[Morvak]

With Bioshock you have a lot more interaction with the environment and your weapons and how you can defeat your enemies. You don't just shoot electricity at your enemy to hurt them, you can use that electricity to interact with environment - open doors, eletrocute water. Same with frozen plasmids etc.

Take a look at the Alone in the Dark preview and Far Cry 2 and fire now interacts more with the environment where it will spread to anything fire should catch onto.

COD4 will have somewhat of a destructable environment as far as bullets are concerned. (and if there's anything else, i forget off hand)

So what's next?

I'm thinking eventually games need to have the environment, walls, cars, buildings, ground, doors, etc., COMPLETELY destructable. The reason I think this is because it will lend to games being even MORE non-linear.Forget having to follow a level based on the walls around you - get C4 and blow a hole in a wall anywhere you want, run your car through a wall, etc. It will take exploring to an all new level.

Beyond environment destruction and interaction - what's next?

We came from games where you just ran around with a gun, ala Doom and Wolfenstein, to now being able to turn lights off and on, shoot them out, telekenisis...

Besides constantly improving the AI, I am curious what some of you think games need to improve or something completely new that needs to be implemented because eventually bioshock's gameplay is going to get old as other games will start to mimic it i am sure.

[||Console||]

3d glasses and a gun like from duck hunt =)

[Twigglish]

Originally Posted by ||Console||

3d glasses and a gun like from duck hunt =)

rgr that

No really though, an FPS with a 3D helmet/visor.

Or a fighting game, where you wear a suit and feel strong vibrations when getting hit/kicked there.

[Thund3rball]

Ballroom Dance Dance Revolution

Bur seriously... I think you answered your own question. Non-linear open environments are the way it's going. Everything in the game will have physical properties that act and react as they would in the real world. I think they'll be building on this for a while. Triple screens are already here. That's pretty sweet but I am sure running them with everything on MAX is more than any GFX card can handle ATM. Perhaps full virtual reality will try and take off again with fancy new technology. Not big clunky goggles of yesteryear but slick, lightweight specs, earphones and a mic.

[SteveLord]

Destructible stuff is a good one. I feel like its been promised for many years, but we've yet to see it fully implemented.

AI is lagging behind the most of you ask me. But its probably the hardest to get done right.

We need enemy AI that communicates commands with other AI and can use some serious tactics to kill you. Call in armor or air support would be cool to see. The "AI that takes cover" thing is old already.

For RPGs, you need AI that reacts to your actions. Sleeping AI in their houses sense the noise you make creeping in to steal. Or like pulling out a weapon, going into their houses and stealing stuff. Even if you're not caught red handed, the AI could inform a guard, and that guard would inform others to look out for you.

AI that does more than stand there forever. AI that has a job routine. They wake up, goto work, go do some hobby and come back home to sleep. The only game to pull this off was (and yes I like to brag about it and point out the flaws in modern games) is Ultima 7. A game from freakin 1992!!!! 15 years later and I've seen nothing to top it yet..in RPGs anyway (Oblivion is somewhat close) Shooter games arent much better. Most them are just "tell teammate to HOLD or FOLLOW" If there is a line of game that has failed to deliver on promise of massively improved AI, its the Rainbow6/Ghost Recon series..with only a little exception to their latest titles.

And lets stop with the shooters that have enemy AI that can shoot you in the head with a pistol from a mile away for just peeking.

[Burninate]

Originally Posted by Twigglish

rgr that

No really though, an FPS with a 3D helmet/visor.

Or a fighting game, where you wear a suit and feel strong vibrations when getting hit/kicked there.

Halo 3 Collectors' edition comes with a totally awesome 'Master Chief' helmet you can wear while playing . But, I think Wii is going in the right direction by making games more interactive while not making games cost $200+ with costly special controllers and add-ons ala Rock Band and DDR.

[SteveLord]

Originally Posted by Burninate

Halo 3 Collectors' edition comes with a totally awesome 'Master Chief' helmet you can wear while playing . But, I think Wii is going in the right direction by making games more interactive while not making games cost $200+ with costly special controllers and add-ons ala Rock Band and DDR.

The Wii surprised me a lot. I thought it was gonna be another cheesy product from Nintendo, but the technology is top notch and it seems to be quite addictive eh?

[Twigglish]

Originally Posted by SteveLord

For RPGs, you need AI that reacts to your actions. Sleeping AI in their houses sense the noise you make creeping in to steal. Or like pulling out a weapon, going into their houses and stealing stuff. Even if you're not caught red handed, the AI could inform a guard, and that guard would inform others to look out for you.

AI that does more than stand there forever. AI that has a job routine. They wake up, goto work, go do some hobby and come back home to sleep. The only game to pull this off was (and yes I like to brag about it and point out the flaws in modern games) is Ultima 7. A game from freakin 1992!!!! 15 years later and I've seen nothing to top it yet..in RPGs anyway (Oblivion is somewhat close) Shooter games arent much better. Most them are just "tell teammate to HOLD or FOLLOW" If there is a line of game that has failed to deliver on promise of massively improved AI, its the Rainbow6/Ghost Recon series..with only a little exception to their latest titles.

And lets stop with the shooters that have enemy AI that can shoot you in the head with a pistol from a mile away for just peeking.

I believe Oblivion does all of that very well.

[IR1]

Red Faction anyone..!? You could blow through walls with your rocket launcher, customized shortcuts!

[Twigglish]

Originally Posted by IR1

Red Faction anyone..!? You could blow through walls with your rocket launcher, customized shortcuts!

If only it was a good game lol. It was ahead of its time.

[Roofles]

I think for RPG's the next thing is a more interactive storyline and AI interaction. Usually you have only a couple choices when doing RPG's, ie good or bad, and no real grey area.

Eventually virtual reality will make a comeback. Because it has too, once we get photoreal images in 2d, the only step then is 3d. And body suit controllers instead of mouse and keyboard.

[Morvak]

Ya'll make some great points!

SteveLord on the A.I. bit: I agree. Games perhaps need to get to the level where the A.I. live real lives, and you are invading in their space. So if you kill some guy instead of it simply being another enemy, it should effect the entire story - you kill him, well now his family or his mob boss or whatever that lives somewhere else in the game will eventually realise this and they will call authorities or send more peeps out to his last known location. Things like that.

Full bodysuits! Great idea! But could you imagine people running around blindly up and down your street as they play Half Life 3000 ? lol People running into walls, getting hit by cars.

But maybe something more like Wii where you just sit in your chair and move your feet to run or something.

[Thund3rball]

Originally Posted by Morvak

Full bodysuits! Great idea! But could you imagine people running around blindly up and down your street as they play Half Life 3000 ? lol People running into walls, getting hit by cars.

Now that's funny!

[outercipt]

Yeah, latest games are finally evolving, most of the makers some years ago only wanted to show better graphics, but, many of them forgot about AI and realism.

New games like Bioshock / Crysis / Whateva u want! are going to make a new STANDARD in the market. Being able of destroy anything could be another reason to buy a PPU.

@Offtopic: I would like to thank M$ for making VISTA, even if it isn't faster than XP I think that OEM builders/home users now have to put better hardware to make it run. If everyone gets better hardware, then Game makers may have more resources to deal with.... I'll open a thread about this xD

[ShadowPho]

Originally Posted by IR1

Red Faction anyone..!? You could blow through walls with your rocket launcher, customized shortcuts!

YEAAAH! That was the BEST GAME EVER!!!
Except that RedFaction 2 sucked majorly. And not a lot could be blown up. (Ahem, the glass level! )

To be honest, we won't see big changes in gaming unless something big happens in the GPU/RAM/CPU department. You can only store so much of the level in RAM to be processed only so fast by CPU and displayed only so fast by the GPU. Sure the CPU might be 2x,3x,4x as fast as it is now.... but it's not fast enough to see a big difference in games.

I am just waiting for a second Bill Gates to invent radically better hardware. And learning to be one

[Brolloks]

I'm sure Crysis with it's amazing physics and fully destructible environment will set quite a high standard in the FPS arena, beyond that, who knows...virtual reality

[Thund3rball]

Shadow, do you think the way in which the assets of the game are now starting to be constantly streamed as opposed to "load level... wait... " will get better. id's new engine engine is supposed to be really good at this and we have already seen how well the U3 engine moves everything along in Bioshock without much fuss.

By streaming the content, using more advanced compression/decompression, utilizing multi-core CPUs and learning the tricks of the latest API, games worlds can theoretically become quite massive and detailed without a single load screen.

FarCry 2 is boasting a 50 sq. km map where you can go anywhere, interact with anything, live in a 24 hour cycle with AI that knows when it needs to sit down and eat, relax, take their post, wait for teammate to catch up, help you, kill you, etc... etc...

[deathman20]

Physics and more Advanced AI...

Physics:
Are starting to come out now because of the increased power at hand, mainly due to the multi-cored CPU's and the way games will now utilize more than 1 Core. This is a huge improvement over before and surely it is JUST the begining with that. Not only boxes, windows, doors, vehicles, etc being destroyed but full structures in due time. Remember though having fully destrutable games there is a problem with that, expecially if you need to get somewhere thats not there anymore because you blew it up or you moved an object you can't move anymore. There are issues with it but Red Faction was definatly where it was at with that type of idea, limiting to a certain extent of what could be done where.

Advanced AI:
Probably one of the hardest things to ever make in a game IMO. Having the AI do certain things and react to certain senerios is about one of the hardest things to code for, since theres so many different veriables. Really this will be the biggest challege for any game maker expecially one that makes there own engine. Surely if some company makes AI that can do many things and be used in verious games surely that would be the IDEAL solution to hopefully solving this issue. 1 Dedicated company working soly on this to improve it. Have updates to the AI that could be updated amoong verious games without the main game needing to be updated. Of course this in itself would cause issues but its probably the best option for a more advanced AI than we have currently.

Enviroments:
Maybe not the top of the list but its already being done and decently well in some games. Making enviroments more realistic and the ability to go anywhere type deal. Surely more and more games will hopefully start using this open ended type game style more even in FPS's since it does make it very enjoyable IMO. Surely this style of game can be a limited audience as well.

Surely graphics have come a long way and will continue to grow in games, but after a bit surely more and more games will start to shift focus a little further to these options which some games have. The dedicaed physics processor is one way of going right now that helps do certain things but overall something much larger will be needed, weather its another piece of hardware (DOH) or hopefully just more powerful CPU's to take over the physics calculations.

Man just years ago was nothing to what it is today for the Gaming industry. I remember growing up on Doom and here we are now and I'm just 25. Heck when my first kid starts playing games (oh yeah i'll start them early) there will be a huge step forword to what we have now and they'll look back and think damn my Dad played these games, how could they possibly play such crappy looking and unrealistic feeling games back then.

[ShadowPho]

Originally Posted by Thund3rball

Shadow, do you think the way in which the assets of the game are now starting to be constantly streamed as opposed to "load level... wait... " will get better. id's new engine engine is supposed to be really good at this and we have already seen how well the U3 engine moves everything along in Bioshock without much fuss.

By streaming the content, using more advanced compression/decompression, utilizing multi-core CPUs and learning the tricks of the latest API, games worlds can theoretically become quite massive and detailed without a single load screen.

FarCry 2 is boasting a 50 sq. km map where you can go anywhere, interact with anything, live in a 24 hour cycle with AI that knows when it needs to sit down and eat, relax, take their post, wait for teammate to catch up, help you, kill you, etc... etc...

I am sorry, I don't think my post was clear enough. What I meant to say is that we will not see big changes in the gaming unless we get some big change in computing. For example, if you stand in the grass. Will the computer calculate movement of every grass with respect to the wind, gravity and friction to other grass? Or if you see a tree, is it really just wood with leaves attached, or is it a big model? Does a single game have the option where you can cut down the tree and see a branch break off as the tree hits the ground?

That is where will get huge changes. In the end we should be able to imitate every electron to get the feel of reality. Is it possible to create the Matrix right now? (besides the point of connecting your head to a computer and intercepting/sending signals). We would need more RAM than there is currently on Earth.

Think about this: a forest. In front of you are thousands of leaves, grass blades, animals and bird nests. Now picture having to store every single tree, plant, animal and ground piece into RAM or on the HDD. We would have to either a) cut down on stuff or b)pretend that there are only x trees with all the same stuff on them. Going by the b route we would immediately see that you cannot do stuff to the trees.

There is a reason Oblivion, Fallout2 and Bioshock(to some extent) take megabytes of hard drive space to save. In fallout 2 if you drop a gun on the floor, it stays there. Now, picture that with everything: you chop a tree down, and it stays chopped. You kill a person -- their body remains or gets picked up by somebody.

I am yet to see a game where a war is portrayed with many people. What is the maximum bots count in BattleField 2? In a real war there would be thousands of people dying. Are we going to see thousands of people fighting where the AI is individual for each person? Like, you mentioned Far Cry2 has nice AI. Is it realistic? More than before. How will it run though? Is it limited to the pure processing power? Yes.... it is.

I want to break the glass and see thousands of shards of glass fall down each one of them following the rules of physics. I want to see a real fire in a game. Bioshock's one looks good... but is it good enough? We can do better as software engineerings, but those are cheap tricks. If you want to model 5 billion blades of grass, you will need to decide on what to store about those 5 billion blades and then you will realize that you can't do everything you want.

Just picture it: you can not only see your feet (FEAR), but also the blades of grass actually crumble under your feet! And when you come back an hour later some of the footsteps will remain.

[SteveLord]

There needs to be a new break in technology to store all these and optimize it. Megatexture is kinda like that right?

Halflife 2 is something that needs to be modeled after. Seriously. Its STILL an awesome looking game, has the physics and detail there...AND AND AND...it does all that without bringing your system to the ground.

We also need freakin games that are freakin multithreaded. Games that see a 3ghz dualcore as 6ghz and quadcores as 12ghz. Seriously, dualcores have a couple generations on them already....and the games that FULLY take advantage of them are almost nonexistent.