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Physics, what comes into your mind?
Apples*? Parachutes**? E-mc2***? Games?
Yes I would have thought that most people here would have thought about games. No you say. Oh please let me explain.
Any good game needs 2 things,
1) Excellent AI
2) REALISM
The two go hand in hand really. Every game has some sort of simulation in it. Human simulation is called AI, artificial intelligence. THe better this is, the more realistic the games are, and the harder they are, because the NPC's are less predictable. That is good, because if know know that doing something will make someone DEFINATELY do something else, the game loses any sort of fun it may have had to begin with. You know what will happen, so you are not surprised. But if you have good AI, then you do not know what will happen, so you get a surprise and it increases your enjoyment of the game.
As far as realism is concerned, it makes good games, good games. If you character, every so often started to float around the map or room, because the game desiners decided not to fully impliment gravity, I think you would get very annoyed.
If you threw a granade, and it just drops in front of you, because they did not impliment some sort of throwing technique, I think you would get mad.
If you are playing a management sim, and the radiators didnt spread heat out, they only heated the wall they were against, not the room. I think you would get very frustated when you have a few freezing employees wanting to quit.
SO you see, we need physics in games.
MGS2 if famed because you can see loads of detail, you can even see ice melting. Personally I think this is a waste of time. But you see as games are improving, they are adding more and more realism into the games, and they are using the word realism, instead of the word they actually mean, physics.
The PC developers say is the easiest platform to make games for, because the programming is incredibly easy. But our other rival, the console has been having a great deal of problems with physics engines. It has only been untill the past year or so that we have seen a pinball game on a console, because the implemantaion of the engine was too difficult.
That is another of the reasons why I prefer my PC to it's smaller counterparts, because it is easier to make 'better' games on the PC then on the consoles. The producers of Half-Life said the same regarding making the console version. They said that it was very hard, and it was not as good as the PC version. They were right. Half Life has spawned 3 addons on the PC as welll as another game, using it's engine which has become the most popular online game. Whereas the console version never even got to number one in the charts!!!!!
SO you see physics is important in games, the PC ones especially. And you asll laughed at me when you started ot read this, I dont know!!! :)
So next time you hear the word physics, you shouldnt think of Albert Einstein, you should think of the reason you are reading this, games.
-------------------------------------------------------
footnotes
*Newtons theory of Gravity
**The prime example of gravity / air resistance
***Einsteins theory of relativity
Physics, what comes into your mind?
Apples*? Parachutes**? E-mc2***? Games?
Yes I would have thought that most people here would have thought about games. No you say. Oh please let me explain.
Any good game needs 2 things,
1) Excellent AI
2) REALISM
The two go hand in hand really. Every game has some sort of simulation in it. Human simulation is called AI, artificial intelligence. THe better this is, the more realistic the games are, and the harder they are, because the NPC's are less predictable. That is good, because if know know that doing something will make someone DEFINATELY do something else, the game loses any sort of fun it may have had to begin with. You know what will happen, so you are not surprised. But if you have good AI, then you do not know what will happen, so you get a surprise and it increases your enjoyment of the game.
As far as realism is concerned, it makes good games, good games. If you character, every so often started to float around the map or room, because the game desiners decided not to fully impliment gravity, I think you would get very annoyed.
If you threw a granade, and it just drops in front of you, because they did not impliment some sort of throwing technique, I think you would get mad.
If you are playing a management sim, and the radiators didnt spread heat out, they only heated the wall they were against, not the room. I think you would get very frustated when you have a few freezing employees wanting to quit.
SO you see, we need physics in games.
MGS2 if famed because you can see loads of detail, you can even see ice melting. Personally I think this is a waste of time. But you see as games are improving, they are adding more and more realism into the games, and they are using the word realism, instead of the word they actually mean, physics.
The PC developers say is the easiest platform to make games for, because the programming is incredibly easy. But our other rival, the console has been having a great deal of problems with physics engines. It has only been untill the past year or so that we have seen a pinball game on a console, because the implemantaion of the engine was too difficult.
That is another of the reasons why I prefer my PC to it's smaller counterparts, because it is easier to make 'better' games on the PC then on the consoles. The producers of Half-Life said the same regarding making the console version. They said that it was very hard, and it was not as good as the PC version. They were right. Half Life has spawned 3 addons on the PC as welll as another game, using it's engine which has become the most popular online game. Whereas the console version never even got to number one in the charts!!!!!
SO you see physics is important in games, the PC ones especially. And you asll laughed at me when you started ot read this, I dont know!!! :)
So next time you hear the word physics, you shouldnt think of Albert Einstein, you should think of the reason you are reading this, games.
-------------------------------------------------------
footnotes
*Newtons theory of Gravity
**The prime example of gravity / air resistance
***Einsteins theory of relativity
also the amount of physics that would be useful in games would be small compared to the huge amounts out there
take quantum physics useful if you want to model a particle in an infinite well but it would not help james bond have a better aim.
I did not miss the point of your topic its just that I already know too much physics and if it started turning up in games in huge quantities .... it doesn't bear thinking about.
however you could derive more game plots from physics as star trek does: strange phenomena based upon known physics..............
This is one thing that will improve greatly, along with the graphics of games in the future. More and more things can be done and games are now more realistic than ever. Alot of people probably don't realise the time and touble spent in trying to get the physics that are included in most games so right. Take GT3 for example. One of the best if not the best racing games around, cars behave just like real life cars due to the physics of it. Forces act on the car pushing it down on the track and make cornering at high speeds harder than at slow speeds. The physics also contols how objects will act when they fall, get thrown, crash, anything really that you can think of doing to a physical object (with the exception of a few) are usually included in the gaming engine.
(I have finished my physics exam.)
Its all about appropriate physics in games, for example in driving games you want the car to handle like a real one but sometime you know that a car travelling really fast can not make some of the manouvres that are in some games.
Or a futuristic racer has no real physics base because you dont have any real life model to base the game engine on so they use the appropriate nearest physics model and alter it.
Or mario has his own physics systems that apply only to mario games because it would not be the same if he were limited to real world physics.
APPROPRIATE PHYSICS!