[casual_games] Procedural rendering - again

[Austin Haas]

I momentarily overlooked the fact that you can now draw bitmap graphics from 
scratch in Flash, so you should be able to implement most any procedural techniques.

-austin

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

Austin Haas wrote:
> 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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