Topic: Sexual Dimorphism and Alternate Reproduction

[Borogove]

... and even unwanted in the lgaming experience Spore wants to deliver. And since these things are more random than emergent, procedural algorithms won't be the best way of handling them.

And about that thing with Spore opening endless possibilities: the Universal Game has always been the Holy Grail of the industry. It is a admirable and lofty goal to aim at, but it is inconceivable that it will ever be realized -- no matter how cool, new and procedural Spore may be,

I was looking for these words in my little debate with Jaleho 

Creature files may be small, but the game tools may be HUGE.
Not to mention those massive all-in-one scripts.

For a long time now game content has taken up WAY more disc space than code.  So I suspect that is gong to be a non-issue.  I mena, don't expect the game code to fit on a floppy (does anyone even use those anymore?), but it won't take up a significant part of a CD
Size of scripts I guess would depend how high-level they are.  I expect pretty high tho.  And text compresses very well.

But then, they could still pack an extra CD full of a lots and lots (and lots!) of creatures, vehicles, worlds, etc.  Just so that they can say can put on the box that it comes with a million premade things   

[Jaleho]

But gender differences are tip-of-the-iceberg stuff

in a game like Spore, what isn't? Anything they choose to put in just opens up a dozen more possibilities. Welcome to the human imagination.

And about that thing with Spore opening endless possibilities: the Universal Game has always been the Holy Grail of the industry. It is a admirable and lofty goal to aim at, but it is inconceivable that it will ever be realized -- no matter how cool, new and procedural Spore may be,

"The people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones that do." - Apple commercial

[Jaleho]

... and even unwanted in the lgaming experience Spore wants to deliver. And since these things are more random than emergent, procedural algorithms won't be the best way of handling them.

And about that thing with Spore opening endless possibilities: the Universal Game has always been the Holy Grail of the industry. It is a admirable and lofty goal to aim at, but it is inconceivable that it will ever be realized -- no matter how cool, new and procedural Spore may be,

I was looking for these words in my little debate with Jaleho 

If a programmer takes the time to combine random events with emergent, procedural algorithms, they've just simulated quantum physics. How is that kind of skill a bad thing?

And about this "inconceivable" goal... did I watch the same video as you guys? Didn't Will end his talk by saying "the biggest bottleneck to this whole thing was my own imagination and belief that it could be done"? I mean, as long as people keep thinking "it can't happen" then no, it WON'T happen. Bu the more people who start believing "a universal game could actually be built", then the closer it comes to reality!

Has the power of human imagination been so dulled that people just take things as they are and don't strive to acieve the impossible anymore? Where have all the artists and dreamers gone, anyway? Has the corporate society really won so soon? Have bills and schedules and monotonous consumerism really dulled us so far that people look at market values and corporate trends and technical limitations and just say "well, I guess that's all we can do"?

No matter what they put in Spore, it will always fall short of the real world, because in the real world THERE ARE *NO* BOUNDARIES!

</artist_rant>

 

[BobFromReboot]

For a long time now game content has taken up WAY more disc space than code.  So I suspect that is gong to be a non-issue.  I mena, don't expect the game code to fit on a floppy (does anyone even use those anymore?), but it won't take up a significant part of a CD
Size of scripts I guess would depend how high-level they are.  I expect pretty high tho.  And text compresses very well.

But then, they could still pack an extra CD full of a lots and lots (and lots!) of creatures, vehicles, worlds, etc.  Just so that they can say can put on the box that it comes with a million premade things   

I concur.

Will was saying how the data of Myst out-weighs the code by about 500 times. So If this code is even super advanced stuff, I doubt it would be larger than 700Mb of raw compilled code.The only reason I could see it taking up more than one CD is for like a making of feature or something, although that would be more suited to a DVD because of all the data video files have.

[Borogove]

EDIT: ...moved this big rant to "potential of Spore" thread instead of hijacking this one...