Sadly. Since to few users actually read the website, I figure I should post about this here too. Today after much personal turmoil, I decided it shut down Z-Net I. For good. None of the only if mods are online stuff.
The decision on this comes in part from several things. It was a nightmare to moderate. To few users acted even remotely respectable on it. To few users cared to see it thrive. People originally cheating the poll, faking more interest in the project then there was. My inability to distance myself from the project while knowing people would be misusing and abusing the program I put all my hard work into. Fact that it was attracting the wrong type of users than what I wanted. No community was, or even could start to thrive with it. The fact that it was making me come across as an asshole or tyrant. And well, everything about the project lost all it's fun for me.
I gave people every opportunity I could to see it stick around, but few if any took that opportunity. I've just gotten to the point where I want the project firmly in my past, so I can move forward, and do so with a happy enthusiasm. I hoped to have this program around until the day I might release Z-Net 3, but as it turned out, that just could not happen. I don't like the idea of leaving the few good users high and dry with no place to play, and an uncertainty if I will create the all around better project I would want. But it just can't be helped. And to those users. I'm sorry.
Don't put any faith, or much hope in it. But I suppose it could come back if enough people applied to be mods. But I tried that before though. Coaxing users into applying with the possibility of closing down the project looming overhead. The apps fell way short of what was needed, and 1 to none of those even worked out.
I've considered keeping it around for a small "invite only" community of users. But I just don't see that working out to well. And managing who and who is not part of that community would be to much trouble.
So for the people who might stick around the Z-Net community, you have Z-Net 3 to look forward to. But as stated elsewhere. There's not going to be a rush on it. It's important that I do better job on it then I've ever done with a project. And to do so, it should take time.
My ideas for it are starting to get more fixed, which I suppose is progress. But I haven't really worked on any of it yet. Just the IRC client I've been making to help be a backbone of such projects. That project however is coming along well still. And while its not the most impressive IRC client, it's way more solid then Z-Net I. It's at a point where I'm finding little left to do on it, outside of cosmetic things, or the few annoying bits I've been putting off as long as possible.
If I do release that IRC client, it would be with the goal as being IRC made as simple as possible, and being the most newb friendly client. I've recently tried many many IRC clients, and several claim to be the true newb clients. But honestly, none are. IRC can be made more newb friendly then that. Does it need to be? I'm not sure. But it can, and my client would have to have some gimmick or reason to be used instead of others.
I'd want to post a screenshot of it, but it's kind of cosmetically ugly atm. Hopefully I can take care of that issue soon.
Anyway. To those who won't stick around this blog of the Z-Net website now. Goodbye, and good luck!
As I mentioned in my last post, I've been working on a IRC client for the purpose of writing better IRC code to use with my projects, rather than the old dirty code I used in the past. There's plenty of IRC clients out there to choose from, and I by no means think all of them are lacking and I could bring something better. I'm just writing a IRC client purely because without doing so, it would be hard to write the code I want properly, when it comes to it having everything I need for my projects.
But with that said, when I feel I'm done with it, I'm not sure yet on what I would plan to do with it. I certainly won't keep it to myself as yet another unreleased project. But it has been such a great learning experience, I'm considering extending that experience even further. What's on my mind is, that since I'm so far so happy with the code, I'm considering releasing it commercially just for the experience of doing so. Not for any extraordinary price, or even a moderate one. Probably $1-$5 at the most. Just enough to get to delve into new areas with releasing programs. Learn a little bit about selling a piece of software, both in advertizement and income, and programmaticly with trials and registration keys. It's stuff I've wondered about here and there, but just dismissed because I felt it's to far above my head. Which anymore is not how I like thinking. I'm trying to take my development skills to the next level, and this is a new level itself.
Now for those who may find concern with these thoughts regarding my other projects like the Z-Net's. Regardless of the outcome of what I do with this IRC client, those projects will remain just as free as they always have been. That said though, of course I would hope the experience would go well, and lead me into releasing something else more serious, commercially.
Still, it's not like I made up my mind on releasing the IRC client like that yet. I may deem it to big of a headache, or scrap the idea for some other reason. If I do lean that direction, I'll just release it here like my other projects.
Now on to my progress with it.
It's starting to resemble a real IRC client now. Despite me trying to take it slow, it's progressing quite fast. I'm going out of my comfort zone to learn new things, and there have been some days where I was stuck on various things all day. But unlike years ago when I was still learning the basics, my skill and experience is now enough to know when persevering through difficulty on something will work out. Often times it's a difficult balance trying to remain interested when you're unable to make progress, and you can't find any useful help. But lately I've learned a lot even in those such situations.
Right now my IRC client connects to a server, like any should. Remains stable through any activity. Has a decent framework setup for all of the basic aspects of such a program. No more godzilla sized functions, and code that is now a lot more thoroughly thought out and refined before moving on. It supports chat rooms and private messages having their own windows, by way of tabs. I added colored text support that's even more refined than ZNI or EQCLP. Users using colored text complies with the same standard mIRC uses, so you would see such colored text just as intended, including text background color. I have events for most of the non-numeric IRC messages in, and a few of the numerics themselves. I now have the nicklists fully working. And it auto join's a list of channels that users supply.
Mostly what I have to do now, other then to refine my code as I think about it, is get the connect retry code working properly, because it's buggy. Saved settings, probably through an ini file. Beyond that, mostly just minor stuff, and adding more unique event responses to all the message types. My goal for it is to just be a basic IRC client, but I'm unsure as of yet on what aspects I consider basic.
It's not going to wow anyone, since it's just a basic IRC client, but hopefully soon I'll post a couple screen shots or a video.
With it going so well, I need to think more about the Z-Net 3/Z-Band projects, as soon I may have little in my way preventing me from moving forward on one of them. I should probably narrow some of my choices down to some polls. But after the way my last poll went, I don't know if I could trust the results. But such a thing may not go to well simply because both projects would appeal to people who don't come to my blog. So the results would be off.
I went into it more on the Z-Net website, but as I announced there I am dropping the Z-Net I project. Reasons aside, what this means is that the plans I had before to start upgrading ZNI past a clone of zbattle once I felt I got all the issues fixed, are now scrapped. I no longer have plans to do so. And as far as fixing issues with it as is goes, well I might do so here and there, but don't count on it. Also what this means is I won't be moderating it anymore myself. There will still be mods, and I will still take applications for more mods, I just won't be handling it myself. Keep in mind though that the rules are still present, even if your not warned or banned as quickly as before. I worked overboard before to help try to establish in users minds that there are in fact rules to follow for proper conduct when using the program, and that overworking went on far to long, eventually taking its toll on me. The project simply stopped being fun, and just became about babysitting a bunch of idiots.
Moving on now. I did enjoy coding at times on that project, but it was hard to do so with the limits I had to place on myself in order to help get the program to be as good of a quality as I could get it. Coding fun for me comes from doing new stuff with code that I've never done before. Not combing over my code over and over again trying to crack bugs and issues. Both major times I worked on that project, I was rushing through it, as it were. Back in 2010 it was because I was challenging myself to do it in 7 days, and earlier this year it was because users had lost zbattle and needed somewhere else to go as soon as they could get it. So I didn't really allow myself much time to catch issues as I was designing it or just write something more properly before the code was out of hand and in need of a rewrite. To its credit, the ZNI code works shockingly well, for what feels like code held together Scotch tape and bubble gum.
Now though, I've decided to move onto a new project. One I can take my time with. One I can actually try and improve my skill with by not taking a short cut when I know a professional would do it another way. The new projects goal is as of yet still undecided. It's either going to be a true Z-Net 3, which mostly means support for emus other than just ZSNES and a Game Room list that's a lot less of a moderation nightmare than the zbattle style. Or it's going to be Z-Band, hopefully with a different GUI and overall design than ZNI. While it would probably be to much of a task, it could also be a combo of both. Managing Z-Band compatibility and writing server code with just ZSNES in mind would be enough work as is. Doing so with other emus and popular games for them would just be crazy.
Right now though I'm just going back to basics. Lately I've been working on new IRC code. The IRC code I use in ZNI was ported over from the EQC Launchpad project, and even there it was ported over from a very simple MS-DOS console based IRC client I wrote back when I was just trying to get the gist of how to even go about writing such a thing. It wasn't a very well done program or anything, by any means. It just more or less got the job done well enough. The new IRC code I'm working on I'm writing almost all from scratch, using what I learned from the old code I used in those 3 projects, and every part is being done in a more stable well thought out manner. I'm writing the code along with a basic IRC client as I feel I have to, to understand exactly how I want it to be used so I can refine it more as I go. There would likely be little reason to want it, but I may release a binary for the thing once I feel it's done. I don't plan to go open source with it, but I'm happy now knowing I could if I wanted to. I would never do so with ZNI, that's how ugly the code is. Still though I guess that doesn't exclude making my next project a team project if I desired it, as the ZNI code has also made me unwilling to do that. But even then that may not be enough. When other people start doing the work, that means less fun for me. And of course I've had bad experiences with team projects over the net. Well, I'm not going to make up my mind on that stuff now, and instead I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.
Other than the IRC code, I was bored one night and made a mock up program for theoretical new GUI elements for a new Z-Net/Z-Band client. It's nice to see that I can do some of the things with the GUI that I would have wanted to do with ZNI. The mock up is in no way worth showing a picture of though, as I'm really leaving myself open on design ideas as long as I can. It could end up as a tricky balance between retaining the ease of use of the zbattle style GUI as much as possible, but also making something more modern or trying to innovate in some ways. I don't want to fall into making a mIRC clone either.
Ideally the program would look and function so well, it would feel like you can't believe such a thing wasn't made years ago. Like how did we ever get by without it? lol. Or maybe it's so simple, it seems genius! haha. I know, that's a bit of a stretch. But the higher I aim, the better the result! Hopefully... Even if I don't expect that much.
I've released the new, and final version of Z-Net I.
Along with this new version, I've removed the recent ban of the Brazilian IP addresses, and should soon remove the restriction of requiring a mod to be online for the server to be online.
To learn more, follow the link below to the Z-Net news page.
I've recently been working on Z-Net a lot. Ever since I had to instate the requirement for a mod to be around for the server to be online I've been working to add various, sometimes minor changes or improvements with regards to how it effects moderating. Doing just that got me interested enough in the program again to find and fix other minor issues while I waited for feedback about the major bugs.
I haven't wanted to release a new version unless it contained a bug fix for the major bugs, and sadly with the player base being largely Brazilian, feedback just wasn't good if even given at all. Thankfully though, with the help of a couple users (Tallgeese and JacerX) I was finally given some info to get me started on the most major remaining issue, and I now think there's a good chance I've fixed it!
The timing is probably good, as I also didn't want to get the program promoted that much until it was more stable. And thanks to the end of summer and the recent ban of several major Brazilian IP ranges, that user count has got pretty low.
I've never been good at promotion. And as Ive said before, this project was for the community and meant to be maintained by the community, not me. But I'm probably going to make an attempt at promotion soon. I have no idea what I'm going to do differently then anything I've tried in the past though.
The latest version is now in private beta testing, and hopefully won't stay in that phase to long. The new version, once public, will still be a public beta as I'm sure the limited private beta tester pool it has won't catch all the issues. If all works well with this once its public, the next major version will be the 1.0 release. Past the 1.0 release, new features and major changes could start being added.
I didn't plan to write another follow up on the subject, but I've now recently watched the Oculus Rift KickStarter project end at almost 10 times its funding goals, and feel the significance of that warrants mentioning. It shows the demand for this type of hardware that until now we have had nothing concrete to raise our voice in support of.
Now, looking to the future with advancements in projects like the Oculus Rift and the Euclideon Unlimited Detail engine, what can we expect next? And when?
The Oculus Rift previously seemed to have been indicated for a early 2013 release of a consumer model, and with a higher res display. But in reading recent interviews and Q&As it now seems like it's slated for a Q3-Q4 2013 release. It's sad to have to wait longer for this dream hardware, but there's probably no helping it. After wading through pointless question after pointless question, or the same questions getting asked several times, finally there has been some light shed on the question of how much the consumer version will cost. But that light is kind of dim. I'm sure it has been assumed by many like me that the $300 price tag of the KickStarter dev units was going to be the price for the consumer project as well. But as far as the team behind it indicates, that price does not reflect the price of the consumer model. This could mean it would be cheaper, but it's far more likely going the other way. They're generating hype with a lower price, and will probably jack it up on us just assuming we won't mind. Now the consumer model will have better hardware inside of it, seemingly warranting a bigger price. But that would be approaching the situation with HMD's wrong. The problem with HMD tech until now was it being outside of the consumer price range for anything decent. Anything higher then $300 for this thing will keep it marketed for a very slim crowd. Not all of us like paying more then that for our gadgets. Just hardcore computer geeks with no girlfriends/wives spending money on things like unnecessary video cards and CPU's, maybe family's on a TV that several people can enjoy at once, and a few idiots with smart phones. $300 for this type of gadget is the most reasonable price, and what HMD's really need. Great effort should be made to make sure the consumer model goes no higher to make sure it's as successful and popular as it could be.
But realistically, I think they will try selling it for around $400-$500 based on the higher resolution display. And it's already been stated they are not going to make different models for different price ranges/resolutions. So we won't have any tiered options to look forward to. The feedback from people who have used this has been strong (and in no way seems like filtered praise or people getting paid to say positive things). But that can only go so far. The truth is, this tech doesn't show very well in pics and videos. So it has a huge marketing hurdle to try and convince people that $400-$500 for something completely unseen before by most people, and something that video/picture does not do justice, is worth it.
So it will ether come out around this time next year with a $400-$500 price tag, far less fanfare then it deserves, with higher resolution screens, and be basically only purchased by a smaller fraction of the users who would be interested. Or it will be bumped up to $350 with its current screens, and draw more attention than it would have otherwise and probably everyone will have at least a friend of a friend with one. I tacked on an extra $50 just because I think they will that. They claim they're barely breaking even on the dev units right now.
Well, with Euclideons Unlimited Detail engine, its been over a year now, and still nothing. Well, almost nothing. They recently finally added content to their website. But to every gamers surprise, they make no mention of video games at all. Anywhere. Their entire site seems to be about some geological mapping BS that 99% of their fans and critics alike, couldn't care less about. It would seem like they decided to screw over gamers and refocus the tech just for that. But I don't think it's the case. There are reports that they're just branching out the engine into other fields as they add the staff to do so. The engine as it exist now lacks things needed for gaming, like anything related to motion of the graphics. At this stage the engine is better suited for something like this geological stuff that doesn't need motion. So it makes sense for a eager new company to be wanting to put their tech into use in anyway, as early as possible and possibly start earning money as such.
So with that said, why the silence still on the gaming front? Well, besides their arrogant power position of dangling the carrot on a stick for us, and them honestly having no obligation to supply us with any info. They're probably gearing up for something significant to show from the techs advancement in the past year. Most likely it's either a new, and downloadable demo like we were sort of promised for this year, or motion support. Other but unlikely candidates are higher frame rates, something about their "compaction" methods, better shadowing or who knows. I'll stick to talking about the main 2 possibility's.
With a downloadable demo, it's risky. There are tons of talented hackers out there ready to rip apart their code just to see how it's done, I'm sure. Maybe they don't care though. Assuming they don't, what might we see? Well, I doubt that with all the new staff they acquired that they got a new, real artist. So we would likely see a rehash of the same old island demo we've seen before. What would be amazing of them is to release something that demonstrates the ease of converting polygon models into their atom models. Preferably being able to do a whole scene. Let the real, amateur artists showcase their techs abilities for them in YouTube videos or downloadable files to run on it. I doubt that would happen though, as much as it would be nice.
The more likely update I would expect is a video showing some motion. Motion at the least from scenery. But we could see some crude scripted animation from some lifeless dull character walking around on their unmoving island demo. Probably relying on the practiced line that they're just programmers, not animators. I'm being a bit negative I suppose, but while I think the company is legit, I just don't trust them much to show much of anything off. Watching/reading the interviews with their project head, I'm just left with the feeling that they're enjoying the backlash to much, almost like trolls themselves, purposely trying to instigate people into hating them. The "any sort of a attention is good attention" type of stuff. When they have the spotlight on them they're going to milk it in any way they can.
So to sum up my speculation:
Oculus Rift - Q4 2013, $400-$500, 1 step up in resolution from the dev build.
Unlimited Detail Engine - Crummy video in the next 2 months, showing either basic scenery animation or crude character animation.
Worth mentioning in this follow up is another piece of new hardware being developed. I haven't looked into it as extensively as the other projects, but it does seem interesting and worth mentioning. It's called LeapMotion.
I know. Sounds like a stupid name. I don't understand it either. Anyway, what this hardware is, is a replacement for things like a mouse, keyboard, and gamepad. It's a type of camera that tracks the details of your hands and fingers at very fast speeds and at very fine precision. Along side the Oculus Rift, this really makes you feel like that future that movies have always made it seem like we were heading for, is finally near.
There are a few videos demoing this on YouTube, but others don't really showcase much different. And the only gaming it's shown with is cheap trendy type stuff. Not real video games. So who knows how hard they are working on adapting this for gaming or anything outside of useless novelty stuff that doesn't do much beyond what you could do with a mouse.
Personally, I don't think this tech is to near ready. The fact that it needs to be below your monitor to track movement above it rather then the other way around (maybe it supports both, I haven't read about it though.) and its limited field of tracking make its use kind of limited. I don't think it needs to be some sort of gimmicky Kinect BS, tracking entire body movement, just a larger area then the couple feet in front of your monitor.
If this tech can evolve more and more as time goes by, it can show real promise though. It could move on to maybe 2-3 sensors allowing 360 degree full body tracking, maybe see some facial detail tracking, or who knows. Such things could really allow for some amazing new control interfacing for standard computer use, and go well beyond the capabilities of current motion detection game interfaces.
But thinking about this, if the drivers and software that go along with it are as good as could be hoped, controls could be amazing if you could use hand gestures, like sign language or some sort of spell casting. The range of such gestures is enormous, and could be used as shortcuts for a lot of basic computer actions or gaming controls.
I could theorize its capabilities all day long, but won't. This is defiantly another piece of tech to keep our eyes on though, and see what evolves with it.
I've recently been working on ZNI some again. Sadly, there's still a severe lack of feedback on its more major bugs, so I'm still left in the situation were I won't work on anything new on the project until I've fixed the major issues. This is part why I lost interest in the project, and haven't done anything with it in a few months.
I slightly adjusted my stance on working on it, and begone working on it again only to cover some weak spots in it and zbattles design. Mostly related to make moderating the program easier/cleaner. And doing so within the bounds of retaining backwards compatibility with v0.5.3.1 while also not moving it to far away from the zbattle design.
The changes are almost all behind the scenes, so I won't go into anything. Few users should care outside of knowing the fact that I am still willing to work on the project. It's just lack of user feedback and other community aspects that are keeping me from doing so. And I very much want to add all the new features users want and bring it beyond a zbattle clone. I'm just holding firm to the belief that whats broken now needs to be fixed before adding anything new that might end up broken.
I'm hoping to release the next version sometime soon, even without all the bug fixes I used to want in it. But I don't have a real timetable yet. It will need to see some private beta testing first.
The only other news about Z-Net is already known by most that actively use the program or visit the website. But I guess I can talk about it here for the few that don't. The problem facing ZNI with a lack of mods, and abundance of users who disregard the rules finally reached it's boiling point, and regrettably I've felt forced to make the drastic step of restricting use of ZNI to only times at which a ZNI mod is connected. This helped coax 2 users to apply to be mods, but ZNI still needs several more to help ensure it both up at all and well moderated anywhere close to 24 hours a day. Right now I do what I can still to make sure its up during the hours of the evening (PST), but I can't always cover those hours myself.
So with that in mind, please do your part if you can and apply to help moderated and grow the health of the community and project.
I'm a MMA fan. I've thought about posting about it in the past, but ended up not doing so due to it being to much in contrast of the other posts I had going on. Now that I'm trying to expand the content on my blog it would seem to be a good time. And regrettably, this is what I have to post about.
It was announced in these past couple days that, for the first time ever, the UFC has completely canceled an event. One that was even scheduled to happen just 8 days later. "Why?" you may ask.
Well, a lot of things factor into it, but in the short of it, because it's Light Heavyweight Champion bitched out. What I mean is, while I don't think he was scared to fight the challenger put in front of him, he declined the fight based on his ego, money, etc. Sure his head trainer could be shouldering the blame instead of him due to the advice he gave to him, but in the end it's up to the fighter to take a fight or not. And he didn't.
A short while ago, Jon Jones himself was in the opposite position of a similar situation. Coming in on short notice to challenge the Champ. Back then he seemed to be the next big deal. A great up and coming role model for the sport. A hungry, competitive fighter that people could appreciate. One that cares more about putting on a good show or challenging himself, more then how much money he's getting, how it effects his endorsement deals, a legacy based on winning, or other such things.
That all changed once he got the gold belt. Fan's started seeing through his phony persona. And despite continuing to win with impressive performances, his stock in fans eye just didn't go up. Instead maybe down. He seemed to poorly fight it for awhile, but recently it seems he has just given up and is now starting to show himself for the person he truly is, one even worse then we thought was poorly hiding behind that mask.
I'm only going to speak from my perspective as a fan and how I view it effecting me. Other fighters, promoters, sponsors and other people effected by his actions have or can speak for themselves elsewhere. As a fan, I find his actions embarrassing. I'm a pure MMA fan. I've cared little to nothing for every other sport. MMA was something special, and devoid of all the bad aspects plaguing other sports. I've been proud to admit I'm an MMA fan, and tell people whats great about it and why they should watch. For all the pure fighters that show their heart in the cage, are hungry for competition no matter where they rank on the ladder. UFC has had its issues in the past year or two, of which I'll go more into later. But seeing a guy like this just brings to MMA what is one of the worst aspects of boxing, something that is why MMA outshines boxing in the way it does now.
I titled this post about UFC jumping the shark. And what I more fully mean is that in recent years the UFC has digressed into exactly what I hated about other sports. UFC and MMA in general used to have the most intelligent fans, which also is why I was proud to say I was one. Many UFC fans both quickly learn all the technical details that went into a fight to be able to enjoy it, and they saw past the regional BS mindset of "I like this guy the most because he from somewhere close to where I live!", and instead were fans of someone purely because that guy had skill, was a hard worker, a great heart as a fighter, or was because he was a entertainer.
Well, those days are gone. The sport has been heading in a direction that completely endorses such limited mindsets. I find it embarrassing to hear the chants of "USA", just as much as I find it disgusting to hear the cheers and boos in the way in which that happen in Brazil events. It's just sad to see a sport that was once so great, going this direction.
Maybe it isn't to late. There's a possibility of salvaging the dignity of the sport. I hope it happens. But as it looks now, the talent on fight cards has been stretched to thin, egos and money are starting to drive fighters, fan intelligence is at a all time low, and ticket and PPV prices are to high and seem to be going up. It's going to be hard to fix all of that.
This is somewhat of a follow up to my last post on the Oculus Rift HMD/VR Headset. While that is a piece of hardware set to change the way we see/play games, what I'm going to talk about now is more about software.
As I mentioned in my previous post, I didn't like the look of games on PS1 and other consoles in that era. The best looking games were only games that just didn't look particularly bad. This was due to 3D being done using polygons which lacked the advancements done since then to make them less jagged, richer in color, and just plain have more of them to make things look less blocky. While back then I just didn't find many games particularly appealing, looking back at those games now, some look down right hideous.
But polygons were all we really had. If you don't know, polygons are, simply put, triangles or deformed rectangles. 3-4 points get specified, then a picture gets placed in between those points to create whatever is desired to be seen. Either a piece of terrain, maybe a piece of clothes or skin, etc. As game tech has evolved more and more polygons can be placed on a screen at a time, and this makes things look smoother and all around better like we see from games today.
Despite that, even in games today, if you look closely at a game you can see the polygons. While games may get better and better looking, polygons are always going to be limiting games from achieving that perfect realistic look the future of the game industry should be striving for. But it is the best of the worst possible ways to do 3D, so were stuck with it.
Things like voxels have existed for awhile. If you've played MineCraft, you've seen voxels. While it's a very good game, visually it looks like crap compared to other modern games. It doesn't look like that purely for its personal artistic uniqueness or anything. It looks like a N64 game because of the limits of voxels. It just takes more data being processed at a time to display voxels. The real world is made of atoms, so ideally to replicate that in a game you would want to do something comparable. Voxels would fit that. But as they are now, they will always be behind polygons in when it comes to pleasant graphics. I say "as they are now", because someone could rethink the technology and cause a great leap forward. And that just may have been done.
Enter a new small company called Euclideon. This group has caused a bit of controversy after releasing a couple YouTube videos about a year apart and remaining silent in between. They made enormous claims that if true would turn the graphics industry on its head, and with such claims the silence rightfully seems very shady to a lot of people. To this day they could be orchestrating a hoax. We honestly don't know until they reveal more or release playable demos. To me though, they seem legit, and I can't wait to see more.
Getting to the point, what they have claimed is to be able to render games in unlimited detail using atom based graphics. To break it down more, while they claim it isn't voxels, the tech their claiming to use is at the least very similar or just an evolution of voxels that was needed. Its called Point Cloud data. They render worlds by the atom, each far smaller then seen in MineCraft, with more density and at very usable speeds. If they can truly do this, worlds will look amazing. Graphics artists will no longer have their hands tied behind their back. Simply, 3D games will look like we always wanted them to. If the same tech can be applied to character models, our games would look like those amazing cut scenes videos and trailers for games that for me, always lead to a huge let down once I get into the game and see it looks little to nothing like that quality.
Without further ado, watch this video for yourself.
For the disbelievers the video below is more interesting, but much longer. It's a interview with the project head, and in it you get to see their demo played in real time as best as it can be proved at this point. At the very least, when you watch this video you should begin to think "This is a AWFUL lot of work for a hoax if it is one!", which to me means its chance of being one is very low. The only other reason to go to this extent is for scamming money out of investors, of which they claim they don't need any. If their privately taking behind the scenes funding, we will never know. Still, I'm choosing to believe in it for now.
If true, what this will mean is that $500 graphics card you have right now is almost worthless as it would be little to no different then a $50 one. This Point Cloud rendering is all done on the CPU, not the GPU, or so they claim. Now in the future, GFX cards could very well be redesigned to take some of the load and increase performance, but we wouldn't see that right away. If developing a game for this is just as easy as it is with polygons, then this should get adopted quickly and NVIDIA and ATI should be struggling to adapt for a little while.
That's the only bad with this, but even then things could go differently. There could be a marriage between the 2 techs, and for example, polygons could still be used for character models. For all I know, doing such a thing could cause character models polygon counts to be safely increased much higher. Things like lighting, shadows, etc, could all still be handled by current GFX hardware.
Also of note. This is a graphics engine, similar to the Unreal engine series most of us know about. This means that the possibility of seeing this on consoles is fairly good. If we do, there should really be little difference in the 3 major consoles if their games are being created using such an engine. People will further realize that things like innovation and features matter more. And thankfully, this favors my favorite brand as Nintendo is the only one that really tries to innovate.
Below is a video from another site showcasing some of whats been done since then. At first when looking at the preview still, it seems like a pic of the real world. It is however a real time rendered 3D environment. It's fairly obvious once the video starts playing, even it you didn't see into the emptiness of infinity at some points. But its still massively better then the environments being rendered right now with polygons! But with such a small environment size, it's still not likely the definitive proof that hopeful skeptics would like to see.
What we need to see next, besides them obviously just finishing their tech and putting it into the hands of game devs, is a downloadable demo or acknowledgement from undeniably credible names in the gaming industry. The latter being maybe similar to John Carmack lending his name and face along side of the Oculus Rift. I'd like to see this just to get past all the negativity surrounding this project. Its such a huge step for gaming that it just needs to have all the most legitimate claims to it being fake squashed, so things could move forward with it getting the proper attention it deserves. With a demo, well, that would be even more significant as long as they didn't impose tons of limits on it. But it would also be dangerous for them as company. Once any code is out, they risk people reverse engineering their code. This could create competition to soon, and effect things negatively in other ways.
Next we also need to see this rendering animation. Real time animation requires a significant amount of CPU power, and that requirement grows with the more data you have to keep rendering as the animations continues. Animation has been a huge concern to a lot of skeptics because of knowing that. Thus far the only animation shown by Euclideon is with a old very crude version of the engine, and that just says little for the engine at this state. Animation is most important for models, which as I said could possibly still be rendered with polygons, but scenery has is own animation as well, or at least it should. Another concern about this is its memory footprint. Rendering worlds by the atom should require a LOT of data to do it properly. In the demo, this issue could seem to have been short cut by the reuse of a smaller list of objects. But when it comes to a full game level or seamless world, such reuse of a limited number of objects and terrain isn't going to cut it. This company could have something very special, but so far has given its fans little, and critics plenty. It's now been over a year since their last official update. Not only is it about time for a new update, but starting from that update, the secrecy and shadiness needs to end. Some may see it as they don't owe us anything. I beg to differ some, and here's why. Were all sitting on the edge of a major breakthrough in gaming graphics, and as I mentioned this is all done in software. Think about all the people that may drop hundreds or thousands of dollars on new GFX hardware, just to find out that this is going to hit and make that hardware no more useful then say an old and otherwise outdated card. Personally, I'm not investing in a new card until I know more about this engine, and its been this way since I first heard about it. So this leaves me completely hanging until I hear a real time frame. Whatever happens, if this proves real and to lives up to Euclideon's claims, were all in for a real treat. Both this and the Oculous Rift could be in full swing in the next couple years, and while one of them is a massive change to the way we see/play games, both together is simply mind boggling.
My hopes are high. I cant wait to see how things develop, or to get my hands on both projects.
It's been a while since I've posted. I got to fixated on this being a portal for my Z-Net I project and lost sight of it being more of a generalized content blog. Now I'm going to take another step towards that goal and talk about a new piece of hardware being developed that I think most of you would find interesting.
A lot of us probably grew up thinking the future of gaming was going to be about immerse 3D experiences, either through a Holodeck like seen in Star Trek or through a Virtual Reality headset (HMD) like seen in countless movies and T.V. shows. More so the latter as growing up in the 80's - 90's with all this teasing shown, I expected that to be anytime now. When the Virtual Boy was released, well, it was disappointing. But it was still at least a step forward. It still made me feel like the next step was right around the corner. Sadly, I had to wait many years for the VR blip to appear on my radar. And that was the Nintendo On. If you don't remember this piece of gaming controversy history, it was a well put together demo/teaser video about the next Nintendo console after the GameCube. The console was featured to finally be the first true attempt at a real HMD that we all were waiting for. The way this video was released made it seem shady, and while my expectations weren't up, my hopes defiantly were. It obviously proved fake as the next console turned out to be the Wii and was nothing like it.
Since then the HMD tech world has been silent with nothing new and significant coming forward. For years now there has been HMD's, but most are priced into the obscene and no where near affordable to the average gamer. And of course the cheaper and closer they are to being affordable, the worse they are. And sadly, it seemed like no one was even trying to bring this tech to us.
The major limitation preventing progress in this market was the display units themselves. Developing a couple small screens to sit in front of your eyes with a resolution you could find remotely enjoyable with anything close to modern games, was hard. And at a affordable cost was essentially impossible. While that was the single biggest issue preventing any development at all, there was another. To get a true immersive experience the head movement of the character in game needed to be synced with your own. Since the Wii, the tech needed for this existed in the form of motion sensors. Such sensors for a headset need to have extremely low latency in order to properly fool the brain enough for you to have a quality experience. If your not convinced at the need for such motion sensors, I suggest you look into an experiment by a guy named Johnny Chung Lee. When the Wii first came out he started using the WiiMote in other ways, one of which reversed the positions of the remote and the led sensor bar to a degree. You make a set of sensor bar glasses or just put the normal one on your forehead and put the remote on top of your monitor, load his program, and start moving your head around. The 3D effect is quiet cool even though its so fixed to a screen. If you have a WiiMote, a bluetooth adapter and a little time I suggest you try it out. Or at least check out this video.
Anyway, the tech for such VR devices evolved little over the years. And despite the recent advances with smart phone displays, no one has truly married the screen tech with HMD's, until now. Yes, now there is a a new HMD in development! And whats better it is being made with the backing of some of the biggest names in "First Person" game development. This one has the cred to succeed! It's field of view is good, it's latency is low, and its resolution is currently around 720p for the development model, with 1080p expected for the consumer version. All with a final price in the consumer range. The dev models currently cost around $275-$300, and hopefully the consumer versions will as well. I think that's the perfect price, as anything more would just be to much for a display, and would just limit it to a smaller pool of the gamer population.
This HMD is called Oculus Rift. And right now it in a phase putting kickstarter to use. As you will see, the demand for such tech is huge. It's currently sitting at almost 6 times the funds of its original goal. Now I urge you to understand what your getting if you were to put forward the $275-$300 for one of these units right now. These are dev units, not consumer models. If you were to buy one, you would effectively be buying one for a single game (Doom 3 BFG). And the dev models will likely have less capabilities then the consumer ones, like less resolution, no sound, no wireless, etc. While I'm certainly eager to get my hands on one, even if I had the money to idly throw at getting one, I most likely wouldn't and instead save it for the better/consumer model.
Also you can watch a keynote with the devs backing this here. It's an hour long, but it helps convey the legitimacy on this project, and helps build confidence that it will come to completion.
Anything can happen. But I'm excited to finally see this step being taken for gaming. Since the step away from the 16-bit era, I personally have felt that 3D has mostly been crap. It was ugly on the PS1 which is a huge part of why I never bought it. It was done well enough on a few N64 Classics, but poorly on many others. Since those eras the marriage between graphics and gameplay has gone askew, with to much of a focus on graphics that just don't deliver anything to me. With consoles since then, I've just been buying Nintendo consoles for continuing to play my favorite franchises that always deliver on gameplay, and staying away from the over-rated graphics focused ones that just output generic FPS after generic FPS.
With this new leap coming, hopefully I can start enjoying modern games again, as the 3D should now be living up to its capabilities more. This still isn't everything to make a good all around enjoyable 3D experience, but there are other advancements being taken out there that I will post about later.
