(very) raw notes… my murmurings are in the [square brackets]

digifest: friday: afternoon

[whoa – that was horrible… my tibook just took about 5 minutes for the screen to come on… very nasty… missed some of the opening remarks of first speaker as a result]

james schmaltz: digital extremes: UT

creating real-time worlds

UT -18 people, 3.5 years
typical big games 5m – 25m dev budget

we generally give out the editor with our games
cites counter-strike example of mod_culture
“come with all the tools that we use to make the game”

probably half the people that DE hires come from mod community.

Spielberg used UT editor to create animatics for AI [true?]

goal for editor was to let ppl create worlds in real time
[terra-forming with ‘terrain brushes’ in realtime – incredible]
the realtime element is the most important thing in terms of creative feedback… makes sense for the company – not just a benefit for user community.

[i love UT]

[is there an aggregation anywhere online of ‘exotic’ uses of UT/UT_editor?]

my trip to liberty city
jim munroe, marc ngui
brilliant spoof TRAVELOGUE movie of GTA3…
skins: mime, street priest administering last rites…
http://www.nomediakings.org

it’s kinda satirical, but the aesthetic of the city really appealed to him… appreciated the details… the same reasons you warm to cities and their detail and decay

[there’s a patchwork history and psychogeography to liberty city that feels real, like gotham? hyperstylised and amplified characteristics… characature… liberty city is a pretty warm, if mean character?]

after a while you depart from the story and get more into the world.
curiosity and learning are as powerful impulses as destruction

verisimilitude – key element in all art – on display in liberty city… the broad strokes and the right details have created a world that succeeds as art, urban design etc.

architects of virtual can get too caught up in absolute reality of rendering a city.

a world of physics, rules, gnomic, that scripts can fit in and be supported by but unscripted action can happen as combos of the physics and the rules. the marc: unscripted events stand out in your experience more than the scripts often.
managed to drive a bus at speed off a ramp which then teetered on the edge of a building… italian-job style. tried to get out and bus fell on and crushed… physics gave rise to unscripted but exciting experience.

games create the world and the impetus/excuse for the social interaction
[scripted goals create the nodes for the unscripted arcs within an authored environment]

another personal epiphany gaming moment – Halo on xbox: AI alien… the last alien of an attacking troop that he and his friend had vanquished… doing it’s best to stay alive… sudden, strong feeling of empathy with your enemy… it felt like a living thing… identified with it’s movements, struggle

demo scene
forced the artists to know about code… musician to know about art, coder to know about music…
no tools – just code. [applications and tools reinforce lines of specialization?]

still pretty underground -> apart from old skool, lots of game developers these days don’t know too much about it or participate.

music – open source music… sharing of samples and source code, knowledge, trading. at demo parties, given 10 minutes to create a track.

url just came up on screen: http://addict.scene.pl

my q to panel: what makes a playable electronic city?

jS: levels that reveal themselves over time? environments that teach – or can be exploited through experience.
TW: counterstrike very simple – it’s a canvas that many things can be played on… in the film one player called it a chess game. [ there were some very detailed analysis of maps in the counter-strike documentary]

demo guy: techniques to promote emergence and unscripted moments in an environment [what are they!!!???]

—
demo sites:
http://www.mindcandydvd.com
http://www.ojuice.net

q: what tools are used to make demos?
fundamentally: demos are real-time applications… it’s an oxymoron to ask what tools are involved…
hypercompressed – historically limited by 8-bit computers such as the c64, but now a point of pride and prowess.