Tell me what cloud computing is. - The Bear and Badger

monkey

There's no reason maps can't be procedurally generated now. Or they can generate tens of thousands of them and just serve them up randomly. They don't because it would be shit and they wouldn't be able to sell any map packs.

Mod74

Has anyone ever made a decent Captain Scarlet/Thunderbirds game?

Mod74

As for the computing cloud. Who knows. Broadband is going to get faster and more reliable not slower and less. Devs will work out the best utilisation over time. An early example of the differences might be evident in Titanfalls. It might not. Ultimately it's something devs can use to try and make better games so even if they fail to do that successfully its existence isn't hurting anyone.

n0face

This just popped up while reading this page.

This cloud gets everywhere.

Moto70

That's a good Cloud, it enables me to get online and receive text messages in the pubs I don't get a signal in.

WorKid

I use cloud computing all the time, at work and at home. It normally works very well.

Sasukekun

Moto70 wrote:

RamSteelwood wrote:

Sasukekun wrote:

Moto70 wrote:

Would it be possible with 'the power of the cloud' to finally give me what I wanted in CoD. Especially now I've stopped playing it. Procedurally generated maps. The game can have its themes for maps (Article, Urban, Jungle, etc) but then 'the power of the cloud' bangs out a map, the raw data is d/l and the XB1 generates the map from that. It would certainly make S&D and the like much more tactical.

I don't think so. Not at the point we're at

It could... But so could your Xbox.... The problem is that procedurally generated levels like that would generally be shit.... if you had the massively complex algorithms required to generate good levels, it could be something deferred to cloud level to do all the calculations quicker than a single box... I'm not sure how likely or practical it would be to happen, but it's probably as good an idea as I've heard for 'the cloud' in an actual game term.... Online COD or whatever where each level is new to everyone each time would be interesting....

I just thought the cloud would be better suited to generating one map for 32 consoles than 32 consoles all trying to make exactly the same map.

True, but it's the procedural generation that would be the problem. A ready made map, fine, but one that's generated on the go? I don't think you'd get anything fun to play.

Mod74

It's not easy to get actual numbers/details on this, but there have been a few nuggets over the last days

http://www.zdnet.com/microsoft-were-adding-7000-azure-iaas-users-per-week-7000016550/

If you're interested. And yes, "100,000's" isn't an actual number.

Hey look, even our Four Dingoteers will have a pair of centres.

g.man

...and yet the second you join a Battlefield server it'll still be on the other side of the world.

g.man

[Deleted User]

g.man wrote:

...and yet the second you join a Battlefield server it'll still be on the other side of the world.

g.man

you know you can filter your server areas on bf3?
you can filter a lot really.

g.man

IT WAS A JOKE DAVIE

isanbard

The Azure pricing schedule is a lottery to me as I know next to nothing about it but afaik MS are seemingly offering (marketing bullshit sensor at maximum granted..) 3 or 4 virtual XBoxs to each user aren't they?

At the very least that would seem to be running into hundreds of dollars a month on that page? Is this in any way comparable to what they would be offering for this? Would MS just suck it all up as an additionally costed 'loss' to wipe out over the life cycle of the machine or would devs/pubs be expected to foot a heavy bill to cater for all this cloud access?

Moto70

isanbard wrote:

The Azure pricing schedule is a lottery to me as I know next to nothing about it but afaik MS are seemingly offering (marketing bullshit sensor at maximum granted..) 3 or 4 virtual XBoxs to each user aren't they? At the very least that would seem to be running into hundreds of dollars a month on that page? Is this in any way comparable to what they would be offering for this? Would MS just suck it all up as an additionally costed 'loss' to wipe out over the life cycle of the machine or would devs/pubs be expected to foot a heavy bill to cater for all this cloud access?

I've always wondered how people get to these prices, not the people supplying the product but the people speculating on the cost.

I'm guessing that these servers are already bought and paid for so for Microsoft to use them will cost next to nothing or does it not work like that?

isanbard

I'm sure they are already accounted, prepped and ready to go(ish?) by MS indeed but by allocating them to Live they're not making revenue as they would traditionally.
Perhaps the pricing would be the same? Do mega corps manage to slash these prices with huge demands and access? The prices from that sliding scale get pretty damn pricey pretty fast.
300,000 for 8/10 years is going to be a bit of a dent in the division's profit if they don't get some decent cash for their usage? I dunno though.. it's all foreign like to me.

Mod74

I'd guess they'd say to devs it's free. Otherwise why would they use it. Perhaps with some overage if suddenly your game becomes insanely popular. Bit like what Epic do with their Unreal pricing.

isanbard

Will be interesting to see some more meat on it as time tickles on.
I can also see them going cheep cheep (free??) initially to get the uptake and then scale it as it becomes more essential or proves it's worth. Could end up as a nice loss mitigation/earner if they could get Activision to cough up for some kind of insane persistent, 3000 player COD ultra death thingy? License to print etc etc

[Deleted User]

g.man wrote:

IT WAS A JOKE DAVIE

i knew that, but still.

ShabbyMcCrabby

I guess it's already been covered but if they truly are doing cloud based computations then that would largely effect elements of the game that is continuously CPU intensive. Elements such as AI can be very complex and are constantly running, taking resources away from other parts of the game. With cloud you could theoretically have complex AI routines running for a large number of NPCs. Imagine a GTA where the entire population is actually living out a life whether you see them or not.
This, of course, will probably never be a reality but you can see the potential benefits.

Procedural generation may be tough on a processor during the actual generation but things like level creation and so on is never so complex as to be worthwhile offloading. Just look at games like frozen synapse or spelunky. Even Fuel procedurally generated it's world every time you played, it just happened to be the same one.

The only game I can think of that would benefit is Dwarf Fortress and that's because it creates a whole ecosystem and world history. Not many AAA titles would bother going to those lengths when they can just write it themselves and it'll still sell.

Genetic and learning algorithms on the other hand would greatly benefit as they can eat up processing time very easily. Especially if it has a lot to consider. I still can't see any big developers using them though.

b0r1s

Pretty much what I was saying bottom of page one... except you put it better than me :-)

Mod74

So if it hadn't have been complete bullshit SimCity could have benefited from cloud processing the city lives.

Diluted Dante

It might even have been a good game.

Mod74

I looked again the other day. The 4.0 patch has improved some things a helluvha lot. I'm just not as interested in playing SimCity as I thought I was. And what desire there was has been sated.

GooberTheHat

Me to, I keep thinking I should give it another go, then I remember how small the maps are and think balls to it.

Billy

Devs already use the concept of cloud processing for some things, it's like a render farm for film sfx or animated films. You have a bunch of networked machines just for crunching numbers. Unreal does a thing called swarm where any machine on your studios network that has free CPU cycles helps with rendering complex light mass -

http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/Swarm.html

PS3 has been a part of Folding at home or ages, that's just treating everyone's consoles as a cloud for computing.

Same concept, different application. As cloud computing gets cheaper and cheaper we'll see it helping with AI as Shabby said, graphics and lights too.

Mod74

I suppose games are quite suited to the idea of on-demand computing. You have a massive demand for 3 weeks then it tails off again to almost nothing. As a publisher you wouldn't set that up yourself (hello again SimCity) but tapping into someone else's would be realistic.

Mod74

Just going back to the talk of pricing. I suppose it depends on how devs can to use it. Does it make it easier and quicker to make a game? Would the cost of off-loading X to cloud processing save you X months of development time? If so it becomes just another paid for tool similar to other third party ones like SpeedTree or Scaleform.

monkey

GooberTheHat wrote:

Me to, I keep thinking I should give it another go, then I remember how small the maps are and think balls to it.

I heard somewhere (can't remember where) that the citys are so small precisely because it was too hard on the servers to manage larger ones.

Moto70

GooberTheHat wrote:

Me to, I keep thinking I should give it another go, then I remember how small the maps are and think balls to it.

That's what has stopped me going back to it

Blue Swirl

"In the cloud" is marketing bullshit for "on the internet".

"My saves are in the cloud." = "My saves are stored on a server farm somewhere so I can access them wherever I am."

Sasukekun

Folding at Home. I still seriously can't believe Sony put that into the PS3. Did it ever cure cancer?

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