View Full Version : 2000-5 PS2 (so far)
The concepts behind the machine
Around PS2 launch Edge had an interview with Phil Harrison from Sony R&D. Quite a good read, it talked about some interesting new concepts which the PS2 was supposed to introduce. The interesting bits.
When asked what the emotion engine is?
"The emotion engine is synthesis and the ability to elicit an emotional reaction from the player"
He describes the synthesis model as a new technology where content is completely generated Procedurally inside the PS2 hardware. Allowing for huge randonly generated worlds and characters.
His description of the games is that basically nothing in a game will look or the sound the same. Every single cloud, brick, stone, tree, leaves even sound and A.I will be individualy different.
What to expect from the synthesis model?
Large infinite gameworlds with no edges, no predefinition of textures or geometry.
The end of on-rails racing games.
Further more
In future PS2 titles; over time trees will grow, roads will get ware, paint will deteriorate, characters will age.
He mentioned some other complex stuff I couldnt understand.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Its been 5 years now
What happened to the emotions that were supposed to created by the EE?
Are any programmers using the synthesis model to create new experiences?
cybamerc
19-Dec-2004, 20:43
What happened is that reality set in.
Guden Oden
19-Dec-2004, 21:18
If only they would start using VU0, games could do all this...
:lol:
Seriously though, games COULD do all this on hardware even less capable than the PS2, but no developer has actually taken the time to develop such a piece of software and then create a game around it.
Megadrive1988
19-Dec-2004, 21:36
Shenmue is one of the few console games that IMO have come closest to reaching this 'synthesis'. maybe some of the PS2 RPGs do aswell but I havent played many RPGs on PS2 except FFX.
Guden Oden
19-Dec-2004, 22:41
I would have said Black & White, but whatever. I guess now the DC fans will go on about friggin shmenue forever. :P
In future PS2 titles; over time trees will grow, roads will get ware, paint will deteriorate, characters will age.
Heh, sounds like what nintendo said the 64dd's rewritability would do.
BTW, randomly generated terrain would probably suck.
Shenmue is one of the few console games that IMO have come closest to reaching this 'synthesis'. maybe some of the PS2 RPGs do aswell but I havent played many RPGs on PS2 except FFX
Eh? I don't think anything in shenmue was random, it just had a lot of hand created things.(probably why it took so long to make)
MechanizedDeath
19-Dec-2004, 23:51
Its been 5 years now
What happened to the emotions that were supposed to created by the EE?
Are any programmers using the synthesis model to create new experiences?
Maybe Peter Molyneux could make some pie-in-the-sky promises like that and then grossly underdeliver. :lol: Maybe Kutaragi and Harrison are hitting the same crack pipe Peter's been pulling on for years. Game design needs to step up bigtime. PEACE.
I agree that Molyneux is much closer to that than Shenmue.
Shenmue stands out because every texture, every detail was made different, which was possible only because of the 200 (and more) people team and the big budget. Shenmue is just an example of brute force development.
IMO
I agree that Molyneux is much closer to that than Shenmue.
Shenmue stands out because every texture, every detail was made different, which was possible only because of the 200 (and more) people team and the big budget. Shenmue is just an example of brute force development.
IMO
Too bad the voice acting budget wasn't as big.
BTW, shenmue also is rather confined compared to a game like grand theft auto...hmm, some new sports and wrestling games have some pretty neat random player creation functions though, perhaps technology like that could be used to randomly create npcs in games?
What happened is that reality set in.
Im sure they have demo at R&B showing their synthesis model
I agree that Molyneux is much closer to that than Shenmue.
Shenmue stands out because every texture, every detail was made different, which was possible only because of the 200 (and more) people team and the big budget. Shenmue is just an example of brute force development.
IMO
I think Dark Cloud has some dynamic world building feature in it.
add n to (x)
20-Dec-2004, 01:57
Procedural geometry and textures have two main issues: i. making them look as good as their pure artist generated equivalents and ii. making them fit the kind of gameplay that you want. These two requirements present two problems to solve: i. designing your algorithms to give the artist or level designer enough control to create what they want, whether it be from an aesthetic or practical point of view, and ii. making sure that those controls act in an intuitive manner. It's all very well having a heightfield or texture generation function with 60-odd parameters, but if your artist can't use the controls then it's all for nowt. It's easy enough to write a heightfield generator to run on VU1 and churn out 100k polygons/frame, but making it look good and work the way you want is something of a black art, and probably why we haven't seen this approach take off in great numbers. The amount of R&D and effort that has gone into something like Terragen (http://www.planetside.co.uk/terragen/) goes to show it's not an easy task, and certainly not anywhere near real time yet.
Well, I always figured "emotion synthesis" meant having the poly pushing power to do facial animation ;)
And more than a number of PS2 games have illicted emotion from me (the player), so I guess they came through on that part. Regarding huge procedurally generated worlds? Well, not sure on that, but DQ8 sounds pretty seemless, as do the GTA games (to a certain extent). I agree though, mucho hype.
Evil_Cloud
20-Dec-2004, 18:23
I agree that Molyneux is much closer to that than Shenmue.
Shenmue stands out because every texture, every detail was made different, which was possible only because of the 200 (and more) people team and the big budget. Shenmue is just an example of brute force development.
IMO
Too bad the voice acting budget wasn't as big.
BTW, shenmue also is rather confined compared to a game like grand theft auto...hmm, some new sports and wrestling games have some pretty neat random player creation functions though, perhaps technology like that could be used to randomly create npcs in games?
Sega had all it's teams contributing to the development of Shenmue... I would say nearly thousand people were involved in the production process.
I agree that Molyneux is much closer to that than Shenmue.
Shenmue stands out because every texture, every detail was made different, which was possible only because of the 200 (and more) people team and the big budget. Shenmue is just an example of brute force development.
IMO
Too bad the voice acting budget wasn't as big.
BTW, shenmue also is rather confined compared to a game like grand theft auto...hmm, some new sports and wrestling games have some pretty neat random player creation functions though, perhaps technology like that could be used to randomly create npcs in games?
Sega had all it's teams contributing to the development of Shenmue... I would say nearly thousand people were involved in the production process.
Certainly not every team played a major part though, did they? Like did sonic team contribute anything significant, or just the models for all their characters used in the pop toy machines?
It's not the variety of detail in a game world that makes it believable; it's the cohesiveness of that detail, how much sense it makes when it all comes together. Shenmue does a good job at justifying all of its game elements by having each one be a part of its world. Instead of having the clues for game progression given out by random, nameless NPCs, the NPCs are all distinct individuals within the virtual community. Instead of their lives revolving around supplying the clues, they have their own daily routines that must be observed when meeting up with them. And instead of them just being arbitrarily endowed with the wisdom to give clues, it's their identity -- who they are, what kind of job they work and expertise they have, what they know from their life history and experiences -- that determines how they can aid in supplying information. The details that compose the game come together realistically because they're all accounted for within the larger whole of the world and not simply for the sake of the game only.
Akumajou
20-Dec-2004, 20:36
It's not the variety of detail in a game world that makes it believable; it's the cohesiveness of that detail, how much sense it makes when it all comes together. Shenmue does a good job at justifying all of its game elements by having each one be a part of its world. Instead of having the clues for game progression given out by random, nameless NPCs, the NPCs are all distinct individuals within the virtual community. Instead of their lives revolving around supplying the clues, they have their own daily routines that must be observed when meeting up with them. And instead of them just being arbitrarily endowed with the wisdom to give clues, it's their identity -- who they are, what kind of job they work and expertise they have, what they know from their life history and experiences -- that determines how they can aid in supplying information. The details that compose the game come together realistically because they're all accounted for within the larger whole of the world and not simply for the sake of the game only.
Correct, more than any other game Shenmue and Shenmue II convey that immersive emotional world the Sony PR-Hype man pulled out of his ass.
Indeed Shenmue is a legitimate watermark that anyone including SEGA fans can use because after all if the shoe was in the other foot and Shenmue and its sequel would have been developed specifically on PS2 (provided that the PS2 were to have 8MB of VideoRam instead of 4MB) Then add Square as the publisher and forget it, all Sony PS2 fanboys would be raving about Shemue as the definitive Emotion Engine materialized in a videogame, that and the game would not have faced the gamer apathy and instead sold millions on fluffy hype alone.
As a matter of fact the following article talks about Sony PS2 components the GS and EE from a technical standpoint and compares it to other hardware like the XBox and the Nv2A:
XBox Specs: http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.html?i=1561&p=1
marconelly!
20-Dec-2004, 20:45
Holy crap, Akumajou's post is like year 2001 all over again. Some poeple just can't let it go, much less learn a thing or two so that they don't sound completely clueless. 4MB vs 8MB... Holy crap...
As for Phill Harisson, that guy's PR track record is less than stellar. I honestly take every single thing he says with a huge grain of salt, as I think he's more clueless about all things Sony than many people I know on internet forums. His recent gaffes include saying that Sony would NOT be losing money on PSP units sold (further fueling the rumors about high pricing of PSP) and also decidedly claiming that PSP would NOT play MP3s, just weeks before it was 100% confirmed that it would... There are other silly things he said, but those two I remember clearly, and both a signs of pretty major cluelessness from someone who is a president of SCE branch.
What happened to the emotions that were supposed to created by the EE?
As in "ability to elicit an emotional reaction from the player"?
I would say "Ico" happened long time ago.
civ 1 on my pc and populas on my pc ... sim city too all ahve world building going on . So are the computer games from the last gen where console games are heading :shock: :oops: :wink: :roll:
As a matter of fact the following article talks about Sony PS2 components the GS and EE from a technical standpoint and compares it to other hardware like the XBox and the Nv2A:
XBox Specs: http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.html?i=1561&p=1
This is the same memory bus configuration as the Pentium 4 and thus offers 3.2GB/s of memory bandwidth to be shared between the EE and GS. This is hardly enough memory bandwidth and hardly enough memory storage for game execution code as well as high resolution textures. This is generally why most PS2 games are limited to relatively low resolution textures compared to what we're used to seeing on PCs. While the embedded DRAM of the GS core definitely helps out, there is still room for improvement.
Funny i always thought the 32MB ram was the limitation, not quite as "impressive" on a spec list but nevertheless.
jvd:
So are the computer games from the last gen where console games are heading
It's funny that such a thing is the case.
In North America and Europe, the computing standard for consumers was filled by the PC. Being a general purpose platform, it had to accomodate a spectrum of utility and therefore required interfaces, controllers, and displays tuned for a range of tasks. Keyboards allowed for lots of inputs with all of the keys, monitors enabled a sharp display for making lots of text and electronic documents workable, and hard drives allowed for a more efficient local work environment. Gaming, one of the PC's many functions, took advantage of the platform's interface and resulted in game types that were very involved, focusing on complex interactions with the game world facilitated by a keyboard and text.
The PC didn't catch on as the computing standard for consumers in Japan, however. Computing technology there was instead driven by videogame consoles -- a major reason that the videogaming industry has traditionally been led by Japanese manufacturers. As a gaming-specific computing platform, consoles got interfaces and controllers designed especially for gameplay to enable fast and fluid action. While North American and European developers were honing their skills on more involved game types, Japanese developers were mastering action-based gameplay types which required smoothness and responsiveness. This distinction is still present today as the smoothest reflex-based fighters, shooters, slash-em-ups, etc. still come predominantly from Japan, and the games with the most complex interactivity and world building/changing elements like SimCity, Morrowind, GTA, Fable, The Sims, Black and White, etc. come largely from outside the country.
And now that the videogame industry is globalizing, bringing market opportunity to more developers from countries outside of Japan, their style of game design is helping to bring about console games with worlds of greater scope and dynamics, like Knights of the Old Republic.
Indeed Shenmue is a legitimate watermark that anyone including SEGA fans can use because after all if the shoe was in the other foot and Shenmue and its sequel would have been developed specifically on PS2 (provided that the PS2 were to have 8MB of VideoRam instead of 4MB) Then add Square as the publisher and forget it, all Sony PS2 fanboys would be raving about Shemue as the definitive Emotion Engine materialized in a videogame, that and the game would not have faced the gamer apathy and instead sold millions on fluffy hype alone.
Like marconelly said, this is so 2001. Talking as if the PS2 couldn´t handle it is pretty ridiculous when taking into account the kind of graphical graphic intesive titles the PS2 has been home to.
As for the game itself, Shenmue is a pretty qverage one. In terms of presentation the game has been far surpassed by many other games on PS2 and the other systems obviously. The graphics portion of the game hasn´t aged well either, and the gameplay mechanics are pretty awfull (not to mention the incredibly boring nature of the game doesn´t help it).
One question, what priority, does having an NPC with a scripted route has on actual gameplay? It does help in terms of immersion, but other, much more critical parts of the gameplay needed work, a lot of work. AM2 should have listened to common sense and realize that when an 80s arcade game is much more interesting and fun than the entire main game, it meant something was wrong with the product.
IMO, instead of wasting its time on creating routines for generic japanese NPCs, AM2 could have spent it on creating fun, diverse gameplay, and a better use for the pretty deep fighting system included in the game.
Either way, thankfully the game doesn´t seem to be getting a third chapter, and that frees resources to help Sega recover from its stagnant position in terms of quality releases, the company is almost irrelevant to the market right now, which is sad.
Almasy:
One question, what priority, does having an NPC with a scripted route has on actual gameplay?
For those who appreciated the game's narrative, the cohesiveness that gave each little detail its own purpose within the story's setting offered players a dimension of characters, personalities, and intricacies to explore. While it wasn't a challenging gameplay mechanic, discovering what some "background" character felt about something, uncovering what took place in "off-camera" locations of the world when the storyline's focus was somewhere else, and engaging a comprehensive curiosity to see the lives of the virtual community as deeply as desired could be rewarding.
Shenmue is like a book that can be read straight through, but can also be read between its pages at any point that the player wants to have fleshed out in more detail. It realized one of the dimensions that the medium of games has always promised over books, yet never achieved much of: interactive storytelling. Without the full modeling of the game's setting -- characters' lives and all -- it couldn't have offered that unique quality and instead would've been like most other games where the details exist only for the sake of the gameplay.
passerby
21-Dec-2004, 10:46
I think the simple problem is that the amount of resources poured into Shenmue's development was not justified by the size of it's audience.
However, with this type of design approach, Shenmue Online may really stand out from the other MMORPGs, so that will be very interesting.
The PC didn't catch on as the computing standard for consumers in Japan, however. Computing technology there was instead driven by videogame consoles -- a major reason that the videogaming industry has traditionally been led by Japanese manufacturers.
How can game consoles lead computing technology in Japan? :roll: C'mon the PS2 was released 4 years ago... If you mean gaming technology, PC games in Japan died in early '90s when Japanese PC brands finally gave way to IBM PC, so the consumer market is far more important for gaming in Japan.
The gaming population (kids) in Japan is decreasing, hence there's less prospect in console gaming. Instead, cell phones have a far greater install base than that of game consoles.
I think the simple problem is that the amount of resources poured into Shenmue's development was not justified by the size of it's audience.
However, with this type of design approach, Shenmue Online may really stand out from the other MMORPGs, so that will be very interesting.
My problem with Shenmue is that it's just not fun. It's just so slow paced and therefore boring. I'm sure it's a wonderful virtual world with all the subtle nuances and details possible for this time, but you know what? I play games to escape reality, to have fun, to push boundries I couldn't normally do in real life. Mind you, I only played the first few hours because I couldn't stomach it any longer. Maybe one of these days when I retire I'll get back to it. ;)
...
Are any programmers using the synthesis model to create new experiences?
I've created procedurally generated imagery and experiences...without a CPU/GPU and '0' Flops too...it's called a decent book! ;)
one:
How can game consoles lead computing technology in Japan?
Of the consumer devices that pushed demand for performance microprocessing, game consoles (and, by reflection, application specific consumer electronics in general) grew to the largest sector. That's why consoles sometimes got peripherals like printers and hobbyist development kits only in Japan -- there had been more movement to expand the functionality of the console, a computing device so pervasive there.
C'mon the PS2 was released 4 years ago...
The Famicom was dominating almost two decades ago.
If you mean gaming technology, PC games in Japan died in early '90s when Japanese PC brands finally gave way to IBM PC, so the consumer market is far more important for gaming in Japan.
It's not that there have been no PCs in Japan, just that they didn't become a ubiquitous part of home life as in other countries. Things have been changing in the more recent years, and businesses of course adopted PCs much faster out of need.
The gaming population (kids) in Japan is decreasing, hence there's less prospect in console gaming. Instead, cell phones have a far greater install base than that of game consoles.
The application specific trend of consumer electronics continues to evolve into more broadly functional devices there with the wearable/mobile electronics culture of cell phones and such now. In the most industrialized area of the whole world, Tokyo, the preferred delivery medium for the internet is the cell phone -- one third of all people there both have a mobile phone and connect to the internet that way -- and cell phones themselves are owned by half of the population of the city.
Evil_Cloud
21-Dec-2004, 21:28
I think the simple problem is that the amount of resources poured into Shenmue's development was not justified by the size of it's audience.
However, with this type of design approach, Shenmue Online may really stand out from the other MMORPGs, so that will be very interesting.
I am getting Shenmue Online from a friend who's going to study in China! :)
...
Are any programmers using the synthesis model to create new experiences?
I've created procedurally generated imagery and experiences...without a CPU/GPU and '0' Flops too...it's called a decent book! ;)
I wonder how many [brain] Cell Flops were burnt while reading that book of yours? :lol:
Fafalada
22-Dec-2004, 04:28
As a matter of fact the following article talks about Sony PS2 components the GS and EE from a technical standpoint
That article wasn't exactly particularly technical.
MrSingh
22-Dec-2004, 05:05
jvd:
The PC didn't catch on as the computing standard for consumers in Japan, however. Computing technology there was instead driven by videogame consoles -- a major reason that the videogaming industry has traditionally been led by Japanese manufacturers.
Funny, last time I checked most of the people here use PC's for regular computing tasks rather than consoles...
Fafalada
22-Dec-2004, 05:25
Funny, last time I checked most of the people here use PC's for regular computing tasks rather than consoles...
Your sources must be wrong :P
Back when PCs started to become a standard part of the American and European household through the Eighties and Nineties, they were still comparatively uncommon in Japanese homes. Famicom penetration reached around 33% of the households in Japan, however, and spawned all sorts of peripherals from banking software to modems and satellite services.
While things have changed by now, yearly Japanese PC sales were still well under only ten million into the late 90s.
Back when PCs started to become a standard part of the American and European household through the Eighties and Nineties, they were still comparatively uncommon in Japanese homes. Famicom penetration reached around 33% of the households in Japan, however, and spawned all sorts of peripherals from banking software to modems and satellite services.
While things have changed by now, yearly Japanese PC sales were still well under only ten million into the late 90s.
If PCs are so limited (in uptake) in Japan, what are they using to get online? Don't tell me Cell phones because its hard to imagine interfacing with the things for long periods ( > 5 mins).
Fafalada
22-Dec-2004, 05:44
Back when PCs started to become a standard part of the American and European household through the Eighties and Nineties
If by PC you mean x86, then by all means no - they were not becoming a standard part of European households in the Eighties.
There was a lot of other kind of PCs though...
Yes, mobile phones. Of the 120 million people in Tokyo, 40 million access the internet through their phones out of 60 million phones in service total. The Japanese-specific web is rather undeveloped compared to English language web content, and usage is still pretty heavily focused on text sites and e-mail communication (Japanese teen girls are the world's fastest numeric keypad typists.) Many have full-fledged PCs at home by now for more functional usage, though.
Sorry, by "PCs" I was referring to general purpose computing, so Amigas/Commodores, Apples, etc. are counted.
Yes, mobile phones. Of the 120 million people in Tokyo, 40 million access the internet through their phones out of 60 million phones in service total.
Odd, last I checked Tokyo has only 12 million people... OTOH the entire Japan has 120 million :wink:
The Japanese-specific web is rather undeveloped compared to English language web content, and usage is still pretty heavily focused on text sites and e-mail communication (Japanese teen girls are the world's fastest numeric keypad typists.)
In relative number English web sites must be larger as they include not only the US and the UK, but Japanese web sites are not at all limited in text sites and e-mail. Those cellphones mainly access keitai-only websites with less bytes. Many sites have main contents along with keitai-only contents. BTW, broadband penetration, unrelated from mobile phone usage, is higher in Japan than the US IIRC, not to mention the rising number of 100Mb FTTH (fiber-to-the-home) in Japanese households.
As for the PC technology, Japan is ahead of the US in some ways because of different consumer preference and requirement. In Japan laptop machines are prefered and there are many products only available in Japan. IBM (now Lenovo) ThinkPad is developed in IBM Japan. Transmeta's main market is Japan.
Also, the Windows MCE is considered as a late attempt in Japan as most Japanese PC makers equivalent to Dell already equiped their machines with media capabilities since around 2000 with their own applications, like Sony VAIO, so MCE is kinda lame in there.
Right, the Tokyo numbers I listed carried an extra zero by accident, but are accurate for Tokyo other than that and still carry the same ratios.
According to this article (http://pcweb.mycom.co.jp/news/2004/04/14/008.html) based on the governmental report (http://www.soumu.go.jp/s-news/2004/040414_1.html), internet users in Japan in 2003 are 77.3 million (60.6% of all Japanese population), and broadband connections account for 47.8%. 61.64 million internet users are PC users, 44.84 million are cellphone/PHS/PDA users, game console/TV users are 3.39 million. Internet users of PC only are 31.06 million, cellphone/PHS/PDA only are 14.53 million.
Also according to Global Reach report (http://www.glreach.com/globstats/index.php3), 8.4% of the languages on the internet is Japanese.
http://global-reach.biz/globstats/chart.gif
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