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General: Funcom Wants Smaller Game Clients
MikeB
Community ManagerAdministrator RarePosts: 6,555
Anyone who has played Age of Conan can take a guess why (26GB install? anyone?) but Funcom is looking to reduce client install footprints on their games. To accomplish this, Funcom has licensed a middleware toolset called Substance Air developed by Allegorithmic to do just that.
The technology uses procedural rendering to vastly decrease the size of a game's textures, all without giving up graphical fidelity. There is no word on whether Age of Conan will be able to be retrofitted with this technology, but expect Funcom's future games to eat up a lot less space on your hard drive!
As a huge advocate for the potential of procedural rendering in videogames, this is some pretty interesting news. For those who are unfamiliar with the technology, well, you've heard the saying "Seeing is believing" right?
So, with that said, I'd like to share my favorite demo of what procedural rendering can do:
Check out what can be accomplished with as little as 177KB using procedural rendering in this amazing demo by demo group Farbrausch. Simply run the program, and enjoy. Also, be sure to let us know what you think in the comments below!
Via Cinemablend.
Comments
That's some serious "smaller" in there they want.
Impressive, looking forward to what Funcom and others might do with this....
All I did was look at the demo. I haven't looked into the tech itself, although I have seen it discussed before in various places such as dev.net. However, from what i seen based on the long "loading screen" before the demo started, here's my theory.
It seems that they've done what I've often asked would be possible. That is, to basically have a small text/binary file that tells the cpu and gpu what to build on the fly, rather than having the actual textures pre-built.
The limitations I see based on this premise is going to be hardware based. It'll take a damn good cpu, gpu, and alot of memory to have a full mmo, or even singleplayer, game with this tech.
As I said, just going from my assumptions at this point.
That being said, that was an impressive 177kb.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.kkrieger - 96kb freeware FPS (procedurally generated). According to the developers, .kkrieger itself would take up around 200–300 MB of space if it had been stored the conventional way.
Given that the future of games will be digital purchases with huge downloads, anything that saves a gamer download time is a winner!
Now they stick an installer on your machine that streams the files down to appropriate dirs on your drive. Funcom has more installer problems than any other company. See under Tech Support forums and see for yourself. For those who live in an area with limited wiring and DSL seem to have the most problems. I have no firewalls, virus protection, blocked ports with virtually no download problems with any other client/installer except theirs. I take my computer to work where there is security up the butt and AOC installer works fine. Its a pain to do every time it needs patching. Its pipe size to the installer where it chokes. Hopefully this is their answer to the many complaints they have received regarding this issue. Hopefully it works. If not skip the client/installer provide the client and pathces to be downloaded without it or let fileplanet provide the client and patches for download.
This post is intentionally written as to not make any sense what so ever. Thank You Very Much.
If they paired this with the new streaming services for pc games it would be pretty awesome. they wouldn't have to store as much information on their servers. I just wonder if it would mean that the data streams between client and server would also be smaller.
"For a wounded man shall say to his assailant, 'If I live, I will kill you. If I die, You are forgiven.' Such is the rule of honour..."
Its some crazy shit that this could fit within 179kb lol
I only have a nVidia Geforce 9500 video card, so I don't have a top of the line card. Amazingly though I ran the demo on high at 1920x1080 rez and it ran smooth as butter. The ultra high with multi-sampling on was the only settings that slowed down the demo for me. I wish they had this running now, I think I could play Conan with this. Right now I barely get 30 frames if put everything on their lowest settings and I get about 20 frames if I just use default or click the low setting button. I'm telling AoC is graphic hungry game, lol. I wish they release it for XBOX 360, I'd buy it again if they did.
When we get back from where we are going, we will return to where we were. I know people there!
Loading times is more important than HD space for me. I sure hope they allow users to cache textures that are generated to disk. This could be a good way to save on bandwidth usage though (could save them some serious cash!). Haven't tried the file myself at the moment.
After all the BS people have suffered with AoC, what on earth makes you think anyone will ever have another Funcom game on their hard drive?
Hedonismbot: Your latest performance was as delectable as dipping my bottom over and over into a bath of the silkiest oils and creams.
You're pretty much spot on. It's a technique that's been known for years but few games have used it in the past. Like you said, the cpu/gpu demands would be quite high for an mmo, and it's going to be a while before you see unreal 3 engine style graphics running smoothly with this technology (guys who released the demo still seem to be in the early stages of development), but overall it's a nice thought.
For anyone interested, look up http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Procedural_generation for more info.
Caching kinda ruins the purpose though eh? :P. There are pros and cons to this technique. Pro: You get content on the fly so you don't have to load a ton of prerendered meshs/textures (reducing size). Con: You have to generate everything on the go, making it more demanding for the pc. Caching the textures would mean gradually increasing the overall size, and would slowly turn the program into a standard load up textures/meshes program.
I do wonder how much is stored in the ram though, that is, if they store the generated texture/meshes, or if they instantly drop them when they are out of bounds.
After all the BS people have suffered with AoC, what on earth makes you think anyone will ever have another Funcom game on their hard drive?
Let me see: As of right now, I have 3 Funcom games on my hard drive.
I've been very interested in this technology since I first read about the Quake raytracing project many years ago. It still has a long way to go and so does the average PC's capabilities but we're slowly getting there. The potential for dynamic worlds is staggering but unfortunately it will still require an enormous commitment of resources to properly execute—albeit more programmatic that artistic.
After all the BS people have suffered with AoC, what on earth makes you think anyone will ever have another Funcom game on their hard drive?
Let me see: As of right now, I have 3 Funcom games on my hard drive.
Which ones? Do you play Anarchy? How is it now vs few years ago? Its been around so many years are graphics revamped and compare with AoC or close? I liked it when it first came out. thanks.
This post is intentionally written as to not make any sense what so ever. Thank You Very Much.
I followed a sherpa here now I think this is a sneaky look at TSW.....very sneaky Funcom very sneaky indeed
There are times when one must ask themselves is it my passion that truly frightens you? Or your own?
After all the BS people have suffered with AoC, what on earth makes you think anyone will ever have another Funcom game on their hard drive?
Let me see: As of right now, I have 3 Funcom games on my hard drive.
Just so you know, the "The Longest Journey" and "Dreamfall" do not count as Funcom games. Funcom had no hand in development. The games were made by Ragnar Tournquist and if you read his blogs, he only made them under the condition FC did not put their hands into them.
Edit: mispelled "Funcom" as "Fincom". My apologies to the Finnish community who may have been insulted by being unintentionally associated with FC.
So, its generated on the fly, but will most people have the memory to handle this? This simple demo was showing 892 megs of rams usage in the task manager. While it blew me away that they were able to do this with a 177kb file, it seems like once you add a few dozen people doing things it might get out of hand on the resource side. I ran it at 1680x1050 res, 8x multi and ultra on textures and had great fps but I'm curious how the same people that compained about age of conan not running well on their machines would rate this demo.
Cool tech though!
Well, a 177kb file produced 893 megs of good quality models, sounds, textures and animation, not to mention the entire engine required to render everything in realtime.
Imagine the new installers on the internet that could use this sort of technology (which has been around since '04 or '03, if I remember correctly) - downloading that kind of file size from the internet would be much slower than "installing it" with procedurally produced art and sound.
I fancy myself a bit of a pouet.net vet, at least as a consumer... the first thing that intrigued me was a 64kb demo by farb-rausch called the .produkkt. It was a good solid 10 minute 3d animation with good music, realistic textures and nice modeling. They have obviously improved since then, and made even crazier things with small file sizes (as well as some bigger file-size "demos")
They made a thing called werkkzeug, which they released to the demoscene community, and I think it was pretty rad, and showed how they created some of their stuff. You can create full textures, models and animation with this program, if you try hard enough.
For now (since I've typed this out twice now and it's annoying.) I will just leave you with a screenshot of something that took me like five minutes of experimentation. It's not animated or anything.
I am playing EVE and it's alright... level V skills are a bit much.
You all need to learn to spell.
Well, a 177kb file produced 893 megs of good quality models, sounds, textures and animation, not to mention the entire engine required to render everything in realtime.
Imagine the new installers on the internet that could use this sort of technology (which has been around since '04 or '03, if I remember correctly) - downloading that kind of file size from the internet would be much slower than "installing it" with procedurally produced art and sound.
I fancy myself a bit of a pouet.net vet, at least as a consumer... the first thing that intrigued me was a 64kb demo by farb-rausch called the .produkkt. It was a good solid 10 minute 3d animation with good music, realistic textures and nice modeling. They have obviously improved since then, and made even crazier things with small file sizes (as well as some bigger file-size "demos")
They made a thing called werkkzeug, which they released to the demoscene community, and I think it was pretty rad, and showed how they created some of their stuff. You can create full textures, models and animation with this program, if you try hard enough.
For now (since I've typed this out twice now and it's annoying.) I will just leave you with a screenshot of something that took me like five minutes of experimentation. It's not animated or anything.
Awesome.
Well, a 177kb file produced 893 megs of good quality models, sounds, textures and animation, not to mention the entire engine required to render everything in realtime.
Imagine the new installers on the internet that could use this sort of technology (which has been around since '04 or '03, if I remember correctly) - downloading that kind of file size from the internet would be much slower than "installing it" with procedurally produced art and sound.
I fancy myself a bit of a pouet.net vet, at least as a consumer... the first thing that intrigued me was a 64kb demo by farb-rausch called the .produkkt. It was a good solid 10 minute 3d animation with good music, realistic textures and nice modeling. They have obviously improved since then, and made even crazier things with small file sizes (as well as some bigger file-size "demos")
They made a thing called werkkzeug, which they released to the demoscene community, and I think it was pretty rad, and showed how they created some of their stuff. You can create full textures, models and animation with this program, if you try hard enough.
For now (since I've typed this out twice now and it's annoying.) I will just leave you with a screenshot of something that took me like five minutes of experimentation. It's not animated or anything.
I agree it would be fantastic to have a small file download and then use the player's computer to build the full client for install. That is totally feasible with todays tech.
But the program linked in the OP does not do that. It downloads a very small file which then builds the game ( or the demo, in this case ) itself actively, causing a larger and larger footprint in hardware usage, most noticeably memory. And that is something which, while amazing in itself and definitely something to look forward to in the future, is not technically feasible to do so with even top line consumer grade hardware in an mmorpg expansive world setting with hundreds of thousands of players.
While I realize 64 bit operating systems can handle up to 64gb of ram, I don't see the majority of the mmorpg playerbase being willing to shell out for all that hardware just for ram, and then imagine the cpu and gpu processing required. Players would almost have to have their own server farm to play.
Well, I think that using the demo engines to run entire games would be silly. I don't think Funcom would want to do what the demoscene wants to do - which is push our hardware systems to the limits (or to the very minimum) to create great works of art, smooth animation with great models and textures and sound, with a very small file size.
There have been times where nice things have been created without the size restriction, and I have enjoyed them sometimes moreso than these smaller creations... but I'm getting off topic.
Imagine wanting to break into a F2P game, but, let's just say you're in Australia, and you have a 12GB cap. You don't want to download an entire 25GB game when you'll be capped at half of that.
I believe that, rather than trying to give players with excellent computers a chance, they are trying to do almost the opposite, making their games available to those that sit every day on 112kilobit/s internet speeds.
If a player can download the entire MMO for about 2MB (easily done.) and maybe 2 hours of rendering out files onto their harddrive, I think they will happily thank the publisher.
Hell, I have to go to gamearena if I want to try a new F2P mmo.
I am playing EVE and it's alright... level V skills are a bit much.
You all need to learn to spell.
Really, who cares about 26GB on your hard drive these days? My concerns are quality and latency, and if any new technology messes with those things, I don't want them.
AoC has a lot more for devs to concern themselves with than switching how they deliver it, imho.
Have played: Everquest, Asheron's Call, Horizons, Everquest2, World of Warcraft, Lord of the Rings Online, Warhammer, Age of Conan, Darkfall
Are you getting it yet? Instead of downloading that 25 gigs, you would download 1 or 2 megs. Then that file would instruct your PC to build that 25 gig file. Therefore, no need for long ass downloads that can be interrupted and/or corrupted if you lose your connection. No more being unwilling to download a 25gig file because you're on a 1mb or less connection. Instead of waiting 5+ hours for a download, you could wait 2 hours or less for your comp to build the file, then install and play.
It's not saving harddrive space, it's saving banwidth. Think about people with hard caps on their internet, where if they go over a certain amount each month, they pay more. One 25gb game download could realistically mean they can't play the damn game they downloaded because they just used their allotment downloading it.