6th June 2011, 6:45 PM
Technically not even reality lets you do whatever you want. I can't chop kick a jet out of the sky, not least because the term "chop kick" is undefined.
I am starting to wonder if the current generation of kids would find Woody Allen the coolest dude ever, if only they knew about him. He's like the king of awkward phrasing.
I am looking forward to this game, but it's true that if we're ever going to get to the level of EM's imagination (and my own for that matter), we'll need to invent some sort of "procedurally generated gameplay" coding. Something that can, using some basic rules, determine how to handle any unusual interaction you might come up with. For example, imagine a Zelda game where you fight some skeleton and hitting from the wrong angle can actually send your sword flying into the ground, not because it was a pre-programmed part of the fight, but because that's how the game interpreted the deflection. At that point, it will use the same rules to determine how Link will fight bare handed. Imagine the skeleton running away, you calling Epona to give chase, firing the hook shot into it, which gets caught on it, which makes it run another direction pulling you off Epona. The chain will be handled with physics, and it just so happens to have fallen around the sword in the ground, and when Link braces himself against a rock or tree and "retracts" the hook shot, the skeleton is pulled along the ground into the blade.
We are not there yet.
"Accessible" is code for "pretending to speak a way you don't". Kids aren't fooled by it, and more to the point, what is so inaccessible about just speaking like a normal adult?
I am starting to wonder if the current generation of kids would find Woody Allen the coolest dude ever, if only they knew about him. He's like the king of awkward phrasing.
I am looking forward to this game, but it's true that if we're ever going to get to the level of EM's imagination (and my own for that matter), we'll need to invent some sort of "procedurally generated gameplay" coding. Something that can, using some basic rules, determine how to handle any unusual interaction you might come up with. For example, imagine a Zelda game where you fight some skeleton and hitting from the wrong angle can actually send your sword flying into the ground, not because it was a pre-programmed part of the fight, but because that's how the game interpreted the deflection. At that point, it will use the same rules to determine how Link will fight bare handed. Imagine the skeleton running away, you calling Epona to give chase, firing the hook shot into it, which gets caught on it, which makes it run another direction pulling you off Epona. The chain will be handled with physics, and it just so happens to have fallen around the sword in the ground, and when Link braces himself against a rock or tree and "retracts" the hook shot, the skeleton is pulled along the ground into the blade.
We are not there yet.
"Accessible" is code for "pretending to speak a way you don't". Kids aren't fooled by it, and more to the point, what is so inaccessible about just speaking like a normal adult?
"On two occasions, I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able to rightly apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question." ~ Charles Babbage (1791-1871)