Love: massively multiplayer world created by lone developer
Link to Love, Link to Rock, Paper Shotgun article (via Wonderland)
The game itself, dubbed Love (as in For The Love Of Game Development), is an exploration-based moderately-multiplayer FPS with astounding impressionistic visuals and a procedurally generated universe. Since Steenberg is a one man show, he’s relying on clever maths to build the world for him and then clever gamers to come in and help him figure out where to take it, and what to do with it.So far he’s already populated it with weird animals and wondrous, gaseous visuals, and he intends to build the world into a kind of communal adventure, where gamers work together to furnish a central village, defend it from enemy attack, and explore the surround world and its many dungeons. Players will be able to do things like deform elements of terrain, allowing them to build tunnel networks or walls to defend their property. Items will also be intended for the good of all as Steenberg creates them and drops them into the world. You won’t be picking up rifles in your adventures, but more likely the plans for the rifle-building machine, that can then be utilised by everyone in your village. Part Zelda, part Tale In The Desert, part adventure shooter, and wholly abstract and beautiful, Love looks the kind of amalgam of art, programming and internet savvy that we’ve desired without even being able to imagine. It has the potential, and Steenberg has the huge intellect, for this to be one of the most precious events in PC gaming.
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Wow...
This is one of the most beautiful things I've seen on the internet in a long time. And to think it will all be animated... What the (insert appropriate expletive) are those video game behemoths doing?
My god... it's like gaming inside an impressionist painting... so very cool...
Wait hang on...."BUILD ITSELF? that's a scary thought.
I can't wait for this. Very cool.
Very cool, but I won't get my hopes up. The MMO genre (and gaming in general) is notorious for super cool ideas that never go anywhere. That being said, I'm surprised that I hadn't seen this beforehand; I've listened and read tons of coverage on this year's GDC and haven't heard a peep about Love.
After looking at more screenshots in higher res, it almost looks a little too abstract. I can imagine that navigating and moving around in a 3D world that looks like that would be very hard. Then again, the RPS folks apparently saw it in motion and thought it looked great.
Here's hoping for a playable version in the near future.
Wow, great. Eskil is a talented programmer.
Having seen some of his Verse demos over the years, I'm really happy to see a full game using his techniques!
By "Build itself", I guess the description means that the "geometry" of the game is generated at run time, by programs (procedures) running on the computer and the GPU (in most games, it's all stored or downloaded as data representing all the individual polygons of each object, and the colors and textures to draw on the polygons, which is then rendered by the computer and GPU).
What makes the graphics so nice is the quality of the light - I think the careful management of dynamic range and color will make things realer than simple geometric detail. When things start moving, it should look even better.
This game reminds me of Jane, the computer from Ender's Game that procedurally generated a virtual world for the kids in the space station.
She eventually became sentient...
Beautiful! Love should hook up with "Dwarf Fortress"!
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3549/interview_the_making_of_dwarf_.php
this is interesting... but is it playable now? the article seemed to say yes, but i can't find a link on the author's site.