An open-source Spore Creature Creator-like game content creation framework?
Making games is hard.
I don’t have 20 years of game development experience under my belt to support that statement - but I don’t think I need to. I’ve written small OpenGL programs, I’ve played around with DirectX, I even started writing a small game using the Ogre3D engine. It’s a lot of work, and it’s not surprising that a game like GTA4 cost $100 million to make.
The most frustrating part when you’re starting out is setting up a good toolchain. You need a way to make 3D objects like characters and monsters and trees and stuff. You need a way to texture them. You need a way to make them move. You need tools that can do all these tasks and be able to understand each other. And you need your game engine to understand this entire mess.
Many game projects end up making their own tools, fine-tuned to their exact needs. Hopefully this effort pays off, but it is still time spent not working on the game itself. Others use more generic off-the-shelf 3D products. The problem is that generic tools have no intelligence that applies to your game: a dragon is the same as a table or a mountain, and it’s up to the artist, animator and programmer to make them act differently.
This leads to a LOT of duplicated effort across game projects. At some very basic level, a dragon is a dragon: it kinda looks like a reptile, it has four limbs, wings, it can fly. As a gamer, I want your game world to be unique, but I don’t care if your dragons are hand-crafted polygon by polygon, textured pixel by pixel, and animated frame by frame specifically for this game, just like I don’t care if you wrote every single line of code in the 3D engine the game uses. This is just inefficient.
Well, you can’t really just use a generic dragon mesh and call it a day, either. The experience is cheapened if the gamer thinks “hey, that’s the same dragon from Hack & Slash 4, and from Point & Shoot 2, and from Roll & Hit 9″.
So, what are the problems so far? Game developers need tools that:
- can create 3D objects
- can texture 3D objects
- can animate 3D objects
- are intelligent enough to abstract away the really common parts of game content creation, and allow the artists to concentrate on the parts that are unique to the game
You can see where I’m going with this, right? Well, I have to spell it out, anyway.
The Spore Creature Creator is a tool that lets PLAYERS - not even game developers - do the following:
- easily create 3D creatures
- easily texture 3D creatures
- easily animate 3D creatures
- abstract away the parts common to all vertebrate creatures
I’m not going to belabor the point. Imagine if all game developers had access to a free set of tools like the Spore creature creator. The tools would need to have:
- A standard way to add new libraries of body parts, textures, and animations
- Ability to render and export to the common 3D formats
- A standard, well-defined way to use the procedural creature definitions directly in games that choose to do so
Now, to knock down a few strawmen before they pop up:
- I don’t think the creatures would look and feel too similar across different games. Look at the huge variety of Spore creatures already made, using only the set of body parts and animations that comes with the Creature Creator. Being able to extend the set of tools with new libraries should make this a non-issue.
- This wouldn’t eliminate the need for artists on a game project. Just compare some of the best Spore creatures and some of the worst Spore creatures to understand why a talented person will always be an invaluable asset to a project. Artists’ efforts would simply be much more productive than with traditional tools.
- No, this isn’t easy to do. Spore has been in development for 8 years, and I suspect the editors have been a large part of that effort. But no pain, no gain, right?
Now, in an ideal world, this is where I would say “here’s where you can download such a magical tool!” Unfortunately, I don’t think it exists yet, but I think it’s only a matter of time. Progress in software tends to be made through increasingly higher levels of abstraction. This seems like such an obvious abstraction that it’s unavoidable. So, I’m going to say it:
We need an open-source Spore Creature Creator-like game content creation framework.
I don’t have enough experience, or know enough game developers, to take the lead on something this big. I would love to do anything I can to make it a reality - even if it’s just administrative stuff like setting up a website or a mailing list, or heck, even if it’s just to get a conversation going.
So.
Can this make making games easier?
What do you think?
August 24th, 2008 at 6:46 pm
Not a bad idea…
August 24th, 2008 at 8:32 pm
[...] know a great article when I see one, and BestSporeCreatures.com has an excellent one asking the following question: What would it be like if other game companies [...]
August 25th, 2008 at 7:16 am
Excelent. Your thinks are really interesting. To have a good site you should not only to post something, but do it with your soul. You cope with it.
August 28th, 2008 at 9:17 am
An open-source Spore Creature Creator-like game content creation framework?…
[...]Imagine if all game developers had access to a free set of tools like the Spore creature creator.[...]…
August 28th, 2008 at 1:41 pm
I posted a similar article on my blog a few months ago. Click to read it. I’m glad to see that quite a few people are of the same mindset!
http://www.garagegames.com/index.php?sec=mg&mod=resource&page=view&qid=14811
August 28th, 2008 at 4:15 pm
“a dragon is the same as a table or a mountain, and it’s up to the artist, animator and programmer to make them act differently.”
Good, that keeps the artistic mind working overtime, so some games end up actually interesting and inspirational. IF one would for example use a dragon as a table, and let a table spit fire then this should be no problem, the more time on a game spent, the more money it will cost, but also, the more importance a stable and working (read; fun, creative, etc) game will be released. Now if im correct, u are stating that u wish for some kind of intelligent wikipedia databank for 3d models, fitting behaviors and textures, ever thought of the fact that some games don’t use worldly creatures, and did u ever look at a game and go; wow I have never really seen anything like that before, thats probably because it all started on paper, not digital, now u go browsing for that one piece of ear uve drawn in a multizillion part database for ears.
(btw, did u ever use Zbrush? Spore Creature Creator really feels and acts the same as Zbrush, check it out if u want)
finally, look at Spore, u state that all creatures have a sort of uniqueness about them, I look at them and really see no original creatures because the used parts are from one and the same source, (all is from 1 source, but we are not talkin about “THE TRUTH”) Spore Creature Creator, they all have the same kind of feeling about them. I understand Spore is just the tip of the iceberg, still. At the moment these developers are trained to work with different design suits, there is no problem with that, because at the beginning of building a game (for example spore) they start with brainstorm sessions, drawing tables, plot ideas etc… I can imagine if I were a modeller i would not want my boss to redirect me to pre-fixed model parts, i want to build it from scratch, even if it is going to take me a while, less time is only important for the money, not for quality. (even if this is a multi milion dollar biz, a motivated person still works faster and more efficient then a slave) I can go on and on why in my opinion your idea just would not work on so many levels, even if it is a great idea, and sounds so good… I will leave it at this cause im really in a hurry, hope my post gives some inspirational points on your ideas, maybe I didnt quite catch your idea, and maybe im just horribly wrong, its just my two cents.
August 28th, 2008 at 5:06 pm
Vega, thanks for the comment! You make some great points.
I see such a tool as being useful for very small teams that want to punch out of their weight class. Maybe they want to spend their resources on amazing AI, or an incredible story, or some innovative multiplayer ideas. If you have a team of 2-3 people, you can’t afford to spend hours tweaking the ears of one creature.
To win, you have to pick your fights. Some game projects would have no use for such a tool, because they have the resources and talent to create beautiful and unique creatures. Other projects might not have those resources - they could give up before they even start, they could use stock models from model libraries, or they could use a tool like the one I’m describing to come up with some creatures that at least have a unified theme and a bit of uniqueness to them.
No, you can’t compare the output of such a tool with the output of a talented team of artists. But that’s not all there is to games. Even games made with RPGMaker can be innovative and enjoyable.
August 29th, 2008 at 9:40 pm
[...] An open-source Spore Creature Creator-like game content creation framework? | Best Spore Creatures (tags: programming games tools) [...]
September 18th, 2008 at 5:27 am
Good site I \”Stumbledupon\” it today and gave it a stumble for you.. looking forward to seeing what else you have..later
November 9th, 2008 at 6:00 am
When the Creature creator demo came out,i thought to myself…
“Wow,its so easy to model your creatures here…imagine if game developers had tools like this to design their characters for the games…a lot of effort could go in other aspects!”
I agree with you!…somebody should start to decipher the code of the creator and create an open souce program for that end.
February 8th, 2009 at 12:54 pm
1.What is the name of the piece that lets you walk through deep water?
2.What is the name of the peice that makes a flamethrower?
February 8th, 2009 at 12:55 pm
I loooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooove Spore!
March 1st, 2009 at 7:13 am
Hit me up. I could use your skills. rockhardwang@live.ca (I’m serious)