Server based game augmentations. The transition to cloud. Really possible?

I suspect that's why Sony is charging for MP too. Otherwise the cross platform developers have to implement and tune 2 different types of MP. It is possible that both will have dedicated servers.

 

yea, Sony are masters of the "yea we have that too" pull out of their butts, operating procedure

 

Not really. You still have pros and cons of dedicated servers. It's not all rosy if you think about it. There are still tradeoffs. Of course the best solution is to have a combination of P2P and dedicated servers, so I hope Microsoft doesn't go the idiot way and require all games to be done on dedicated servers.

Dedicated servers are limited by geographic location. This may be all fine if you're living in the US, for example, as dedicated servers, are probably littered throughout the US, but it's a very different picture for other countries. Lets me give a real world example of when dedicated servers may not be the best choice.

I live in Taiwan, and quite frankly there are very little dedicated servers situated in Taiwan despite a not-so-small user base.
In this area usual "dedicated servers" are situated in Singapore, or Japan. When we play P2P with other players in Taiwan, we can achieve < 30 ms easily, and enjoy very good ping times and excellent connection. However, once we switch to dedicated servers, Singapore servers and Japan servers start at 65 ms minimum, so in this case dedicated servers actually is worse for us. So unless Microsoft can really litter the entire world with dedicated servers, dedicated servers isn't a guaranteed plus. It's a good addition to P2P, but they better not wipe out P2P outright.

 

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2013-06-12-vorsprung-durch-forza

Saw this in the Eurogamer Forza preview, it seems that the Xbox is basically uploading telemetry to the 'cloud' and the cloud is generating an AI profile from it. Nothing real time and nothing to improve gfx or gameplay experience in a visual sense (although better AI is a clear win if it works). Anyone seen any references to the cloud being used realtime in other preview s or interviews from E3?

Thus far I am very disappointed at MS failure to explain how the 'cloud' will help games at E3

 

Pfft. I don't need the cloud to collect telemetry data in real time to formulate an AI profile.
It almost doesn't need data at all beyond this tiny ruleset:

If on the outside: ram other player's car.
If drafting: ram other player's car.
If boxed in: ram other player's car.
If losing: ram other player's car.
If winning: ram other player's car.
And so on.

I can't wait until there's thousands of drivatars like mine.

 

Complex stuff there pal

 

Just needs Worf painted onto the other cars.

 

No one has ever said it would improve anything graphically even MS spin has highlight computing power, nothing else as I've seen. And Eurogamer are just being semantic especially as they published a whooping great article regarding latency and generally being very skeptical about cloud uses.

 

I didn't mean GFX, I was being quite deliberate in saying 'visual'. Many have posted reasonable sounding hypotheses as to how the 'cloud' could improve titles in real time including global AI state updates, distant physics, offloading explosive physics and others. My point was that in one of their launch titles all that the cloud is doing is offloading telemetry processing, something that could be easily achieved by processing the data during a loading screen or as a post-race job. A lot of the 'cloud' benefits seem to be for things that don't affect gameplay in real time, this is another example of that phenomena.

 

that's actually a probability, the beauty is that the new matchmaking system will match you with similarly behaved drivatars so you all can crash each other while some of us race clean in our races.

 

C'mon guys, were are your creativity? I thought here was supposed to be filled with game developers

Cloud should be really useful for evolving dynamic worlds. Remember the infamous "In fable you can plant a tree and watch it grow"? Off loading that to the server you could plant not only one, but thousands of trees, and they could use more complex simulation algorithms considering variables like weather, soil, external factors as a in love couple marking their name on it, or birds and bees spreading their seeds... And not just trees, everything can grow older, dirty and rusty, say you build a house, and spent a few years without going back there when you go back it could even be brought to the ground by a storm or something... In snow times they could run algorithms to accumulate snow realistically through the world, and so on... And all that without taking performance from the game.

Sure that in itself is not very interesting, but think of persistent, dynamic worlds, that truly changes with your actions. Remember the awesome theater mode on Halo 3? You could fly through the level and realize that while your were at the beginning another fight anywhere else was already happening in the background, complete with ballistics and simple AI interactions. But that took cpu performance from the game and so it should be limited in scope and was more like they were playing to shoot themselves... Offloading that stuff to the cloud you can use more advanced simulations, like in a squad base shooter send one of your squad mates to another fight, and by the time you got there depending on the skills and personality of your squad mate the fight would have a different outcome.

Dungeon crawlers with randomly generate levels could also benefit from offloading the map generation to the cloud. Instead of randomizing simple building blocks they could create more complex worlds using algorithms that could take hours to build a map on the console. And once the map is generated the can prebake lighting, some destruction of objects, path finding and even make the AI learn about the level so it can explore it better against you. And since the generation happens on the cloud and not on the console, they could be modified as you play with your actions reshaping the world. For example, say that at a point of the game you open a dam that floods a previously beaten level.

There are certainly lots of opportunities for enhancing the game with the cloud, but i think that even the basic fact that the cloud is always online like persisting worlds, community base features (Project Sparks community sharing features, where players can cooperatively create a level across devices), or Forza's AI that stay online and available for others players to play, is already worth it.

 

Except neither Sony nor Nintendo have a "cloud" per se. The titanfall devs were on giant bomb last night and said that ms and google are really the only two companies that have a proper cloud computing environment. Also, they go on to say that ms has built their tools to specifically use it.

Even if Nintendo and Sony could, they'd need to write tools to do it, and also build a global network of servers for this purpose. It's possible but doesn't seem remotely practical.

 

I thought maybe turn 10 was using cloud to control the Ai like an Ai playing multiplayer with you but i guess even that involves too much real time calculations so in other words they could generate these drivatars like forza 1 did locally on the original xbox

 

If you tried doing what they are doing in the cloud locally while playing you would lose processing resources in the box. That's the point. And TitanFall has dozens of AI characters on screen with their AI handled entirely by the cloud, as well as other stuff like having ships and whatnot flying around the levels to drop Titans etc. That's all done in the cloud.

Having cars drive more realistically or having lots of AI driven enemies on screen seems to qualify as something that improves visuals. I don't think it's fair to judge their cloud computing potential here on a racing game that inherently is a sim without a lot going on in any given 'scene'. Realistic animations isn't really something lacking in racing games (nothing really organic, so physics does all 'animations').

 

Lots of good cloud info here:

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articl...-power-of-10-xbox-360-consoles-says-microsoft

 

Giant Bomb podcast mentions an MS tech demo that renders an asteroid field using NASA data from the cloud. Apparently XB1 can render ~40k asteroids locally and with the cloud ~320k, I hope Richard Leadbetter or someone else technical gets a proper look at it. This I am interested in, the Forza stuff is offline telemetry analysis that could be scheduled to happen after the race or while loading. There's advantages to doing it in the cloud but it's not essential, 8 x the dynamic objects in a scene is impressive.

 

That article didn't contain anything in even the same family as 'good info'

Its total PR tripe as usual.

 

Typical response from you. If you bother to read it there is some meaningful info in there worth digesting. For instance, it reveals how many data update can be handled in a large scale usage scenario. And it shows an 8-fold increase in the number of object dynamically modeled compared to what the local box can handle alone.

You try way too hard to downplay anything related to the platform instead of simply digesting it openly and drawing informed conclusions. Read the article again. It'll do ya good.

 

Google does have a compute business. It would seem to me that games that are going to stress the network and really need that level of number crunching are going to be quite a ways away in terms of development. Besides the already existing gaikai server system which may be leveraged, there are obviously some deals that could be made with somebody.

MS is certainly ahead of the game, so to speak.