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Neal Stephenson Joins Magic Leap

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Re: Neal Stephenson Joins Magic Leap

#161

Post by Cushman »

pfisch wrote: post #156
Cushman wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you written software for motion controls before? Like not gestures, but actual physical motion? I expect they quickly found out that Wiimote+[0] is not good enough for swordfighting the way they wanted it. Nothing on the consumer market is. The Razer Hydra came closest, which is why the thing they released wound up targeting it, but even then it was hard to find and too unreliable in typical use for a fun experi…

Wait this is even worse. They didn't even build any hardware at all. So just to be clear in less then a year they spent half a million and used other peoples hardware and didn't even have a real gameplay demo. "It also doesn't sound like you've put any thought into the challenge of simulating realistic swordplay as a generic engine that supports different historically accurate fighting styles, with all the nitty phys…

Sorry, I don't know a lot about these things but it's clear to me now I know more than you do. Its really unkind to speak with presumed expertise about things you're not expert in, and accordingly I'm not interested in talking about this with you any more.

Congratulations on shipping a game. I mean it, that's real. I haven't done that. But stay humble.

Re: Neal Stephenson Joins Magic Leap

#162

Post by rasur »

NotOscarWilde wrote: post #159
chriswarbo wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TDA is an interesting take on the issues a post-scarcity world might face. Unfortunately my immesion in the book was broken in several places by cringe-worthy "computers will never be able to do X" tropes. For example, the Primer must get a human to read its text aloud because "computers will never be able to reproduce a human voice"; this is in a world where atomically-precise, molecular diamond nanocomputers can be…

* > computers will never be able to do X* I like your point; it compliments itself nicely with my previous one. Soon enough, computers may be able to do many things very well -- however, hackers are not catching up to corporations. What I mean: if I remember correctly, in the DA world TV and big companies have as big as a grip on general populace as they have to day, but hackers are able to create alternatives, like…

I think things will get more interesting when Oculus, Meta, Magic Leap and others get a little bit more entrenched (ass-u-me'ing it happens!).. give it another 10 years or so.. ;)

Re: Neal Stephenson Joins Magic Leap

#163

Post by pfisch »

Cushman wrote: post #161
pfisch wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait this is even worse. They didn't even build any hardware at all. So just to be clear in less then a year they spent half a million and used other peoples hardware and didn't even have a real gameplay demo. "It also doesn't sound like you've put any thought into the challenge of simulating realistic swordplay as a generic engine that supports different historically accurate fighting styles, with all the nitty phys…

Sorry, I don't know a lot about these things but it's clear to me now I know more than you do. Its really unkind to speak with presumed expertise about things you're not expert in, and accordingly I'm not interested in talking about this with you any more. Congratulations on shipping a game. I mean it, that's real. I haven't done that. But stay humble.

Just to be clear. I do think the accelerometer/hardware part would be very difficult. I also think the software side of that would be super hard which is why I'm guessing it would take over a year once you have the hardware. In fact because it is so hard I think the first way I would approach a solution would be with an ensemble machine learning solution leaning on random forests because they are quite fast and Random Forests is the ML algo I have had the most success with in the past, and then try and post process that. If that worked I would probably have users individually generate their forests during a calibration when the game starts.

I have 2 more ideas if that doesn't work well. Though I would probably end up combining all the ideas in another weighted ensemble on top.

The game part of this however is not really that complex and could be done on a regular schedule.

Re: Neal Stephenson Joins Magic Leap

#164

Post by jessaustin »

pfisch wrote: post #156
Cushman wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you written software for motion controls before? Like not gestures, but actual physical motion? I expect they quickly found out that Wiimote+[0] is not good enough for swordfighting the way they wanted it. Nothing on the consumer market is. The Razer Hydra came closest, which is why the thing they released wound up targeting it, but even then it was hard to find and too unreliable in typical use for a fun experi…

Wait this is even worse. They didn't even build any hardware at all. So just to be clear in less then a year they spent half a million and used other peoples hardware and didn't even have a real gameplay demo. "It also doesn't sound like you've put any thought into the challenge of simulating realistic swordplay as a generic engine that supports different historically accurate fighting styles, with all the nitty phys…

The extreme detail that went into designing the arenas seemed to consume all the resources of the project.

Let me guess, every arena had a bike shed off to one side?

Re: Neal Stephenson Joins Magic Leap

#165

Post by pfisch »

jessaustin wrote: post #164
pfisch wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait this is even worse. They didn't even build any hardware at all. So just to be clear in less then a year they spent half a million and used other peoples hardware and didn't even have a real gameplay demo. "It also doesn't sound like you've put any thought into the challenge of simulating realistic swordplay as a generic engine that supports different historically accurate fighting styles, with all the nitty phys…

The extreme detail that went into designing the arenas seemed to consume all the resources of the project. Let me guess, every arena had a bike shed off to one side?

Look at the arenas, they are beautiful. They have cloth objects blowing in the wind. Everything looks like it was custom made from scratch.

"Let me guess, every arena had a bike shed off to one side?"

I'm guessing that was a shot at Road Redemption, and I do wish the art was better, but having a huge art team to make 50+ miles of track from scratch would cost a lot more than 150k, and leave no money for making the actual game. We used a lot of premade assets from turbosquid and the unity asset store. We used EZRoads to make all the tracks except the rooftop levels. Most of the animations we had to mocap/animate ourselves though because there just are not a lot of solid on motorcycle animations available.

The point is that we actually made a game and it is pretty fun(90% user review score), and we did it with a lot less than 500k. Art does not make a video game. That is why I am saying the clang project was mismanaged. The art they made is beautiful, and looks like it is all custom. They could've easily gotten 90% of that from the asset store and it would be worse, but it would also cost less than $1000. Then they have at least 400k left to make the game. The problem they had to solve was difficult, but with 400k they should've been able to make something awesome.

Re: Neal Stephenson Joins Magic Leap

#166

Post by jessaustin »

pfisch wrote: post #165
jessaustin wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The extreme detail that went into designing the arenas seemed to consume all the resources of the project. Let me guess, every arena had a bike shed off to one side?

Look at the arenas, they are beautiful. They have cloth objects blowing in the wind. Everything looks like it was custom made from scratch. "Let me guess, every arena had a bike shed off to one side?" I'm guessing that was a shot at Road Redemption, and I do wish the art was better, but having a huge art team to make 50+ miles of track from scratch would cost a lot more than 150k, and leave no money for making the ac…

No, not a shot at Road Redemption! I'm not actually familiar with that game. Rather, it was an oblique suggestion that the Clang development process had fallen victim to the pathology of bikeshedding, in which non-technical people "contribute" in the only way they can, which is to say they change the color of the bike shed, over and over again. The point of Clang was not to have really nice arenas.

Re: Neal Stephenson Joins Magic Leap

#167

Post by lcedp »

Florin_Andrei wrote: post #133
RickHull wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All are fantastic. I was put off by the beginning of Snow Crash initially, as there are some tongue-in-cheek bits that struck me as too campy. But I might not say that now, having read it a few times. The Baroque Cycle is a massive piece of work spanning 3 volumes, comprised of 8 nominally independent books. If it seems intimidating, just try the first one and see if you're not hooked. I'd love it if there was twice…

> Anathem is by far my favorite. Its hooks take longer to set, but for me they set much deeper. There is a lot going on in this book, and it will truly blow your mind if you let it. I've a major in Physics and it took me a couple readings to figure out all (well, most of) the connections therein. My favorite game to play while reading Anathem was figuring out where are the borders between historical fact (translated…

Yes, I enjoy too. [1] is a good helper

[1] http://anathem.wikia.com/wiki/Earth%E2%80%93Arbre_Correlatio...

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