BrokenEchelon
Banned
Research unified network accounts first, please.
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Nintendo researches GPGPU powered cloud computing
- Thread starter wsippel
- Start date
Unified accounts is cloud tech, so that may be exactly what they are doing. There is nothing in the article to indicate they are working on cloud computing in games.
it's likely something the console thats replacing wiiU will use.
Monty Mole
Member
Considering the main selling point of Nintendo consoles is Nintendo games, well... you get my point....
fabricated backlash
Member
It makes sense in the continuing trend of games becoming a series of setpieces with little to no user creativity needed.
Other than that, it's pretty much a pipedream to expect this to have any tangible effect on game performance, as you always have to keep offline functionality intact.
10 year life cycle.
+1
And I don't know for sure how many guys they are in NERD, but I wouldn't bet on more than 15.
That's hilariously few compared to what microsoft can bring on research on the same tech (probably hundreds on ingeniors). So don't get crazy expectations form this thread title!
If you install this chrome extension:
https://github.com/panicsteve/cloud-to-butt
The following weeks will be much more fun on GAF. Promise.
https://github.com/panicsteve/cloud-to-butt
The following weeks will be much more fun on GAF. Promise.
Herb Alpert
Banned
The name really suits their idea of privacy well.
efyu_lemonardo
May I have a cookie?
Didn't read through the entire thread, but while I agree with the OPs example, we can think of more elaborate cases that have a much stronger effect on gameplay.
For starters, instead of just computing the destruction of the building, the server could also compute paths for certain NPCs and how they would be injured or otherwise affected by the explosion. The same is true for vehicles etc, so that actual meaningful stats would be changed. This could be even more substantial in a strategy type game like Total War.
But the important thing to remember is just because something is interactive doesn't mean all results of the player's actions are immediate. A big part of what we've been trying to achieve with deeper gameplay is long term effects and persistent environmental changes as well as behavioral changes for NPCs based on previous player actions.
The whole point of so many games trying to introduce stuff such as morality into gameplay is so some results of our actions would be completely non obvious and seemingly indirect, due to the complexity of the game world.
edit: Also, reading through some of the reactions here, people need to use their imagination a little more. It's true there's the danger of players losing control as a result of gaming becoming more server based, but there's also another, more optimistic side to this kind of tech.
There are so many areas important to gameplay that aren't directly in front of the player at any given moment. Here's another example: Playing GoldenEye, you unintentionally alert a guard to your presence, and before you manage to take him down, he transmits a brief call over the radio. In real life, what would happen next is backup would be alerted and additional guards would arrive from a barracks which could be on the other end of the level. Maybe they'll take the quickest path (which will need to be computed), or maybe they'll split up and try to converge on your location from multiple directions, sealing off exits as they go until you're cornered. There are ways to fake this kind of behavior today, but they are actually far more scripted than they could be if additional computation was brought into the picture.
The key here is that this would have a direct effect on gameplay, yet doesn't need to take place in real time to produce an optimal result; In fact, it shouldn't!
Taking this idea even further, since we all agree it'll take some years before these kinds of systems are mature enough, we could even imagine a game where the servers run sufficiently intelligent code to allow them to facilitate in on-the-fly content creation, which is effected by player decisions in the game.
For example, lets say you committed murder in a GTA game and immediately escaped the scene, next time you come by the server could automatically have the area transformed into a crime investigation scene, including a procedurally generated painted silhouette of the body, police tape, cops and investigators walking around, concerned neighbors etc. This could allow greater freedom in games because you wouldn't be strictly bound to the designer's intended scenario.
Obviously anything that can be computed on a server can be computed locally, but it may turn out that dedicating the local computing power to more immediate aspects of a simulation and letting servers take care of the one's further in the future can facilitate a huge increase in the number of options a player has in a game world at any given moment.
In the real world what I choose to do in the next few seconds would open up hugely diverging branches of possibilities for the minutes that follow. So diverging it would probably be impractical to prepare an in-game simulation for all of them in time. But with the benefit of cloud computing we could make it possible to account for an order of magnitude more options than without it.
For starters, instead of just computing the destruction of the building, the server could also compute paths for certain NPCs and how they would be injured or otherwise affected by the explosion. The same is true for vehicles etc, so that actual meaningful stats would be changed. This could be even more substantial in a strategy type game like Total War.
But the important thing to remember is just because something is interactive doesn't mean all results of the player's actions are immediate. A big part of what we've been trying to achieve with deeper gameplay is long term effects and persistent environmental changes as well as behavioral changes for NPCs based on previous player actions.
The whole point of so many games trying to introduce stuff such as morality into gameplay is so some results of our actions would be completely non obvious and seemingly indirect, due to the complexity of the game world.
edit: Also, reading through some of the reactions here, people need to use their imagination a little more. It's true there's the danger of players losing control as a result of gaming becoming more server based, but there's also another, more optimistic side to this kind of tech.
There are so many areas important to gameplay that aren't directly in front of the player at any given moment. Here's another example: Playing GoldenEye, you unintentionally alert a guard to your presence, and before you manage to take him down, he transmits a brief call over the radio. In real life, what would happen next is backup would be alerted and additional guards would arrive from a barracks which could be on the other end of the level. Maybe they'll take the quickest path (which will need to be computed), or maybe they'll split up and try to converge on your location from multiple directions, sealing off exits as they go until you're cornered. There are ways to fake this kind of behavior today, but they are actually far more scripted than they could be if additional computation was brought into the picture.
The key here is that this would have a direct effect on gameplay, yet doesn't need to take place in real time to produce an optimal result; In fact, it shouldn't!
Taking this idea even further, since we all agree it'll take some years before these kinds of systems are mature enough, we could even imagine a game where the servers run sufficiently intelligent code to allow them to facilitate in on-the-fly content creation, which is effected by player decisions in the game.
For example, lets say you committed murder in a GTA game and immediately escaped the scene, next time you come by the server could automatically have the area transformed into a crime investigation scene, including a procedurally generated painted silhouette of the body, police tape, cops and investigators walking around, concerned neighbors etc. This could allow greater freedom in games because you wouldn't be strictly bound to the designer's intended scenario.
Obviously anything that can be computed on a server can be computed locally, but it may turn out that dedicating the local computing power to more immediate aspects of a simulation and letting servers take care of the one's further in the future can facilitate a huge increase in the number of options a player has in a game world at any given moment.
In the real world what I choose to do in the next few seconds would open up hugely diverging branches of possibilities for the minutes that follow. So diverging it would probably be impractical to prepare an in-game simulation for all of them in time. But with the benefit of cloud computing we could make it possible to account for an order of magnitude more options than without it.
fabricated backlash
Member
But if you have to rely on online connection to achieve better immersion and more meaningfull impacts on the game world, it makes everything you do that way pretty inconsequential to a game. Unless it's there for all customers, for every configuration, it's pretty much a nice cherry on top, not something integral to the experience.
Unless you are ok with crippling peoples experience if they can't meet the requirements 24/7
KillerTravis
Banned
Well if you actually read the text...
efyu_lemonardo
May I have a cookie?
Clearly the experience would be very different for someone connected and someone not connected, but I don't see how that would make the experience inconsequential to those that are connected. On the contrary, what I was trying to show was how there are already in today's games many aspects of interactivity that don't take place right in front of the player's eyes, and that this is as it should be. If real consequences of your actions were limited only to what you could see as it happens, life would be pretty boring..
Cloud tech? Unified accounts are a bunch of database tables and simple queries. lol
fuzzy.dunlop
Banned
when nintendo stops upending those tables, then maybe they can sort the account purchases properly.
efyu_lemonardo
May I have a cookie?
or they could get the servers in the cloud to handle the complex physics for upending tables for them!
Chû Totoro
Member
I really don't know how this could be something that makes the difference.
PS4 graphics on Wii U thanks to the cloud... lol no.
Maybe for eShop games and VC this could be something good but knowing Nintendo we will have to pay again for the cloud versions of these games ah ah ! :'(
PS4 graphics on Wii U thanks to the cloud... lol no.
Maybe for eShop games and VC this could be something good but knowing Nintendo we will have to pay again for the cloud versions of these games ah ah ! :'(
The biggest benefits of cloud computing are things that are not time sensitive. This could be amazing for turn based strategy/tactics games for example. AI computation could be done remotely, resulting in significantly better AI (if programmed well), faster computation, and a greater number of AI units. That's the real benefit of cloud computing for games in my opinion. Not "more graphics".
If you are using it for time sensitive stuff, it's not going to work well.
If you are using it for time sensitive stuff, it's not going to work well.
JimboJones
Member
It's still technically in the cloud though, some hardrive space linked to you account and stored on servers is cloud technology, MS definition of offloading AI computing is not the only valid way of using the "cloud" which is just a stupid buzzword anyway for doing or storing shit on remote servers.
And where are those databases ? In the cloud.
True, basically Microsoft already did cloud with hotmail in '97
Problem is, somebody has to still pay for it, whether it gets used or not.
fabricated backlash
Member
Ok so let's spit ball some ideas here. Stuff like dead bodies could be offloaded to a cloud service instead of being transmitted to each and every game instance running it. Then, with instancing you could load in dynamically the information needed to display those persistent things.
I've heard about problems with player bases from the Day-Z developers, that it would take way too much resources to have all of that information on client side, so they now try to go for underground bases to basically load them in as needed.
With a cloud service, this loading would be done as needed, thus reducing the workload of the individual machines.
I think this tech is better suited for online only games, and not so much graphical improvements to dynamic calculations. Persistence is nice, but if you can't offer this persistence for all players it ultimately amounts to nothing more than a higher graphics setting (more bullet hit decals, more bodies on the ground, more interactions remain visible) which is nice for those that can enable it, but leaves those who can't partake with a crippled experience. It would be a hard sell to me at the usual 60 bucks.
SquiddyCracker
Banned
Sounds like R&D for next-gen.
Sony Higher Internet Technologies?
efyu_lemonardo
May I have a cookie?
I'm not sure I understand your argument. If the technology enables genuine advances in gaming, then it's more than possible there will be sufficient demand to allow such games to forego backwards compatibility.
Just like what we've seen happen with the move to dedicated graphics accelerators.
Regarding your comment on graphics, I completely agree, which is why I emphasized the benefits of additional data and stat-tracking to gameplay rather than to graphics.
To go back to wsippel's example, having a building collapse realistically is beneficial to gameplay only if the server also computes the real time effect this collapse has on the environment, in terms of wounded NPCs, power outages, smoke obscuring visibility, etc.
The complex results of the collapse on the game are far more interesting than how detailed the collapse looks.
edit: maybe you missed the edit in my original post, where I added examples and ideas for the future.
plank
Member
That's gen 5.
Who cares? Game purchases will still be tied only to hardware.
Bigger teams can actually do more harm than good in such cases. Smaller teams are more focussed and can get shit done faster.
And it's most certainly not about cloud storage, because you just need databases for that. There's not even much left to research in that field, not to mention NERD doesn't have database engineers to begin with. I also don't see what GPGPU would be supposed to add in this field.
Sammy Samusu
Member
Drag them.
Given Iwatas recent comments on cloud gaming, I doubt if its about some secret sauce force multiplyer. Maybe it is.
Beermeister
Banned
Nintendo Cloud coming in november 2025, and it will be terrible.
Majukun
Member
It is.
in fact they are researching it...as in "researching if it can actually be used in some way"
not in the "we are going to get a x40 improvement through the infinite power of the cloud" way.
just look at the bayonetta development commentary on platinum games site..and count how many times the problems with ram and real time computing emerge in said commentary.
using the cloud in this way right now is total bullshit..it's the "blast processing" of the next generation.
Ol No Bones
Banned
Nintendos researching it and everyone is ok with it lol. Sony talked about it and nobody cared. Ms mentions the cloud and everything is impossible. We know that onlive was already rendering full games at 720p and and the user was streaming it. It's not perfect but if devs find out a way to stream aspects of their games and the xone streams it similaniously with its own power certain aspects of games could get massive and beautiful.
Go back and read the white paper I posted. Then comeback and tell me its bs. I don't want to hear 'oh it's ms research it's bullshit'. ACM doesn't publish bullshit.
The 40x number is bs though. No way to prove without any metrics.
When people say its just blast processing, I just have to laugh because its a terrible analogy. More revealing than anything else really.
They mention local fallbacks as something that needs to be fleshed out in the case that the network is failing or too slow. Even with that caveat, it is exciting that even on a small level in the 'lab' they were able to produce positive enhancements to gameplay with latency sensitive items. It almost seems like a given that insensitive items are ripe for such a thing. I'm cautiously optimistic, but I do believe that ultimately, engineering will tap into distributed computing to enhance games. It's a natural partnership imo.
1. Nintendo are researching what could be done with it.
2. Sony are saying they can stream games. This is possible to do with some latency.
3. MS is saying they can use the cloud to magicly inchrease performance by 400% in games because portions of it renders in the cloud. And thats what people are calling bullshit on.
People that keep saying this. Do you honestly believe that Nintendo is incapable of making an account system like Sony and Microsoft? Or are you refusing to believe that their account system is setup the way it is on purpsoe for whatever reasons Nintendo might have?
I fail to see how anyone can logically believe Nintendo doesn't know how to do an account system like everyone else.
BrokenEchelon
Banned
What are the benefits of their system?
Snowden's Secret
Banned
I don't see how "the cloud" could effectively handle graphics, but you could off load AI and substitute in enemies and NPCs the same way as other players in a multiplayer game.
Nintendo could probably put this to creative use in a Majora's Mask sequel.
Nintendo could probably put this to creative use in a Majora's Mask sequel.
That's a pretty gross misuse of the term. Distributed storage systems that cloud storage companies use are quite different in functionality and network architecture than traditional relational databases. A SQL server at a data center does not make a cloud.
LittleNemoNES
Banned
Interceptor
Banned
It would mean you don´t need a successor. PS8 Graphics on your Wii U. Today!