Hal Hodson, reporter
A 3D video game that creates a virtual world on-the-fly could change how blockbuster shoot-'em-up titles are built.
Most video games today build a gaming environment for players by accessing a library of graphical objects and textures. Instead, A New Zero draws all its scenes and objects itself in real time, as well as simulating real-world physics. This means players are not limited by game design and can, as developer Alex Austin puts it, "jump through any window they want".
Austin says that the game started off as a less ambitious side project: a flight simulator. "I figured that since I didn't have an artist, I may as well try to do everything with code," he says.
The idea of building gaming environments from code, known as procedural generation, is not new. Austin points to an early 1990s space simulation called Frontier: Elite 2, which procedurally generated a whole galaxy for exploration. The popular Elder Scrolls series of games uses procedural generation to draw many of its dungeons, which are then touched up by artists.
Austin's game goes much further than this, generating moving human figures and bullet trajectories that conform to real-world physics. He claims this model of development will have a big part to play in games of the future.
Simon Green, a graphics programmer at Nvidia, is less confident. He points out that other developers, like Naturalmotion, are doing more practical work that blends motion capture with physics simulation. "I like procedural techniques, but for realism you need good artists or motion capture," Green says.
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