Riot
[ Warning: GTA Spoilers ]


In the last few missions of GTA: San Andreas, the game is radically altered. Burned out cars litter the streets. Cops jump out of burning cruisers that coast down the street before exploding. People are looting, fighting, and killing. The sky changes color only between different shades of an oppressive red. Fires are lit all through the city, making the whole city burn.

It is truly excellent.

Here's the cool thing. I've been playing that game for months; Now, out of nowhere, the game feels like new again. There is a new element of danger that didn't exist before. The whole world is harder, angrier, and much cooler.

Suddenly, I find myself wondering, "Hey, I wonder what it looks like downtown?" and "Hey, If I base jump in the middle of the riots, will I be able to see all the fires and killer homies?" "I wonder what the VineWood sign looks like now?" I start running through the streets, totally ignoring my missions, just so I can see all the cool new stuff in this world.

This is, needless to say, a pretty rare thing in games. It's not often that you see a game where the developers are willing to change the overall fabric of the world just to show this cool effect. Occasionally, you will see an alternative version of the level you walked through before ("This is what the world would be like, little one, if you do not save us all!"), but usually, those are in pre-scripted missions with a very similar map, and different textures.

Now GTA is a generally unique game, because they allow far more freedom than other games. But was it the open architecture that allowed them to completely change the world? I don't think so. I think it was the will to do it that made the difference.

Whenever you see that world-shift in other games, it is temporary, cosmetic, and brief. If you think about it, an "alternate world" is just another level for the gamemakers. In fact, it's easier than that, because you only have to edit the current one, rather than build a whole new one. I think, the only reason game developers don't cotton to that idea much, is that they don't believe in the coolness factor. I think they see it as a gimmick, something that's kinda cool, but not that big a deal.

I started thinking about this, and came up with the following idea. Going along with the original ideal for Fable, and to a limited extent KOTOR 2, what if you made the entire world shift constantly to fit your current player needs.

In Stephen King's "Dark Tower" series, everything bends slightly in the path of the beam. "The Beam" is a lay line of power that runs through the world, unseen. While you can't see the Beam, if you look at a forest, you will see tree branches leaning slightly in that direction. You will see subtle paths in the grass that flows in the way of the beam. You will see leaves falling slightly against the wind, in the path of the beam. The clouds seem to flow in that direction. It is the kind of effect that can't be seen when you look at any one of those, but when you let your view relax, the lines are there, clear as day.

Now, imagine you changed a game world to work like that. Not necessarily using the "Beam" analogy, but just set your game objects to subtly change based on current situations in the game. For instance, imagine this: You set up a "dirty" texture that blends with the standard diffuse texture to make the image of a house. As the player commits more evil deeds, the "dirty" texture gains opacity, making the house look dirtier. At the same time, you set the house's mesh to become slightly tilted, angular, evil. You could create about eight versions of each building (from friendly and rounded, to dirty and angular) and pick the texture and mesh based on the player's "evil" rating.

Now, there would need to be limitations, of course. It's a huge undertaking to make multiple meshes for all the buildings in a game. However, the argument could be made that you only need to do multiple meshes on the highest level of detail mesh, so if you say eight levels of detail for each building, and eight versions of the highest LOD mesh, you only have 15 meshes per building. It's still a lot of work, but it's adjustable depending on how much work you want to do.

Now, there would be multiple uses for this, other than the "evil house" analogy. You could make the entire world catch fire, or switch to a translucent X-ray view, or turn slowly into Smurf huts.

Oh, this would be cool. What if you were doing a "Back to the Future" kind of game, where you have to save the world before it all disappears. As you're playing the game, the world could slowly devolve, not just by losing opacity, but by changing its very mesh (picture the Escher building they used in "Memoirs of an Invisible Man").

The idea of changing the world to fit new situations in the game is an extremely attractive and seductive one to the player. I just hope more developers can see that it's worth the expense.

- posted by BrandG @ 11:08 PM