the random game of life

Life is like a giant RPG dontcha think? You do things to up your stats -
study -> intelligence+
workout -> physical+
eat -> restore hp
sleep -> restore fatigue
and quests are like:
- Defeat the teacher in a battle of wits
- Get a girlfriend
- Learn new skills: sports, hobbies, etc.

See the thing is, have you ever noticed that in a computer RPG, it kinda leads you in a direction? Despite the premise that an RPG should be open-ended, it still points you in some direction. You need to do X in order to get to point Y. Do you ever feel life is like this? You need to please X person in order to get past point Y. Maybe I'm just disjoint from reality, maybe it's my indifference to outcomes of events. No, it only comes out looking like indifference, but I like to accept whatever outcome happens. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy pleasing people; it makes me feel happy that they're happy. But sometimes, the line goes too far... like homework help... it's like those quests where you need to kill some mob and collect some type of drop. Sometimes you get lucky, and it's quick... but other times, the mob is stubborn and won't drop the items you need. Helping with homework is kinda like this. I enjoy the feeling when I can help someone with their problems quickly and succinctly. The annoyance comes into play when, no matter how hard I try, nothing gets absorbed. I don't like telling people answers; I tell people the theory behind it in a way that will lead them to the answer. But some people sometimes don't put the effort to absorb the information I give them, and instead want me to tell them the answer. This frustrates me, because it ends up taking longer than it should to help with the problem. It's like they block out the information I'm giving them, just because it's not what they're looking for. It's like when mobs could just as easily drop items, but they don't - and it takes longer to finish the quest. I know that isn't a very good analogy, but the feeling of frustration is about the same no? And I'm sure any RPG player would either know or been in this situation.

Then again, maybe RPGs are modeled after life..... I feel like a major dork typing about that now... whatever, next topic:

I often wonder when the graphics in games will end up looking completely realistic. What would that take? What kind of games would we have then? Would it be a virtual world? Moore's law observes that the number of transistors in a chip double every 2 years. Essentially, that means more powerful processing right? Thinking about it though... I've sometimes stared at grass (or just other things in nature) and thought, why do we know that the grass I'm staring at is real. Games are starting to nail down the look of objects - cars, buildings, and other inanimate things... but we've yet to see realistic looking organic things. They are insanely close to realistic water ... but it's definitely not real-time yet. One game's art that I admire is Guild War's landscapes. They're beautiful; but, you know it's fake. The upcoming game Crysis has to be one of the most graphically intense project that I can think of off the top of my head at the moment.

Despite how amazing that looks. It's still hyper-realistic. There's something that just tells you, it's not real. I wonder when games will finally trick our minds into thinking that what we're seeing is photo-realistic.

I suppose it all boils down to the idea of random. But I think more about the idea of 'random', the more I realized, that it's virtually impossible to invoke 'random'ness. Random is something only nature can do. A computer cannot generate random numbers, it's all based on some algorithm and some seed. Therefore, it'd hafta be impossible to be completely random since the seed is not random. Even humans can't be random willfully. Pick a number 1-10; chances are, it wasn't 1 or 10. If it was, uhm... well just think about what the general population would pick. 'Random', to me, implies an equal chance of anything choice being chosen. Ever had to pick a random page in a book? Chances are it wasn't the first page. The method for getting a random page in a book means, opening it, flying through some pages and then stopping. But... that's not random... there's more chance of the middle of the book getting chosen than the start or end.

So I guess what I'm trying to say is... I don't know that we'll ever be able to make a completely photo-realistic game in that, randomness defines reality. The grass on the ground, the bumps on a tree, the slope of the landscape... none of these can really be generated by a computer. The only way I see realistic graphics happen is when the cg artists and level designers completely define every single detail in the environment. I admire artists because they can completely fool me into thinking a painting is a photo. I'm no artist myself at all, so this amazes me. Computers can't possibly generate what the human mind can envision.

This is only talking about relatively stationary objects here! Lifeforms are infinitely more difficult right? Movement of a character is so hard to nail down. The way the body interacts with the environment is probably the biggest step to overcome. Clipping planes and being able to "stand" with one foot over a ledge is what kills many games ability to trick you into thinking the person looks real.

I dunno, I think this was a long enough post... there's some things I want to say about quantum computing, but I'll read up more on the subject before I do... the idea really baffles me - being able to be in more than one state at once...

Until then, sorry for the delay in post; enjoy your weekend.