Need I say more?

Um, there was a huge topic about this over the summer. Most of us probably remember it.

Still waiting for more news on it. yes it looks awesome.

Prediction: whoever ports this (if at all) decides that PPC Macs are not worth the effort. Conclusion: buy your TPM Intel Mac today or suffer.

Bad day.

Just can not wait for this to come out. It will be fun to play as God!

That's why I also have a semi-powerful gaming PC. Though I'll still probably have some trouble running it, by the looks of the graphics and processor requirements. It does look crazy, though.

Yeah. That'll be a bummer....

Still, this game looks promising. I played a game somewhat like it on my very, very old Mac. Forgot what the game was called, though....

We'll see. We'll see.

Thats only if you believe in Intelligent Design.

That depends on what you design

http://www.google.com/search?client=safari...black+%26+white

Can't have a Will Wright thread without posting this picture...

Seriously, though, while this game does look like it could be something very special, I'll believe it when I see it.

This is one game that I am definately waiting for. So sorry it's not for my machine...

I don't know what it is supposed to be. I didn't have time to watch the whole thing, besides, it was very pixelated and I can't tell what it is suppsed to be at all...

I'm getting a strange sense of Deja Vu about this topic.

KedFiller, my suggestion is you watch the whole thing. Its a little bland at first I guess but once he gets into things it becomes very interesting...and impressive.

-cent

I am extremely excited about this new game.. I found the idea interesting. An evolving organism... except the evolution is controlled by the player? ahh, Intelligent evolution.

The dud said "procedural" like, 20 times in the movie.

He has a small vocabulary.....

What's a "dud"?

Seeing as how "Procedural programming" is what makes that game possible, unique, and so amazing yeah I'd kinda repeat it too.

Look here for definitions.


I meant to type "Dude"

@Eji1700: But what is procedural programming? He never really explained that.

I see... thank you for pointing that out.

It's explained in the orignial article that contained that link. I can't find it now. Basically the problem with games as they get bigger and bigger is that you need someone to make skins and models and graphics for everything. Look at how much harder a TC is for EVN compared to EV. It's getting very difficult, very time consuming, and very very large. The idea behind procedural programming is that by using some very complex code you can make neat things with a small size. Every single creature you create in spore is supposedly going to take up less than 1k of space as opposed to several megs. Same with the buildings. And the UFO's. Thats why you can create creatures in any shape or form and it'll figure out how they should move and act. If it works right it's very very impressive.

Well, now I now what that is. Thanks for dumbing all this down so people like me can understand it.

So if it sucks, we could just consider it a tech demo for procedural programming?

edit: But it would have to rock on some level.

I can't wait 'till this comes out....

Hopefuly it'll come out for Xbox. My Pc can't handle anything beyond Half-life 2, and even then, just barely....

Now that I think about it, this is the kind of thing that SketchFighter 4000 should have.

Sweet! That sounds very useful indeed...

As far as I've been able to tell, procedural programming involves heavy use of algorithms to create data. This data need not be stored in any form other than variable for the algorithms, and this reduces data massively.

Essentially, think of the formula y=2x. This contains every piece of information you need to know to find a value of y (or x).

Algorithms can be used to caluclate many things, and I cannot even begin to comprehend the complexity behind the movement animations. Wright did mention ratios a lot. Rather than a 1:1 ratio between data and code, we are apparently closer to 100:1. Hence the difficulty in content creation – it takes so long.

Personal Comments:
A game with better graphics is not innately better. However, the graphics sell the game, and high-quality graphics become expected. In certain environments, graphics are very, very important – breaking suspension of disbelief is a no-no. In other environments (Civilization-esque games, for instance), these graphics are far less important. See Introversion's work for particularly good examples of this – none of their titles possess extremely high-quality graphics, because they don't need it. The old maxim "less is more" is very true in these circumstances.

I'm really friggin' excited about Spore. It looks like a lot of fun.