AI is by far the most important next step in gaming.
The first time I played Brothers In Arms (a squad-based FPS), I was watching the enemy run around the cover to my left. I couldn’t figure out where the heck they were going. Suddely, 2 enemy squads burst from behind me and wiped me out completely.
The enemy AI had just distracted my attention and flanked me!
Needless to say I giggled with delight. Games need way more of this.
What about the advance in DVD technology. I’m not talking about Blu-Ray or HD-DVD. I’m talking about this.
With this much room on a disc, then we could certainly afford to splurge on AI.
I want a holodeck stocked with a rich selection of porn adventures.
With the link I provided, such things could be possible, Mr. McPornersons.
I just wish they would make 3D game characters whose arms attach to their shoulders realistically, instead of the rag doll stick figure way they continue to do to this day.
Well I guess we have to disagree there. I’ll give Nintendo points for the N64 analog controller, but not in the originality department. They didn’t make it. They just made it better. The same with the Wii controller. Well… Nintendo made the Power Glove too, but I give them originality points for it, not the Wii controller. I don’t think I can call something revolutionary if it’s just a better version of something else.
I don’t think extra disc storage is going to help much at this point. Games could use more than one DVD now, but few do, much less the HD-DVD or Bluray. No doubt the technology in your link will be very useful for game storage some day, but I think it’ll be a while.
Physics.
I think the next generation will have dedicated physics processors - similar to how video cards began to involve dedicated 3d rendering all those years ago.
… And much improved AI, as the others have said.
Well, when broken down, pretty much everything is nothing more than a “better version of something else.”
Coming up with a concept is one thing, executing it well is another.
I miss the R.O.B.
For a while I’ve said that speech synthesis would be useful. A lot of games today come with editors and SDK’s for users to modify them. One area which is lacking is voices. I would love to be able to create voice-overs or spoken dialogue without having to actually record it.
Some kind of phonetics based programming language with distortion/timbre modifiers or suchlike.
A few ideas . . .
For games that put you in control of a person, or persons, in the real world, there really, really, really should be 100% destructible enviroments with the necessary physics.
I’m talking about games that are basically completely designed to be destroyed. I’m talking about a game that, if you slapped a demolition pack of some generic name, on the wall, would actually blow a huge chunk of the wall away, so that you could, say, improvise your own doors behind a strategically positioned MG42. Similiarly, you should be allowed to tell a tank to blow out the supports of an occupied building and watch it slide down like it would, in reality. The remains of the building would then be just a shitheap of bricks and mortar and your tank could slam over it, your men could crawl through it or you could booby-trap it if you so like. No more of this stupid blocked passages to create a linear flow with preset choke points.
(On another tangent, you should be allowed to tell your tank to smash right into the building in the first place. Give me control of what a tank CAN do, not what it probably should do)
I’ve played Company of Heroes, and it’s the closest I’ve come, but it comes so bloody close, it’s all the more disappointing for the few yards missing of the mile. So to speak.
Another peeve of mine is, make the bloody effort to incorporate a bloody story into the game. Yes, I’m aware of the smarting examples of the games that really, really want to be virtual movies (I’m looking at you, Metal Gear Solids series) but still. You should at least give it a shot. Hell, there are so many disaffected gamer hokeys who could broil up a plausible story, you could at least post a request on a message board and see what trickles in?
And then there’s the AI, and the realization that what we really could use right now is a more thorough look at artificial stupidity, and the balance between the two. Make a man act like a man. This also includes limiting his knowledge into what he can physically know and when. If you stole anything in Oblivion, and made the tiniest misstep, every damn guard within three miles and a dog of your location would be on your arse before you could think “Shiny!” If you placed a sniper round a half inch to the right of a guard’s head in, oh, 90% of most recent shooters, the next thing that would happen is a whole shitload of red dots appearing on your body. In reality, you’d have at the very least the chance for another shot before the other person even came to the realisation he’d been shot at, nevermind from which direction, what height, trajectory and distance.
Of course, what I’d also love is the AI responding in a rational manner and being able to tell the difference between being on the aggressive and the defensive. For instance, when over half of your crew disappears from guard duty in a military terrorist camp, the answer is not to search half-assedly for thirty seconds, shrug and go back to your campfire and stick your thumb up your ass. There’s two proper answers, both of which includes letting your fucking boss know and asking for reinforcements. You can (aggressively) attempt to flush out the area, with any means possible, flares to startle-shots to setting a tent on fire if he thinks you’re hiding inside. Or he could (defencively; alternatively he could go straight for this) tighten the perimeter and demand that patrols be paired.
The thing is, many games are great at this, particularly Half-Life 2 (where you suddenly have guards shooting flaming barrels and kicking them at you, or blowing up stuff and letting the debris rain down on you, and so on) - the problem is only that it’s scripted. If AI ever reaches the level where the enemies actually consequently react properly (whether it’s predictable or wildly unpredictable) to a situation in a manner that could be mistaken for a human reaction, we will have absolutely great gaming. Combine this true AI with a sandbox-type destructible game world that allows for truly non-linear progression and you’ll have a masterpiece.
Already here how long until it becomes commonplace is speculation of course.
That’s really cool and not as expensive as I would have thought. Any idea which games work with it? Their site doesn’t seem to say.
Brown University’s Swordplay(pdf), where you wear VR goggles and hold Wii-like controls, as projections on the Holodeck-like walls around you are sized and oriented to your own perspective to create immersive gaming.
As for physics in games, *Myth * captured my imagination for a long time. Blood soaked the ground. Body parts and debris was kicked around by nearby explosions. Barbarians picked up body parts from the ground and threw them as weapons. Ammo on the ground exploded with nearby fires and explosions. That was a cool game to watch and play. Never saw anything like that after it.