Comments on: Sandbox Stuff

By: Darren Torpey

Darren Torpey — Wed, 09 Aug 2006 12:23:00 +0000

The comment about CPU power going to gameplay-related calculations reminds me of the ASSISTments tutoring system that I work on at WPI.

The system is starting to meet some of its early potential as and intelligent tutor by keeping track of student progress and using statistical methods (informed by content creators) to decide what kind of problem to give the student next.

The actual "graphics" of the system are dead simple. Very rudimentary HTML output is all we really need, but eventually there will be tons of processing going on behind the scenes just to decide what problem (or even what hint text) to show next.

It reminds me of how Matt Ward, my animation teacher in undergrad and graphics teacher in grad school, always reminded us that the entire sum of graphics processing all boils down to choosing the right color for each pixel. No more, no less.

It seems like many threads of game development (design + programming, that is), if not all of them, will start to head in the same direction, but with respect to gameplay, as you and your quoted sources suggest.

A million gagillion cycles, and all to decide what challenge/story element to present next. ;)

By: Ian Schreiber

Ian Schreiber — Mon, 31 Jul 2006 17:04:00 +0000

Take an example game like Civ 4, where there are multiple layers of “content”. Even a beginning player can figure out how to use the game editor to make maps and scenarios. A computer-savvy player can change unit strengths and other basic stats in XML. An expert user can start messing with the actual game rules in script (I forget if they use Lua or Python or whatnot, but whatever it is it’s made accessible to the end user). So where’s the dividing line between software and content? Is that line even meaningful anymore as a distinction?

By: Craig Perko

Craig Perko — Mon, 31 Jul 2006 16:21:00 +0000

I definitely agree with what Ian said. Or, at least, what you said he said.

It's almost impossible for me to think of interactivity or gameplay as "software" any more. Software is the engine which packages my scripts and pics.

Is that the summary of what the "cell system" is?

Kinda wish I'd gone. :)