Hacker News Reader

Comment by Shorel | Hacker News Reader

That would require programming lots and lots of procedural generation algorithms, one for each kind of thing.

Sounds like a fun project for the next generations. Something to play when I am older.

Procedural generation for plants is actually pretty common already Most trees you see in video games are from middleware like Realtree

That's just one procedural generation algorithm.

Now suppose I want to take some fruit from the trees. And I want to slice and dice the different fruits. Peeling the skins when appropriate.

Or I want to plant a new tree. Or I want to remove it, with say, a lightsaber.

That's a couple generators more. Now add birds, dogs, insects, moss, moist surfaces, and so on. Hence, my point on needing several generators.

I mean, fine if you want to make an actual virtual world. But when it comes down to it, it's a video game. Why in the world would any of this be in COD or Battlefield or Fallout? It would take more time than making the actual game part of it to do this pointless garbage that nobody would care about and consume the majority of computer resources. Not to mention a lot of video games remove realistic aspects that would otherwise make it a chore to play.

There are lots of things to be improved in games, but what you're describing are improvements to a real life simulation.

And so you start to wonder, why you should buy a new version of COD, Battlefield or Fallout? Because it uses more energy and you need a new GPU then?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com