Rob's Blog

Someone is making the computer game I want to make, and doing it pretty much exactly how I would do it. Infinity: The Quest For Earth features a procedurally generated galaxy and planets with procedurally generated terrain.

This lets you see a whole planet from space and then fly down to its surface and see hills and mountains, like this:

Procedural generation of 3D environments reduces everything to a formula. It works for galaxies as well as mountains. This way you don’t need to store the location of every star in the galaxy in your computer’s memory. You plug your location into the formula and out pop the locations of nearby stars. To make the galaxy interesting and the right shape you use random number generators and probability functions. The random numbers aren’t really random, or you’d get a different galaxy each time. Instead you seed the random number generator with the same starting value each time so that it always generates the same galaxy.

The author of Infinity describes this in some detail, and there’s a video, which you really have to watch in HD to see the level of detail.

(I think if you wanted to simulate an entire universe down to atomic scale you’d do it something like this. But of course, the universe is real, we’re not living inside a simulation, continue reading…)

Infinity will have Newtonian physics, which I think is essential to immersion in a space game. The use of aeroplane-physics in Eve online is the main problem I have with that game. And I can only assume it will have a realistic galaxy with stars and solar systems on a realistic scale. This is rare in space games. The only time I’ve seen it done properly is in Frontier: Elite II.

So I hope Infinity is completed, even if it takes a long time. Although its author gets the community to supply artwork, it’s a one-man closed-source project, and they have a habit of disappearing.

My interest in PC Games has so far been under-represented on this blog. To remedy this, here is a list of the up and coming games that are getting my juices flowing.

• Half Life 2 – Let’s get the obvious out of the way first. Everyone who even passingly likes computer games is following the progress of Half Life 2 with eager anticipation. The first Half Life is still the pinnacle of single player first-person shooters, and one of the few games I’ve ever played all the way through. This sequel promises to revolutionise FPS graphics with real-time shadows and bump mapping galore. Add to that the impressive physics demonstrated in the preview videos, and the fact that, well, it’s Half Life, and there’s no way I’m going to miss spending several hundred pounds upgrading my PC so I can play it.

  Half Life 2 is expected sometime in the Spring.

• X2: The Threat – Yet another reason to upgrade, this time the real-time shadows are cast by planets and space stations onto ships and asteroids. It’s an open ended space trading and combat fest in the tradition of Elite, which, as we all know, is the best computer game ever. X2 has a huge universe to explore and allows you to build your own space stations, fly anything from a tiny fighter to a multi-turreted carrier, and recruit fleet of wingmen.

  The European release of X2 has been delayed for a couple of months, but it will be shipping from DVD Box Office in Canada any day now.

• Deus Ex: Invisible War – Another long awaited sequel to another superb single player FPS, this one has recently suffered from the release of a slightly disappointing demo. However, having adjusted some settings to make it feel less console-y, and played it through a few more times, I’m starting to warm to it again. The twist of Deus Ex is that it offers multiple ways of achieving each goal. For instance, to get into a secret base you might shoot the guards, sneak in through the ventilation system or hack into the security system. Its branching storyline means that the way you play and decisions you make at key points affects the plot. This is what makes it unique. Despite its shotcomings, Invisible War’s demo shows that these features are equally to be found in the sequel.

  The developers, Ion Storm, are being somewhat shady about release dates.

• Lock On: Modern Air Combat – I’ve always loved flight sims, and with increasing development costs for games and the low returns of such a niche market, they’re few and far between these days. LOMAC lets you fly a variety of Russian and American jets, including the famous A-10. The terrain and object modelling is some of the most detailed ever seen in a flight sim, and the flight models and avionics are about as realistic as you could hope for. There’s even a community supported, 300 page leather bound manual. Trust me, that’s a good thing!

  LOMAC is released on the 5th of December.

• S.T.A.L.K.E.R: Oblivion Lost – Out of nowhere (or more accurately, out of a development shop in the Ukraine), comes Stalker. It hardly seems possible, but Stalker seems to have even better graphics than Half Life 2; see the videos to believe it. Stalker is a first-person shooter, with Elite-like open-endedness, set in a 30km square exclusion zone around Chernobyl. You can explore the environment, walking or driving vehicles, seeking artefacts to sell, avoiding radiation, defending yourself against mutants, and trading and fighting with other humans. Days and nights pass, so you must find food and sleep occasionally. Weather is modelled dynamically, including rain, thunderstorms, and wind that rushes through the bushes and trees.

  Stalker looks like it will be the most stunning FPS yet – but don’t hold your breath. It’s currently billed for a Spring/Summer 2004 release. Plenty of time to get that PC upgraded, at least!

• Richard Burns Rally – Driving games can be extremely cathartic, providing instant fun and endless replayability. For me, the more realistic the better. To date there hasn’t been a completely realistic rally game. Although car physics are modelled very accurately in some games, damage modelling has always been lacking, and the stages are never as long as real-world stages. Richard Burns Rally looks set to provide all this in one game, with realistic physics, full length stages and touch-a-tree-and-you’re-out damage modelling. It looks beautiful, too.

  Richard Burns Rally is due some time in 2004.

Update: There’s an excellent article about Stalker on Eurogamer, which describes how the team visited Chernobyl for research. It’s also revealed that the game is inspired by the movie Stalker, which was made by Andrei Tarkovsky, who brought us the original version of Solaris.
It seems that people who work in the Chernobyl exclusion zone also call themselves stalkers.