[casual_games] Procedural rendering - again

[Austin Haas]

I, for one, am interested in procedural methods. I think there are a lot of 
Casual Game markets where file size still matters. Cell phones, for one. Set-top 
boxes might be another. Our company makes browser-based Flash games, and most of 
our clients want these games to be <2MB. Bill Gates is reported to have said at 
one time that "No one will need more than 637 kb of memory for a personal 
computer." Seems to me that file size will always be an issue.

Are there any procedural libraries, methods, or algorithms in use for Flash? 
I've never seen anything practical.

I don't really understand the statement that it's not worth the time. Whose 
time? Certainly, it's worthwhile to invest in code libraries and tools. If 
someone else makes the library, then it might not cost me anything. If I can 
render a beautiful landscape procedurally, rather than paying an artist, then 
that's a savings.

-austin

Austin Haas
Pet Tomato, Inc.
http://www.pettomato.com

Ron wrote:
>  > So on one hand I could spend my time developing the tech and tools to
>  > make procedural graphics and SVG and whatnot and have a download size of
>  > 2 MB. OR I could actually make a game, use the standard "brute force"
>  > approach and have a 10 MB download. Of course it's the second one that
>  > pays the bills :)
> 
> 2MB...10MB...does it really matter?  My guess is the the vast majority 
> of casual game buyers have broadband connections (am I wrong), so the 
> download difference is going to be measured in seconds.
> 
> I agree with Gabriel, it's just not worth the time.
> 
> While there are some interesting (artist?) reasons for using procedure 
> effects, I don't think saving space needs to be one of them.
> 
> Ron
> 
> Gabriel wrote:
> 
>>         I thought downloadable/browser game developers would be 
>> extremely interested
>>         in procedural graphics (be it vector-based such as Flash or 
>> pattern/texture
>>         generators) because of the significant decrease in download 
>> size it can
>>         mean.
>>         [...]
>>         If I was a downloadable game developer, this would be one of 
>> my top
>>         priorities. Is it not for you?
>>
>> As a developer, engineer and geek, yes it is. If I had infinite time I'd
>> explore procedural content generation (textures, cities, entire virtual
>> worlds), directly rendering SVG or SWF, and many other cool things.
>>
>> However, I don't have infinite time, so I have to choose what do I do
>> with my limited time. Designing and making a game is a *huge* amount of
>> work, and I'm not even counting the also huge amount of work done by the
>> artists!
>> So on one hand I could spend my time developing the tech and tools to
>> make procedural graphics and SVG and whatnot and have a download size of
>> 2 MB. OR I could actually make a game, use the standard "brute force"
>> approach and have a 10 MB download. Of course it's the second one that
>> pays the bills :)
>>
>> Bottom line : yes, it would be cool to do. No, it's not a priority. Of
>> course, if you make games as a hobby, your priorities equation may be
>> different.
>>
>>         --Gabriel
>>
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