bit of creativity, anyone will be make take their dreams of the wildest adventures a possiblity. Thus, the physics card will revolutionize the world of adventure gaming.
Here are some demos which demonstrate the mere beginning of this physics card revolution:
http://www.ageia.com/press/press4.html
Granted, some of you may not be impressed ("Bah. These physics suck,")Ã, but I'm here to tell those of you that you should re-evaluate what you see in these demos. These simple demos are just the beginning... they are the product of a pre-Quake gfx card, so to speak. Today the demonstration of a simple plane crash, tomorrow the backbone of every great adventure game.
Quote
Gaming will never be the same with AGEIA PhysX Processor. Bridging the gap between beautiful static worlds and responsive physical reality, AGEIA PhysX technologies enable unlimited creative possibilities for game developers. The result will re-ignite the enthusiasm of gamer and game creators alike, and propel the game industry into unexplored new markets. Experience the world of pervasive interactive reality with PhysX technologies.
- AGIEA
I use this physics engine every day (though the fluid simulation part isn't available to the public yet), using it in my game.Ã, The physics card should increase the complexity of scenes we can do by a lot, I am not sure if it'll take off, but it could, it has the patronage of Epic, for the Unreal 3 engine.Ã, Increasing CPU speeds will have a similar effect, anyway, it'll just take a bit longer.
You point out a lot of the interesting things about physics for adventures, I think the main hurdle is giving players an easy way to interact with physics objects.Ã, With current interfaces it'd be quite hard to bend a paperclip into a lock pick, for example.Ã, I'm sure it can be done with some thought, though.
For anyone interested in attempting these things, the PhysX engine (previously, and to coders still known as NovodeX) is available free for non commercial use, for a physics engine it's pretty simple and nice to use.Ã, The best one I've used.
A physics card might not be really necessary for adventure game type puzzles, sure you could make very complicated physics set ups, but generally in an adventure game scene 99% of the objects are going to be sitting still at any point in time, so you could have the character manipulating very complex stuff with little CPU usage.
Phlpppt is what I say to you. A whole lot of Ppphhhllllppppttt with my tongue spraying wonderful juices, droplets spattering your cheek. There's a physics demonstration for you.
Granted, physics can add a lot to the gameplay, but there comes a point where their usage is so heavy-handed that ruins the immersion more than the lack of physics. I found them very engrossing in Half-Life 2 but only one more slap across the face from the steaming pile that was Deus Ex: Invisible War.
Physical approximation is only one small aspect of the experience. We actually need a whole new chunk of hardware for this? Another item that'll need constant expensive upgrading like Video cards and sound cards. Recall, please, that sound cards were on the verge of dying simply because it was easier to offload the calculations to the CPU. The CPU usage of a dedicated sound card isn't much lower than that off an onboard solution using CPU calculations.
The more specialized our add-ons get, the less useful they become. We need a physics card about as much as we need an AI-specific card.
Tests utilizing ATI's newest card for physics calculations (similar calculations to applying pixel-shaders due to the calcs performed as functions in matrices) showed it performing far better when dedicated to this task than modern CPUs, partially due to its speedy memory controller. So, why would we want another add-in card rather than utilizing the greater resources available to us on our current upgrade paths? The only real reason I'd want a physic's card to handle a portion of calculations would be so I'd have some damned use for those extra PCI-e slots.
QuoteYou point out a lot of the interesting things about physics for adventures, I think the main hurdle is giving players an easy way to interact with physics objects.Ã, With current interfaces it'd be quite hard to bend a paperclip into a lock pick, for example.Ã, I'm sure it can be done with some thought, though.
Interesting that you mention that. I never really considered that until now. I mean, such fine physical manipulation would require a completely new interface that is far from the customary. I can barely imagine using my mouse to bend a paper clip with virtual fingers. I might suggest the data glove (http://www.vrealities.com/glove.html) technology but I'm not entirely certain how well that would work, since I'm not familiar with this technology.Ã, Another possibility could be to incorporate AI into the interface, where the main character is verbally controlled (the user could input “bend paper clip.â€)Ã, Of course, this would essentially be the equivalent of a text adventure game taken to the next level. Other than those two interfaces, I really can't fathom any other possibilities. Well, I take that back. There is that one device, the Nintendo “Revolution†Controller (http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/yabb/index.php?topic=22665.0) that could be the key to certain physical manipulations in a 3d world, but I'm still not entirely certain how this could be applied to bending a paper clip.
Pfffft. Adventure-gamers. Give them ultra-realistic environmental conditions, unlitited interaction, games so real you can - and will - sweat as your own adrenalin triggers, and they want to bend paperclips. :=
Physics is of no importance to adventure games, a detective adventure game will be good only if you can smell where a corpse was dumped!
Quote from: Risk on Mon 10/10/2005 04:23:21
A physics card can simulate a key unlocking a door, a hand picking up an object, a crowbar breaking into a car, and virtually just about anything possible.
I enjoyed your enthusiasm, but adventure games are about
narrative. Physics simulation is irrelevant. I can't imagine an adventure game fan saying, "Yeah, the story was weak, but check out that hyper-realistic key-in-lock action!"
For a long time now books have featured doors being unlocked, cars being jimmied, and objects being picked up. They haven't ever needed a physics engine.
In your opinion.
For some people adventure games are also about solving puzzles. For some it's more about solving puzzles.
more direct physical interaction excites me regardless of the game genre. Adventure games are about a lot of things and that doesn't say much by itself. Narrative? sure. But even a mudane use object on x type of puzzle can be spiced up with physics. Is this bad?
To agree with Helm and make an obvious joke about him being excited over physics [insert joke] is where I point out the best part of Half Life 2... getting the batteries for the generator... Too bad it was so damned easy... Extremely simple "get x use y" but in my opinion the world interaction and physics made it seem... fresh.
I originally had written 'more direct physical interaction gives me a huge boner' for what it's worth
I've spoken to Helm about this a lot, and it's clear the main reason he wants physics in adventure games is to throw stuff at the npcs, just to piss them off.
"throw stuff at npcs" well yeah... I guess that includes what I had in mind in a way
I read the topic but... I still don't understand what the hell everyone is talking about. These are ... cards? Like for a computer? You... put them into the computer? Different ones? Or just one?
Then... it... makes it.. so that... I don't even know. How can this affect what programming goes into your game? I don't understand. How could it affect your graphics and scripting to make things more complex?
God, I hate technology.
As I understand it, it leaves the calculating of the physics calculations to the physics card, so that the gfx card can focus on rendering the graphics.
Kinoko, perhaps you should just sink back into your cushions, close your eyes, and forget about it.
So, I reckon therefore it's like the math coprocessor, only taking up an entire card rather than just a chip within a card.
I was thinking, as I read this, something that no one else seemed to say, at least not in a straightforward fashion: this could make it so that games weren't at all about "use x on y" puzzles... at all..
If they decided to make a door in a game that had a specific key to open it, and you had earlier used that key to throw through a window to break it so you could unlock it, you could open this door by taking a piece of broken glass and slipping it between the doorjamb to jimmie the lock. If a game had real time physics, anything would go. Rather than having to do the puzzle exactly as the programmers designed it, I wouldn't have to sit around and go "dammit! what do they want from me, blood?" I could just, instead, come up with some totally original thing to do that would work because the game works like the real world. If I couldn't reach a window, rather than looking for the complimentary movable crate, I could rather knock down a pile of barrels and climb on them instead.
The only trouble would be, as has been said, getting the character to take the action you have in mind. However, once he could... say, for instance, by using virtual reality gloves or something, anything could work.
However, that would suck, because you could very conceivably win the game in eight seconds. Take for example, Quest for Glory 2. (I think it was 2)... "You wanna play Mancala with me, friggin' lion? Well, since I can do what I want, I'm gonna ram this Mancala board up your..."
ummmm... Okay. I really didn't like that lion guy...
Yeah, basically it is like a math coprocessor, designed for the sort of vector and matrix operations that physics uses. I am not sure if many people would want to buy a card purely for physics, but I can imagine a future where motherboards have some general purpose vector processors like these on them, something like the PS3 has, with its 8 "cell" coprocessors, these could be used for speeding up lot of things besides physics. In interviews I've seen the makers of the physx card mention that they are going to/would like to see the features built in to motherboards.
And Kinoko, like a 3d graphics card doesn't make any difference to how fast Monkey Island plays, and doesn't render it suddenly in pixel shaded 3d, a physics card won't make your current game scripting and physics any more complex. It's just a processor that new games can take advantage of to do things that were too slow before, aimed at physics calculations.
Aaahhhh, I get it now - it's kinda like the difference between plugins and script modules, yes?
Like putting too much air in a balloon!
(Sorry ^_^ Futurama)
Quote from: Rui "Brisby" Pires (a Furry) on Wed 12/10/2005 10:09:21
Aaahhhh, I get it now - it's kinda like the difference between plugins and script modules, yes?
At last I got it too.
Ok. This sounds amazing I have to say! So many possibilities. It doesn't have to work on adventure games it can work any way. Lets keep an open mind...
Yep, I have it now too. Eureka!
Quote from: Kinoko on Wed 12/10/2005 11:13:16
Yep, I have it now too. Eureka!
* Nikolas claps his hands *
I have to admit that at first I thought that it was something like Pokemon (Don't kill me please), or something like magic (games with cards...)
heh ;D
We have been discussing HL2 puzzle solving before and the phrase that will bleed in my cornias is this:
"Imagine taking a coin, and trying to unscrew some screws with it but it wont fit. Then whacking it repeatedly with a smiths hammer so it got thinner. Right, now you can unscrew those screws."
Needless to say, I'm paraphrasing, but I think the general idea of it came through. The cool part is that you could basically take any piece of scrap metal to make a primitive screwdriver.
But physics sschmysics; imagine when the AI card comes along, and the parser'll never be the same. Why smell corpses when you can interrogate people and make them tell where they hid the god dam thing instead. Ever spoken to a conversational bot? Imagine it being resonable and acting accordingly to basic psychological principles.
2ma2 has predicted the Psychology-card.
I can't wait :)
Duh, we already had that. Don't you remember all the hype about the PS2's uparalleled Emotion-Engine? Yeah... neither did game developers.
Similarly, while the physics cards are neat for the new types of gameplay they could allow, I predict that even if they become common place, gameplay won't change. Developers will just use them so they can add another bullet-point to the back of the game box:
-Exploding crates splinter and fly through the air with realistic physics!
-Dead bodies flop around with "Rag-Doll Physics Mach 2" (tm)
or
-That guy's clothes move like they're real and stuff!
I only wish that developers (and publishers) would care more about substance than style.
Considering that today is 2005 (and alomst 2006) and we have the opportunity to make games like ti was 1998, adn with other engines like it was 2002 it is not far behind, there will be a module or a plug-in that will take advantage of the physics-card.
Maybe AGS 3.7 (just for the argument) will have the ability to play with this type of card around. And then Vince and everyone acytually we can make our gameplays in our games more perfect than it is.
It is like I would never thought of having such a high quality of music in a game. But things change and now not only music is amazing but I can make my own game with amazing music (music that I compose !!!!! hehe).
Just think about it in a possitive way. I'm allready dreaming of ways to use the card. And who knows, maybe some games (KQIX), or other half finished 5-year projects would benefit from that... :D
Sometimes, reading Tom Clancy's Net Force Explorer books get's you really interested in VR.
This Physics card, if it lives up to expectations, seems like, to me, it would break free from the standard linear scripted events of today. It would make adventure games so much more interesting... I mean, should I use this crowbar to jimmy open the door, or to smash right through it?
Though using VR gloves would be the next step up. This would give us the technology to create an actual VR game that didn't require a couple of million pounds and a horde of script... COOL! ;D
I just had to say this:
I just ordered "Nocturne" off Ebay. I bought it from England, which means I wound up paying double for it (damn conversion rates... And why am I paying in GBP? why not in Euros?) but that doesn't matter right now.(1)Ã, Ã, Ã, But anyway, Nocturne: This game was made quite some time ago.... I think like in 1995.(2)Ã, However, I have not yet seen an adventure game that rivals it. Even some of the newer adventure games like Broken Sword and Neverwinter Nights (3) don't hold a candle to it. Nocturne offered some of the best gameplay and storylines I have ever seen in a game, plus some features that were WAY ahead of their time... The main character, The Stranger, had a trenchcoat that flapped as you turned with real-time physics. The light that he could mount to the end of his guns had such realism that you could forget it was a game (4), and the monsters actually looked like they were getting shot where you were shooting them, including different animations for the different types of weapons you were using against them. It had realistic blood spatter. Even though the game used fixed 3D environments, you could swith from third person to a first person "nightvision" mode, which was exceptional. All in all, one of the most fantastic games ever.
My point for having said all that (5) is this: in 1995, Nocturne used a realistic physics engine. Then, they said they were going to make a Nocturne 2, in which you play as minor character and vampiress Svetlana Lupescu. Eventually, they scrapped the project and renamed Svetlana: BloodRayne. They gave her bigger boobs and a worse attitude, and turned it from intelligent adventure to mindless bloodbath. I don't know if they maintained the physics engine since I wouldn't be caught dead playing BloodRayne. But it was, and still is, the best thing I have ever seen in a game, and I have never seen it duplicated, not even in games like Doom 3 or HalfLife 2.
FOOTNOTES
1 Even though I spent two whole lines and a parenthetical clause on it.
2 a quick Google search proves me right.... It was GotY 1995
3 both of which I also just bought
4 An example:
(http://img414.imageshack.us/img414/7320/15567full2lz.jpg)
5 Besides having an outlet for footnotes, which I think are cool after having read the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and especially after playing the IF game, which was probably the only video game in history to incorporate footnotes.
That's good to hear. I bought the game second-hand from someone else (though my net cost was closer to $3 US) and I've yet to play it. I tried the demo, but most of it was spent approaching the camera with the Ego's head/hat tilted down, tilting it up quickly and whispering, "I'm Batman." I'll have to actually try playing it instead of amusing myself.
I recall it having interesting physical reactions, lighting and being one of the first with realistic shadow-casting but my hardware at the time crippled my experience. As for Bloodrayne, be glad you never played it. It was tripe. Mediocre reviews were done by people hypnotized by breasteses. It was nearly complete crap. Never buy a slew of budget titles when experiencing gaming withdrawl.
Quote from: YakSpit on Fri 14/10/2005 12:09:13
As for Bloodrayne, be glad you never played it... It was nearly complete crap.
But the movie's gonna rule! How could it not, with such an experienced and talented director?
Quote from: esper on Fri 14/10/2005 11:21:37
The main character, The Stranger, had a trenchcoat that flapped as you turned with real-time physics. The light that he could mount to the end of his guns had such realism that you could forget it was a game (4), and the monsters actually looked like they were getting shot where you were shooting them, including different animations for the different types of weapons you were using against them. It had realistic blood spatter.
This is kind of the point I was trying to make. When realistic physics are plausible, they're used not to improve gameplay, but to add bells and whistles to the graphics and a few more bullet points to the back of the box.
However, this does kind of highlight a good counter point to my argument: While a moving cape and blood spatter don't add directly to the gameplay, they do add that "cool" factor that can make the game just that much more fun to play, and isn't the enjoyment of the player the ultimate goal?
That being said, even if the physics don't add to the gameplay, they can cut down game development time and costs. Would you rather spend time in a 3d animation program animating the cape's many different possible movements, or would you rather just let the physics system calculate all of that real-time?
Regardless, I conclude: physics, yay! But physics cards, nay! Because it's just another expensive thing that makes my crappy system unable to play all the latest games.
Thank god for 2d adventure games!
Quote from: Vince Twelve on Fri 14/10/2005 13:26:43
However, this does kind of highlight a good counter point to my argument: While a moving cape and blood spatter don't add directly to the gameplay, they do add that "cool" factor that can make the game just that much more fun to play, and isn't the enjoyment of the player the ultimate goal?
heh... There was one problem, though. Imagine this:
It's the nineteen-twenties. You are the Stranger, paranormal investigator and exterminator. As you wander about in complete darkness, with your prototype nightvision goggles on to prevent the undead legions that lurk in the darkness from seeing your flashlight, you see movement out of the corner of your eye. Determined to get the drop on your target, you pull off the nightvision goggles, which switches you to a beautifully rendered 3D third person perspective. Your trenchcoat flaps about you as you rip your twin pistols from their holsters beneath it and aim, switching on the mounted flashlights as you do. Light fills the area, illuminating a huge, hairy Loupus Garou, or werewolf, as he dives past you and rips the throat from the townsperson you were leading to safety. Hurtling yourself backwards, your coat still flapping, you open fire on him. The eerie light your guns give off for a moment create a bright halo as you aim them at the camera, and the way the light bends around your quarry is almost ethereal. The shadows it casts are long and dark. You spin, following the fleeing Garou with a hail of gunfire, and your trenchcoat swirls about you.
You hear the sound of the werewolf screaming as your silver-tipped bullets tear into his ribs, exploding outward behind him into the gloaming darkness as a thick black splatter of chunky, coagulated blood mixed with organ matter. The werewolf slumps to the ground, dead.
As you stand and dust yourself off, the overall coolness of the battle and the pleasure derived from the victory wear off as you realize your trenchcoat has somehow inexplicably gotten lodged
inside your hat, and is now stretched unrealistically up, stiff as a board, and refuses to come out of the damn hat no matter how hard you shake the mouse back and forth in attempts to dislodge it.
I think this is why they model the animations rather than letting a physics engine take complete control. Nocturne was, as I have said, the coolest game ever... But it sucked when your coat got stuck inside your hat, or when the Stranger's walking animation would stall, and the blood you were tracking around on your shoes now painted a thick, straight line behind you you could write your name in cursive with. It totally added some (unwanted) humor, but took away the immersiveness which made the game so wonderful in the first place.
Quote from: Vince Twelve on Fri 14/10/2005 13:26:43
Thank god for 2d adventure games!
Yes I agree! Completely!
Just a small thing.
I believe that I'm creative. And while creating I tend to make my creations
usefull. Now this word can have so many meaning and anybody can try to explain that. The thing is that sometimes, I just realised that music, is just...music.
And the better you make the music, the better it sounds, and the better job it does.
It's not all production or mastering or polishing.
But then again, unless we're talking about a genious like Mozart, Betthove, Prokofiev, Schnittke or whatever other name (all composers, well known), well the rest is crap in piano.
What I'm trying to say is that although the ideas behind a game, will always be a matter of thought, of deep thought and of experience (which makes a good 2d adventure game), for gods shake, I would love to see perfect graphics, with perfect music, with a physics card, taking care of a lot of things, leaving the CPU able to deal with a huge gameworld, or a really great gameplay.
Why great graphics, or movies, or whatever contradict good gameplay, or deep thougths, or anyway a good game.
My dreamm is an amzingin sight for ears, eyes, mind (and later in time, taste and smell)!
Really why not?
On the last point that Vince made: Yes I agree. But this is the nature of companies and of technology today. Things advance in such a pace that if we were to keep up with things we would need to buy a computer every 6 months. True! And everyobdy knows that!. Wel for me, I'm happy that I can get a hold on games, that 10-5 years ago I would only dream of playing. Cause I haven't bought qa game for like 15 years (I do believe the last one was Betrayal at Krondor). Now I can get this for free.
Well I don't care if I have to wait. After 10 years I'll get a really cheap physics card and buy every game that is out
now.
Patience is a virtue... And costs nothing... hehe
I think Vince Twelve's 'Cool Factor' explains why physics cards sound so fun. I do doubt whether they would do a great deal to improve the 'Cool' of an adventure game, and I note that many of the games mentioned are at the FPS end of the spectrum.
My qualm would be with the word 'adventure' in the title of this thread. I think of all games, adventures would be the least able to make use of realistic physics.
On the other hand:
Quote from: MrColossal on Tue 11/10/2005 18:20:10
For some people adventure games are also about solving puzzles. For some it's more about solving puzzles.
I didn't mean to overlook puzzle solving, I just wasn't sure what realistic physics could add. Having thought about it, it would be a great deal of fun to be able to carve a hunk of rock into the shape of an idol (needless to say, I have no idea whether a physics card could facilitate that).
Physics? Taking a load off from CPU might be a good idea, but I smell another big and noisy cooler in the case... And I already got 4 of them, thus making my machine sound like a jet.
Nah. I'm waiting for Geo-mod to come back. Nothing could be as fun as it was tunnelling in Red Faction!
I just scanned tge PhysX page. It seems to me this thing consists of both hardware and software. Clearly it is meant to opeate on 3D models that likely contain additional information about the materials that comprise the models.
So consequently, I don't see that this would have any effect or benefit for AGS or any other 2D game engine.
I think realistic 3D game worlds would add to the enjoyment of an adventure game. In such a world things happen in "real-time" so navigating such a world naturally requires "real-time" hand-eye interaction with the game. The resut is something more like Tomb Raider than Fate of Atlantis. I'm personally not bothered by this prospect but many AG pureists are.
QuoteBut physics sschmysics; imagine when the AI card comes along, and the parser'll never be the same. Why smell corpses when you can interrogate people and make them tell where they hid the god dam thing instead.
Heh, that gives me a stupid idea: how about an Olfactory Card? lol.
But seriously, the AI technlogy we have today isn't quite good enough to make an entire card based soley on AI, so don't expect to see those for a while. However, realistic interaction would be an amazing feature. It would probably end up serving as a sort of psychotherapeutic device more than just an added feature for next-generation games.
The demos look cool, especially the water/lava/slime ones.
But how is it going to work? Will we have to own a physics card if we want to play a specific game? And are we going to be forced to upgrade it every once in a while like a graphics card? I suppose future consoles can easily support it, but what about the PC?
And I don't see how it could work well with adventure games, but I'm open minded.
Battlecruiser Millenium had a sequel... I forget the name, but it involved war using every conceivable vehicle, from jeeps to subs to battlecruisers in orbit around the planet... I never got to play it, though, because it required a pixel shader and a vertex-somethingorother. Same thing with Myst and Caligari Truespace. Back in... ummm, I think 92 or 93, I couldn't play one or use the other because my graphics card didn't have a maths coprocessor. Therefore, this is nothing new. I believe the physics card will probably not be a card by itself, but will probably just be an enhanced graphics card. They would be stupid to make a lone card just for the sake of processing physics.
Quote from: InCreator on Fri 14/10/2005 15:34:46
Physics? Taking a load off from CPU might be a good idea, but I smell another big and noisy cooler in the case... And I already got 4 of them, thus making my machine sound like a jet.
Hah. Just wait til you've heard one of my 11 fans. The one with an outer powersupply and separate on/off. That, my friend is the jet. I call it Airforce 1.
http://www.tdrdesign.net/uploads/tschernobylfan.zip