Making Graphics In Games '100,000 Times' Better?

Notch, the Minecraft Overlord, says:

IT'S A SCAM!

tits a crap

  On 8/3/2011 at 10:45 AM, Blanket Fort Collapse said:

Hence why it saddens me that people are so lazy that developers have to develop on this extremely outdated generation of consoles.

Limitations tend to evoke creativity as well. You remember how excited everyone was when Super Mario Kart came out with that fancy new "3D-technology" they came up with? The console had been there for a while. Or compare Uncharted 1 to Uncharted 2 - both are on PS3, yet Uncharted 2 looks so much better cause they further optimized it. Or Mirror's Edge with pre-rendered Radiosity, also looked amazing while being in no need for better hardware. It's not all about the system, it's more important to have creative minds involved. Computer graphics is all a big trickery to begin with, so instead of just upgrading, I prefer if someone comes up with some new crazy way to make use of what is there. For me, PS3 graphics, if used to their max potential, leave nothing to be desired when compared to a PC. If it gets you hard that you can run a game on 100 fps on your PC, fair enough, but ...

Graphics aren't important to me, not even for inmersion. Super Metroid, Portal, Manhunt, with their shitty graphics, they achieved a higher level of inmersion than Crysis or any other game with over-the-top graphics to me, and trust me, I played it with fairly high settings. Better graphics aren't in any way related to the level of inmersion; inmersion is achieved by creating a certain atmosphere, creating an interesting story and characters, and letting you live the story instead of just watching it. Of course graphics matter, but we've come to a point were graphics aren't an obstacle. We don't need to cut out stuff because it doesn't fit in the cartridge's memory anymore

  On 8/3/2011 at 12:36 PM, mcbpete said:

  On 8/3/2011 at 1:26 AM, disparaissant said:

but i bet every damn tree on that island looks exactly the same. or else 512 petabytes of data!

Not necessarily, bear in mind the following is only 4 kilobytes worth of information (and that's including the music data!) -

 

[vimeo]15982655[/vimeo]

 

(sorry, just wanted an excuse to post it again !)

What do you mean 4kb including music data? I don't understand how procedurally generated graphics work but talking about music data even if it would be like 32kbps quality it would still be about 1mb. Even a midi file would be about 10kb.

  On 8/3/2011 at 12:41 PM, disparaissant said:

yeah but that's largely abstract and procedurally generated. they claimed they made that tree. they're not procedurally generating trees, as procedurally generated trees would probably look quite non-tree-like and kind of defeat the purpose of everything being "super unlimited detail" or w/e

 

ive seen that thing before though, and it is pretty goddamn amazing for 4kB

why? couldn't one say that real trees are kinda procedurally generated?

it's not recorded music, and probably not really written as we know it, it's presumably just as procedural as the graphics, they've just got a bit of coding to tell your sound/video card to output, and a bit of coding to nudge it in the direction they want. good programmers can do a lot with 4k.

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why? couldn't one say that real trees are kinda procedurally generated?

yeah, but real trees have dna that tells them how to grow and "generate", trying to emulate that on a computer is probably quite difficult.

  On 8/3/2011 at 5:51 PM, Jonas said:

you're thinking music format data or something, this 'demo' is like a little program that is 4 kb in size and generates the music (and images) as you run it.

Yeah, imagine it having something in the code saying something like -

Play this note based on the X camera position, at the volume based of the Y axis, filtered using the Z camera position, and the tone of the sound based on number of polygons appearing on screen at that moment.

I mean it won't be that, but you can see how a lot of extra data can be generated from a small algorithm like that...

  On 8/3/2011 at 5:54 PM, disparaissant said:

it's not recorded music, and probably not really written as we know it, it's presumably just as procedural as the graphics, they've just got a bit of coding to tell your sound/video card to output, and a bit of coding to nudge it in the direction they want. good programmers can do a lot with 4k.

 

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why? couldn't one say that real trees are kinda procedurally generated?

yeah, but real trees have dna that tells them how to grow and "generate", trying to emulate that on a computer is probably quite difficult.

I don't see why it should be dificcult, it's a stick that branches every so often and produces leaves at the end.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZVyi4ykVHJM

yeah but that kind of looks like shit

a super high resolution and super detailed tiny-voxel tree is going to use a fuckton of memory whether it's procedurally generated or not.

and really it's kind of moot, the douchey narrator said they modeled the tree. and considering how repetetive the entire "island" is, it's probably a safe bet to say they just reused the same one

  On 8/3/2011 at 6:30 PM, disparaissant said:

yeah but that kind of looks like shit

just the first thing i found in youtube, it's made in java btw, and it looks like a tree.

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a super high resolution and super detailed tiny-voxel tree is going to use a fuckton of memory whether it's procedurally generated or not.

you don't know that, maybe you just need a few MB of textures and then a few KB in code.

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and really it's kind of moot, the douchey narrator said they modeled the tree. and considering how repetetive the entire "island" is, it's probably a safe bet to say they just reused the same one

obviously, but that's not a limitation of their supposed technology. one could implement a tree making engine or some stupid thing like that.

yeh but it's just a 2d approximation of a tree, not ULTIMATE DETAIL or w/e they're hawking.

i don't really know what i'm talking about but i'd bet 64 pixels per millimeter + full size tree + colour information stored on a per-voxel basis (no textures afaik) = tons of memory... no matter how you generate the tree. even making a procedural generation algorithm that has to do it on a sort of "atomic" level is going to be WAY complicated and intensive.

bet it would look cool as fuck tho

  On 8/3/2011 at 6:57 PM, disparaissant said:

yeh but it's just a 2d approximation of a tree, not ULTIMATE DETAIL or w/e they're hawking.

 

i don't really know what i'm talking about but i'd bet 64 pixels per millimeter + full size tree + colour information stored on a per-voxel basis (no textures afaik) = tons of memory... no matter how you generate the tree. even making a procedural generation algorithm that has to do it on a sort of "atomic" level is going to be WAY complicated and intensive.

 

bet it would look cool as fuck tho

The algorithm describing the tree is the tree and that doesn't necessarily require tons of memory. If you want to view the tree, then you want that "2d approximation" of the tree, of which the memory footprint will be proportional to the size of this image.

well, sort of. the algorithm can either generate a random tree or generate a tree from a template tree.

but i think it will require tons of memory, if you're looking at 64 voxels per mm^3 with all the colour and lighting information as part of the voxel... well, how many mm^3 is your average tree? lots!

  On 8/3/2011 at 2:08 PM, rumbo said:

Notch, the Minecraft Overlord, says:

 

IT'S A SCAM!

 

I was suspicious. Not because of tech specs, but because the guy they have narrating the video sounds like he must be a d-bag.

Notch commented on his commenting

  On 8/3/2011 at 9:36 PM, hautlle said:

Notch commented on his commenting

  On 8/3/2011 at 9:36 PM, hautlle said:

Notch commented on his commenting

He's overlooking one thing - there's a big difference in storage requirements between uncompressed voxels and sparse voxel octrees.

Still, unlimited detail means recursion - therefore I think it's fair to criticize the visual style of these demos.

  On 8/3/2011 at 5:53 PM, GORDO said:

  On 8/3/2011 at 12:41 PM, disparaissant said:

yeah but that's largely abstract and procedurally generated. they claimed they made that tree. they're not procedurally generating trees, as procedurally generated trees would probably look quite non-tree-like and kind of defeat the purpose of everything being "super unlimited detail" or w/e

 

ive seen that thing before though, and it is pretty goddamn amazing for 4kB

 

why? couldn't one say that real trees are kinda procedurally generated?

for a while i was quite into trees. why do they look the way they do?

the answer: a tree can make two types of wood. one type is hard and strong, the other type is weak but flexible. all parts of the tree continuously grow and expand. as this happens, stress on the branches increases, necessitating hard wood (heheh heheh). too much hard wood, though, and the tree won't be able to bend with the wind, risking a snapped branch. the tree continually varies the type of wood it generates in response to wind and to its own weight, angle, location, etc.

so, the appearance of a tree comes from a combination of optimization engineering and local conditions. if the tree grows on a slant, that will effect how it grows. in a way, tree branches are a physical manifestation of local wind conditions. i find that charming.

i am vastly oversimplifying this. for example, there are different types of hardwood -- compression wood (gymnosperms) expands on the bottom of a branch to build a stem up, while tension wood (angiosperms) contracts on the top to do the same. i have a lovely paper my sister pulled off JSTOR for me, if anyone's interested.

as for computer-generating trees, i think you can get away with just recursively generating branches that roughly follow the ratios. a lot of games these days use the speedtree library: http://www.speedtree.com/

That was the most coherent and value added post I have seen from you since...I can't remember.

  On 8/4/2011 at 12:54 AM, rumbo said:

That was the most coherent and value added post I have seen from you since...I can't remember.

"hahathhat makes a good post. more news at 10."

i credit drinking more coffee than usual today.

hathathat, has been in my top 10 favorite wattmers for a while, he so riced out it ain't even funny

  On 8/3/2011 at 6:13 PM, mcbpete said:

  On 8/3/2011 at 5:51 PM, Jonas said:

you're thinking music format data or something, this 'demo' is like a little program that is 4 kb in size and generates the music (and images) as you run it.

Yeah, imagine it having something in the code saying something like -

 

Play this note based on the X camera position, at the volume based of the Y axis, filtered using the Z camera position, and the tone of the sound based on number of polygons appearing on screen at that moment.

 

I mean it won't be that, but you can see how a lot of extra data can be generated from a small algorithm like that...

I find this shit incredibly fucking interesting. I have no comprehension of how you could optimize your code to do all that with 4kb. I tried to run it on my friends decent machine and it fucked it in the throat. It was still amazing though. Can't even believe it, so cool. I would love to learn some about the way the coded it.

i didn't realize minecraft was a voxel engine until today.

  On 8/4/2011 at 3:42 AM, Blanket Fort Collapse said:

hathathat, has been in my top 10 favorite wattmers for a while, he so riced out it ain't even funny

 

  On 8/3/2011 at 6:13 PM, mcbpete said:

  On 8/3/2011 at 5:51 PM, Jonas said:

you're thinking music format data or something, this 'demo' is like a little program that is 4 kb in size and generates the music (and images) as you run it.

Yeah, imagine it having something in the code saying something like -

 

Play this note based on the X camera position, at the volume based of the Y axis, filtered using the Z camera position, and the tone of the sound based on number of polygons appearing on screen at that moment.

 

I mean it won't be that, but you can see how a lot of extra data can be generated from a small algorithm like that...

 

I find this shit incredibly fucking interesting. I have no comprehension of how you could optimize your code to do all that with 4kb. I tried to run it on my friends decent machine and it fucked it in the throat. It was still amazing though. Can't even believe it, so cool. I would love to learn some about the way the coded it.

are these guys still using floppy discs and dial up modems or what's the point.