Phil Rice 00:44
Hello and welcome to And now for something completely machinima, the podcast about machinima, virtual production and related technologies. I am one of your hosts, Phil Rice, and with me is Tracy Harwood and Damien Valentine. Hello. Ricky took his toys and went home, but when he cools off, he'll be back, so we look forward to his return. This week, we're going to be talking about news, and it's not for those of you in the in the US. It's not the kind of news that you want to turn off and never watch again. This is actually interesting, fun news that has nothing to do with stuffy people in suits. Well, maybe a little bit, but not those stuffy people in suits. So, yeah, without any further ado, let's Tracy, why don't you launch us into what do we got to talk about this

Tracy Harwood 01:35
week? Oh, okay, well, I've got a bunch of stuff as usual, but actually, what I want to start with is a bit on AI, and particularly something that's quite close to me in relation to the pioneers in machinima book that Ben and I wrote, Ben grossi and I wrote that is, which was based on many, many years of work and a lot of interviews with the pioneers, and throughout that many years of data collection, I suppose you'd call it basically Ben and I received an email from our publisher, which is Vernon press, in November this year, which we discussed at length before making our decision on on how we would respond to it. The Email stated that it is exploring the possibility of licensing parts of its catalog, burns catalog that is for use in training AI models, the publisher justified their support and move towards doing that based on it being an interesting opportunity to extend the reach of the author's books with a view to generating additional licensing revenue. I think, on balance, Ben and I both feel that we would sooner be part of the mix with our accurate historical representation than let generative AI make it up without reference to any of the source material and writings that we included in that book. So even though we feel that many probably won't agree with us, we decided this, that actually we would support the use of the book being used in AI training. This, we felt, is because lots of AIs are now also being required to cite their sources. So yes, I guess it is a possibility that we may get more views for the work. But I think the most important part of our decision wasn't so much that, but that because a lot of the book, the book's content is actually reference to sources and analysis, it's going to result in a more, potentially more reference to lots of other source materials too. Certainly, my view is that I'm not that bothered so much about making money from this, this, this book project, because it was never really about making money. You don't make that much money from an academic book as such, or a sort of a hybrid book as this one was. But for me, it was all about contributing to the cultural history with factual information and where I'm coming from, I feel we've already seen the erosion of Wikipedia on the origins and history of machinima, where original content has been replaced with layer upon layer of misinterpreted and factually incorrect commentary by God knows, whom possibly AIs will be at least able to retain some of the original content where Wikipedia has failed to do that in practice, even though, when I've raised this point with the team from Wikipedia and their comments have been along the lines of, well, it can always be retraced and unpicked. That's never happened, of course, because cultural memory is short and incomplete, and cultural development is continuously evolving, making Wikipedia not only a source of historical Well, not really a source. Historical fact, but a source about a living medium, or at least that's what it is for some aspects of the way that it reports on machinima, I dare say, AI may end up, end up actually being like that a bit too if the generative material is reintegrated into the training models in and over time, and probably the result may happen a lot quicker than 15 years it took for it to happen on Wikipedia. But I do feel that books and original source materials are not editable in their first published form, and should always be retained as a resource, as a form of original IP by whomever contributes to these models. I don't know if that will be true, but that's my thoughts. Of course, we can't predict really, how these are going to go in the future, or how quickly whatever that future is will actually happen. Frankly, I've struggled to think of lots of use case scenarios, but things like plagiarism, bizarrely, I think, could be minimized for formal things like news reports and such, because of the requirements to check that citations are correct from publishers and that there is actually now a growing trend to declare any use of generative AI, plus, we're only talking about a period in time which is the origins of machinima, not the, you know, the not the evolution of it, over 20 years since that period of time. So there you go. That's our decision on this one. I'll let you know how it plays out over time, and I'll certainly be tracking how the book is used in models, if I can, if I'm aware of it, and Ben will do the same, and similarly, if I would, I would sort of like put a plea out there, really, if any of you actually see how it's being used, or you have observation observations about what it's being used for. When you come across it, I would really, really welcome the feedback on that. I don't know what you guys think about, about that, any, any thoughts would be really welcome.

Phil Rice 07:13
Yeah, my initial thought is, it's nice. I would think it's nice to be working with a publisher that that put this before you, and didn't just do it, didn't just lawyer their way into figuring out a way to do this without your permission and keeping the money or whatever, that they actually it seems like this is the way to Do it, if you're going to do it, is consult with the actual creator of the IP, get their input on it, and then make a decision and and be equitable, equitable and fair in anything that's monetary related to this. You know that that's negotiated ahead of time and and executed, you know, ethically. And I like, I like your take on, you know, there's a you've kind of put it as, there's a dichotomy here of either generative AI is going to guess, or they're going to have my source material and maybe get it, maybe have a better chance of being correct. I think that's, there's, that's, I think that's completely sound like, if those really are the options. Um, so if your objective is, I want the truth to be known, then, yeah, weirdly, having AI, you know, flip, flip its fingers through your pages makes the most sense. There's no other way that you're going to improve the odds of the right information getting out there to people. And it's interesting because this, this sound rationale, doesn't really apply to other forms of media quite in the same way, like a painter or a creator of moving images, for example, correct to let their material be borrowed is a very different matter than than textual information. You know, especially an academic, you know, a work that is non fiction like this. It's probably even a different a different thing, a different consideration, for a writer of fiction, for example, I

Damien Valentine 09:27
just want to jump in and say that as well, because, like, if

Phil Rice 09:29
you would, they think of it the same way. Because, yeah, this is, this is interesting. I'm, first of all, I think your reasoning for for doing it, in my opinion, for what it's worth, is that it's sound. I'm very interested to see what you know by proxy of you and Ben, that we will learn about how this actually does play out, what information you are able to obtain about because this is all beforehand, right? So for the moment where they they give your work over to. The AI. Well, then what? How do you how do you know what happened with it? Is there any way to even know, if so, what are those tools? We've talked some about that, about tracking and such, being kind of vital to IP, not being completely divorced from its owner, when, when AI eats it, right? And so with with text, it's, it's, yeah, it's, it's, it's different, different ball, a different and My words are just not not working. It's not the same. It's not the same as as as long pictures and stuff. Yeah, sorry about that. That's all right. That's all right. Anyway, yeah, very interesting development,

Tracy Harwood 10:46
yeah. Well, I don't know quite when or or who or which models, but time's gonna tell. I guess. I suppose, really, yes, you're right about the consultation process with the publisher, and I agree with you. I think them coming to us at this stage is is really the most honorable thing that's

Phil Rice 11:06
encouraging, right? There's some publishers who would not do that. I think we know that. I think we know that that if they there are some publishers who, because the people running them are not particularly ethical, that if they thought they could get away with doing it without paying you anything, they would, you know, it's not, it's not a distrust of publishers in general. It's the fact that publishers are run by people. Some people are just bad, you know, and greedy. So it's, it's, to me, it's, if nothing else, it's just nice that it certainly appears Vernon press is not run by that kind of person or people. That's a good thing, you know, like I would if I had published my book with him like you had, and that that's one of the things I would take away from this is thanks, you know, thanks for asking me what what I want to do with my work. Thank you. You know so well, yeah, some one wouldn't. And once it's out, yes, exactly, then, then what can you do about it? Like if they told you after the fact? Yeah,

Tracy Harwood 12:10
there's no pulling it back, is there? Once it's once it's done. I mean, I think from a from, you know, if you were ever thinking about this point of view, making money, there's no way, because once it's out, once you only need it once in a training model, and it's all over everywhere. So there is, oh

Phil Rice 12:25
yeah, and they're not, they're not going to be paid a royalty. It doesn't sound How would royalties even work at this point without the tracking we've been talking about. So, yeah, it's not a royalty. It's a one time thing. So I don't expect that. Yeah, your Instagram is going to have a video of you doing the thing with the dollar bills. You know me,

Tracy Harwood 12:43
but

Phil Rice 12:44
it's, it's, it's nice that, you know I yeah, I think the, I don't know it's, it just, it's, it strikes me in a positive way that there are a lot of ways that they could have handled this, and this seems like a good way.

Tracy Harwood 12:58
Yeah, exactly. All right. Well, I've got other news as well. Do you want me to carry on? Me to

Phil Rice 13:03
carry on? Oh, that wasn't the whole episode. Oh, God, no,

Tracy Harwood 13:05
I've got loads. I got, you know, another 10 hours of this other news about AI, though, a new, I think there's a new AI focused filmmaking studio which has launched called asteria. Interesting. Not sure what it's the quality of what it's going to do will be like, because I can't say, as I'm all that impressed, necessarily, with a lot of what comes out of AI production. I would say I was almost said studio productions, but I think that's the last thing they are. Basically what their argument is is that AI can change the way indies make and distribute content. They're arguing that it will provide them with new opportunities and presumably new types of content. I think actually, they're making very much the same point that we made a few months back when we first started talking about my cinema, my cinema with AI. So I think this will be quite an interesting development, I'll be quite intrigued to see how successful these guys are. So I will keep following these and I will endeavor to feedback what their successes are in future.

Phil Rice 14:13
They're probably not the first group of people to try and turn this into a company or figure out how to run it as a business, but they're one of the first, well, certainly one of the first, certainly one of the first. It will be interesting. Everyone will be watching to see how they do it exactly.

Tracy Harwood 14:29
And I think it's interesting because this has been picked up on major news channel, so it's obviously going to be a thing and clearly worth reporting on. So yeah, I dare say, we'll see a little bit more come out about this. I'm bit disappointed they didn't use my cinema one of the terms we came up with. But hey, you know, we've got other new terms that we can use instead. Then I've also got some game related news. I don't know if you've seen the. Silent Hill to remake which has been released, and it's certainly gaining a lot of attention, having been nominated for several awards at the Game Awards. However, quite a few are less impressed, to the point that the main story about its release is not actually anything to do with the game, but to do with a mod that turns it into a VR game. And that Mod's been made by prey dog, and it gives the game more of a first person perspective. And there's a cracking demo, Vision demo video of it, which I will share with you if it's definitely worth having a look at. Then another piece of news, Philip Rosedale has rejoined the team at Linden labs, Second Life as the Chief Technology Officer, back after what would that be? At least 10 years out? Yeah, at least, if not more than that, having worked on a heap of other projects, some of which he is apparently bringing back into the world, such as things like spatial audio project that he was working on for a while, which which I kind of picked up and used in some of the stuff that I was working on. So some fascinating things he's been doing. He did a really interesting round table discussion with the community in November that's worth watching if, if that's your poison. And he's also started up a friends with Philip group in world that will help you keep up with what he's doing in terms of how he plans to make the changes he wants to see happen in the in that virtual world,

Phil Rice 16:37
almost round table. I'm sorry, the round table was that? Was that done before or after? He his return as CTO. Um, sorry,

Tracy Harwood 16:45
after, just after. Okay, so, because basically, is an announcement, right? This is what I'm going to do this. So his style,

Phil Rice 16:52
yes, town hall type of of thing is so him. He's, he's remained a really active and interesting voice. He certainly in that space, even when he wasn't CTO there. I've followed him for quite some time. He's a very thoughtful and, yes, interesting person.

Tracy Harwood 17:08
Yeah, me too. And I think pretty much everyone that I've seen comment about the fact that he's back is also very happy about it. I think it was such a front runner second life that is back in those early days of its development. I can't really wait to see how he further develops that environment with I mean, I thought he'd got amazing foresight as a pioneer in virtual worlds, and I think that will just play out. There's also a really great interview with James Wagner al who was reported on that in two blog posts on his new world notes, there are a couple of takeaways for me on this. One is how mobile will be integrated into the user experience, and the other is, is the role of AI, for example, as hosts and greeters, but also for things like voice to text and vice versa, which is interesting, because I, you know, I think the thing that's always been a bit of a challenge for me is the fact that you got to type to communicate with everybody. Why not just make it voice? But then maybe part of what he's thinking is how maybe to integrate synthetic voices so that you're not just you as a as an avatar, but you are a character as well. So I guess there's an element of that going on there. All of that, I think, is basically because he explains in this interview that you did with James, as you know, one of one of his drivers, is to increase competitive competitiveness against worlds like, for example, fortnight and Roblox. And I think one of his goals here is actually to increase the monthly active users in Second Life to around 50 million. Well, I don't remember what the the top usage of Second Life was back in the day, but I don't think it was anything like that. So,

19:12
no,

Tracy Harwood 19:14
no, never a massive a very ambitious, yeah, very ambitious aim. But I would guess. You know, Second Life had that reputation. Lots of people did dabble with it. There are, oh, sure, some reports of, you know, 50, 60 million people having a an attempted go with it. Why they didn't stick with it, though,

Phil Rice 19:33
I cumulative, if you mean, maybe, like, over, over a period of time, yeah. I mean, I'm sure that. I'm sure at its peak, the user account was in the millions, but I don't think it got anywhere near 50, yeah,

Tracy Harwood 19:47
well, that's a different order of problem. I think so really interesting to see, interesting to

Phil Rice 19:52
see what they do to attract that, because part of that is going to be making it a place that that those 50 million people want to be. Yeah, absolutely. So it's going to there's going to be some some fresh takes. I think that's going to be very interesting to

Tracy Harwood 20:05
watch. It is indeed. And I think possibly some of the sidekicks that he's been working on over the years are probably going to be some of the drivers for getting people more interested. Because one of the things that he's created is this kind of new type of digital currency. It's called a fair share concept, which I don't know too much about, if I'm honest, but it certainly sounds a little bit more, a little bit more user friendly, say, than Bitcoin was back in the day. So yeah, I think that digital currency idea, which, which I say. So, you know, the Linden Dollar thing was, was groundbreaking in its day, to the point when, you know, people were actually making real money using digital digital currency. It's got to be one of the first examples of people actually attempting to extract income legitimately from a game world. And, you know, here he is doing something else along the very similar line. So I mean, I am really, genuinely very interested to see where he takes this. I wish him lots of success, because I definitely think if anybody can do it, he can sure. And finally, for my updates this month, I just want to mention a couple of World of Warcraft things. Firstly, a project that used Blizzard's IP for a Netflix film called remarkable life of ibelin, which apparently didn't seek permission before it started, and only approached the game developer as it was finalizing the film. And it's predicated on, well, I think their idea basically was to seek forgiveness rather than ask permission in the first which I think is admirable, to be honest, gutsy, gutsy, very gutsy, I have to say, because, you know, a lot of us have not done that sort of thing. And I've heard lots of comments in the community of the original machinima pioneers where that was not the case, but I have to say, probably in this case, I think if they'd have gone in all guns blazing to start with, they probably wouldn't have had this film made. And actually, it's a very moving story. It's won a couple of Sundance awards. And when you have a look at the trailer, which I'll share a link to you can clearly see why any game, not just World of Warcraft, but any game where there was somebody involved with this kind would actually want to support this kind of project. I won't spoil it. I'll let you watch the trailer. Have to say it's the complete antithesis of of numerous negative commentaries you hear about the impact of games on people's lives. It's a it's a wonderful story with a with sadness, I have to say. And then the other thing that I was also very interested to see, and Phil, I'm sure you will be too, is a World of Warcraft, 20 years of music, orchestral concert, which has actually been promoted by Blizzard two, and it's on their channel that I picked this up, and it's to the discussion that we had a couple of months back about how games are increasingly licensing their music. Well here part of what they're doing is this two hour long concert, which took place in September at a theater in Switzerland with a little tiny, teeny bit of video accompaniment in the background to a packed audience, with this concert having been produced by a company called Health pick and the performance being made by this orchestral group, 20 called 21st Century orchestra with three choirs and an ensemble of 190 performers on a stage, phenomenal. There was some suggestion, actually, that the original composers were part of the audience of the game, that is so I would guess that will have been an absolutely massive treat for those who were there. What I did see, though, was quite a lot of discussion and disappointment among the community in the mid summer of those who wondered why this had not been performed in the US, and actually the reason, as I understand it, was because that the project, proposed proposal came out of helvic Quarter, rather than Blizzard actually taking a lead on it. But quite interestingly, on the video, which is the only place that I've seen the video being available on Blizzard's channel on World of Warcraft channel is that it's right at the bottom of it. It's copyright 2024 Azeroth music and omnica music, divisions of Blizzard Entertainment, all rights reserved for World of Warcraft. Warcraft and Blizzard Entertainment, trademarks of Blizzard Entertainment. Is in the US and or other countries. So yep, it's licensed and performed, just like any other music, and in turn, it will have implications for those that may want to use any of that music in future too. But you can actually see the whole concert online, which is which is brilliant. I definitely you know, if you've got two and a bit hours just to have some amazing music going, pick that it's wonderful. I will put the video link. Is

Phil Rice 25:28
the music? Is the music? Good? I don't, I don't think I could identify It's the moment of World of Warcraft music in a lineup like, I have no knowledge of it. So

Tracy Harwood 25:39
it's you could imagine it being World of Warcraft, but it is beautiful, beautifully performed orchestral music. It's stunt. Just have a listen. It's amazing. I

Phil Rice 25:51
definitely will.

Damien Valentine 25:53
I'm not too familiar with World of Warcraft, but I played the previous Warcraft games, and I've played StarCraft, and they all had music. Okay? Yeah, I can imagine what World of Warcraft would follow that as well. Because great.

Phil Rice 26:06
I look forward to that. Yeah,

Tracy Harwood 26:08
it's definitely worth sitting and listening to for Sunday afternoon. Wonderful. And that's it for me this month. What have you guys got?

Damien Valentine 26:18
I've got some news, some big news for making machinima, which I think many people may find helpful. The latest version of steam, which is the steam launcher, has now got game recording, video recording features built into it. It works on any game. Now, I can't say I've tried this myself yet. I realize I should before I talk about it, but my understanding is it works on any game you've got in your Steam library. So you can record anything. Imagine the game is down to the game itself regarding hiding interface and stuff. So you'll have to figure that out with your the game of your choice. But having this ability to record video and record the sound as well. It's going to be great for making machinima. It also works on the Steam deck. So if you've got one of those and you want to make some machinima on the go, you can use it on your steam deck, and it records just as well, although I imagine, because the steam deck runs at a low resolution, you won't get if you want to make a 4k video, maybe don't do it on the Honda deck, sure. But if you don't care about that, then, you know, that's fine. So I thought that is a really big thing that steam have done, or valves done with the steam launcher, and it'd be interesting to see how people make use of it. I imagine a lot of it's going to be sort of doing, let's play videos and stuff like that, yeah, but you know, if you want to make a story or something spirit, or any other types of machinery we've looked at, this might be a way to do that, because I don't know if tools like Fraps get updated so much anymore. I know that OBS can do game recording, but steam is the big one, so OBS

Phil Rice 27:59
doesn't I still have a license for Fraps, but I haven't used it in years, or even tried to, so I'm not sure how well it works, or if it's updated. I use OBS, which, once you've got the settings right for it, it does a very decent job, but it is intriguing the idea of not having to fiddle with a third party tool on another screen to get that done. You know, yeah, sometimes there's issues with if the game that you're running wants to run in full screen, then obviously alt tabbing over to OBS to start and stop recording and stuff, you lose it. And it's, yeah, it's a little clunky to get there. So I'm definitely gonna gonna try that out and see. I'm curious to, well, to see, I assume you have control over where you can store your recorded files. Does it break long files up into into smaller bits? What format does it save the recordings in? Things like that? So I'll see if I can do a full deep dive on that, probably in the interests of doing like a zero to hero, zero to hero video on my channel. But I'll, I'll report here as well next month on what I find on that

Tracy Harwood 29:11
sounds good. They might even get me going there. All right. So

Damien Valentine 29:15
next thing, Dragon Age, the veil guard has been released. Now this isn't really a game you could make much machinima with, but it's a Bioware game, and BioWare and machinima have gone side by side for quite some time, because back with the original Dragon nation, the original Mass Effect, a lot of Bioware recruited a lot of machinima members to work on the cinematics of the game. And those games are very cinematic, in a way that not many games were at the time. And so this is the latest Dragon Age game. So I thought it's worth mentioning. I've played maybe two hours of it. It lives up to the bioreputation for being very cinematic is what we're used to. So again, maybe not the best tool for making machinery, but if you want to play a cinema. Magic game that has deep connections with the machine learning community. This is one to have a look at, and I'd say, even though I haven't spent a lot of time with it, I've enjoyed what I've done so far. So I look forward to getting the chance to explore more of that. Next thing at the time recording. It hasn't happened yet, but it will have by the time it goes out on the December the fifth is the PC Gaming Show. This is an event where lots of video games are going to be announced. Now, obviously I can't say what's going to be announced because I have no idea. But you never know something might be good for machinima that's been announced there. So go back and check that out. On a similar note, on the day this goes out is the Game Awards. You can check out that stream at Game awards.com I believe it'll be on YouTube and Twitch, and you know, all the others. Again, lots of, usually lots of game announcements included in between the actual awards going out for various video games. But again, I can't say what's gonna be announced because I have no idea about that either. But you never know something might be good for machinima, so it's worth keeping an eye out on that. And the last thing I saw was half life is get this half life 2/20 anniversary, and Ricky mentions it in his episode as well. But the what I caught my eye was the RTX mod that's in development. I don't know if it's been released yet, but it's using the the RTX remix tool, which is part of Nvidia Omniverse. And this team of Half Life two modders are going through the game and reworking it to have full RTX ray tracing. And this video is a sort of documentary talking about what the work they're doing, and they show off what they've done as well. So some before and after shots, it looks like they're staying true to the spirit of the game. So you go into a room, everything the room's going to look like it did. The furniture is in the same place, the blood splatters are in the same place and whatever. But they're updating the models so that they're more detailed, and they've got the ray Tracy as well, which makes the lighting look so much better. And there's, you know, modern visual effects like fog and all of that that's in there as well. So I thought I'd mentioned that as well, because that's machine adjacent, shall we say, there's a video Omniverse. I haven't I'm not too familiar with the half life games, but it looks exciting what they're doing there

Phil Rice 32:28
as, I mean, it's one of the all time great video game story worlds. I think for my money, it's File this under the same category as what we were talking about last on another episode about, can I envision this story being taken to the big screen? I think it was for dominski film when we were talking about, yes, that's right. And half life two has always, I think I'm not alone, and feeling like that is the case for that. And it's, it's, it's a bit of a head scratcher. Why they've never pursued it. I know there's been talks and they flirted with the idea, but just never have quite pulled the trigger. But it's an extraordinary story, kind of a war of the world's flavor to it. And you know, since the Alyx emphasis in the recent title, you know opportunity for a strong female lead there. So there's, there's lots of possibilities. And yeah, for whatever reason, they haven't done that. But it is this trend is interesting. This, this the half life two RTX thing like Quake two, about a year ago, I think, is, is id Software released an RTX version of Quake two. And same thing, it's basically a remaster of the game to use these higher end graphics and lighting conditions and things like that. And of course, you know, Mass Effect very famously did the whatever name they gave. It a special name, the read, yeah, Grand Theft Auto did that with some of their earlier titles, maybe with not quite as much success, but I think now they've didn't. They just recently, Damien re release the original Red Dead Redemption with the there's some kind of a mod that was really popular that turns it into a zombie apocalypse type world, in the world of Red Dead Redemption. And they re released that, and it supposedly is, is visually upgraded and remastered. So, yeah, that's an interesting trend. I don't, I don't remember, I don't remember that being a thing prior to the last few years. Like, usually, if a, if a game wanted to, you know, you look at a, they would just release a new game, right, and it would have all new content. So this idea of taking a classic game and or or just a slightly older game, and bringing it forward into to newer graphics, and of course, in many cases, that means. Uh, another purchase opportunity, right? So there's no, no real mystery as to why they're doing it, but it is interesting that they're devoting resources to that, and less. You would have to think devoting a little bit less resources to new titles, to new IPs, to new story worlds. I wonder why that is

Tracy Harwood 35:21
keeping the audience, I think,

Damien Valentine 35:23
right in games like half life two or Mass Effects, where they're not new games anymore, but they've got a long, lasting appeal, it makes sense. There are some game series on I'm thinking of last device in particular, where they've remastered it three times, maybe four. I can't remember

Phil Rice 35:41
now, that game's not that old, is

Damien Valentine 35:43
it? Yeah, it's about 10 years at most, eight to 10 years old, yeah. And the sequel, which came out in 2020, that's been remastered, and I think they'll probably do it again. And I thought, why

Phil Rice 35:54
one man's remaster is another man's unfinished game? It sounds like you shop. But you know, I mean to, in fairness to the to the developers, that has always been a challenge that that developers have have had to contend with, is in the middle of making your game, there's, a major shift in technology, and so you're faced with this decision of, oh God, we can't, we can't just switch over. We'd have to start over again. So do we do that, or do we release it as is? And that's always been something that I think that's largely what's responsible for whatever the third the Duke Nukem game, right? The one that is a little bit more recent, that it became its own meme, how long that game took to come out, right? And I think that's part of what it was, is that the technology just kept improving while they're in the middle of it, it's like, well, we can't release something that looks like this. Now we gotta. So that's always been a challenge, and maybe this is a new approach to that is just release the game and then we'll just remaster it later, you know, because it probably does take less resources to just update textures and models and things, but the underlying gameplay is essentially unchanged. So I guess it maybe is a little bit more efficient, and they can still charge, they still charge the same amount as a brand new game when they release these remasters. So maybe the economics of it just works, well, I don't know, but I think it's one

Damien Valentine 37:28
of the problems that Star Citizen has is they is a decade ago, they had the crowdfunding campaign, and it's very successful. And the things they set out to do, they let feature creep come in, and they've changed engine about four times. Yeah, and and the recent Citizen Con, they actually said, admitted that in the crowdfunding campaign on the stretch goal, so they'd have 100 Star Citizen, star systems to explore at launch. And so they're because they've changed the game so much, originally, you just land and you have a room, and then you go to the door, and it sort of teleport you to where you want to go. You just press it and say, I want to go to the shopping district, and it'll take you there. But because now each planet is now simulated in full scale, they can't do 100 star systems, so they've reduced it down to five. But he had to explain, that's why, because they're doing so much more now than they could have done back then, right? But there was a point where I was thinking, you know, maybe you should have stuck to the original plan, and you'd have a finished game, and then you could flesh out the planets as the technology improved later on. But, you know,

Phil Rice 38:38
I think, well, and look at we've discussed on this show. I don't remember when it was a few episodes ago, the steam. I don't want to call it a game. It's not a game, but space engine is a Steam Universe simulator. Is how the it's an indie developer that made it, and it's fascinating. The approach that he took is so he obviously our solar system is there in very high detail, for all of our planets and Pluto and all of that, and all the moons, and then there's certain key star system. Most of the you know, the ones we know a lot about, are in there, literally, like where they would be. But then he used procedural generation to fill in the rest which procedure generation is behind. Let's say No Man's Sky. I think pretty much most of the game is flesh out that way. And the result is this universe that, if it's not infinite, it's, it's darn near it, you know, it's universe sized. So, and this is indie developer has got a game space engine that you can go anywhere in the known universe. Now, it may not be what's really there, but the only reason that you would know that is no way of knowing that. Right? What are you going to compare it to? So that. To me, that's really clever. And it seems like that games that are trying to do, you know, we talk about map size, with regard to red, Dead Redemption, two and things like that. But when you're talking about universe scale, it's like, it's like whole orders of magnitude more. Games like Star Citizen and

Damien Valentine 40:21
me dangerous, elite and dangerous.

Phil Rice 40:23
And what's, what's the latest uh, Bethesda? One star field. Star field. Yeah, you'd think that that developers like that would catch on to that approach that so far has mainly been pioneered by indie developers. Interestingly, Minecraft, when Minecraft was conceived as a procedurally generated world, that was by that was when it was an indie, vintage story, same way, which is basically a, it's, it's kind of a jazz riff on Minecraft, essentially. It started as minecraft mod, No Man's Sky, yeah, that's, that's an, that's a smaller indie developer. He's an, he's an interesting character, by the way, the the main, the lead behind that, he's, he's, if you don't follow him on on Twitter, slash x. He's an interesting person, very he's an artist, for sure.

Damien Valentine 41:17
I do like the way he teases an announcement with a single emoji, sort of related, and then hundreds of people trying to guess what that means. Yeah,

Phil Rice 41:25
he's really interesting. And then, yeah, this space engine. So it's kind of surprising that more because it's not AI, it's procedural generation, it's different, it's an algorithm. So

Damien Valentine 41:41
I certainly dangerous, because I had it on my mind that I was going to jump in with something that that is a indeed procedural. Mostly, it is okay rated so it simulates whole galaxy. I think I've said this before, and obviously they put our solar system in, and the ones like space engine, the ones we know a lot about, they've put in, and then everything they know about astrophysics, and all the science behind everything, they've put that into this system that will then procedure generate the rest of the galaxy, right? And there was this instance where, think it was about four years ago, Bucha, two years ago. Anyway, a real star was discovered. You told me about this, yeah. And it was a, there was a when they looked at that, lead generous developers looked at that. There's their procedural system had analyzed the gravity waves of the way that other stars in the area were known. Stars were interacting. And they thought it must be something in here. So their procedural thing had put a star in, I think it's only half a light year off where the real one was.

Phil Rice 42:40
Oh, wow. I remember you telling me about that. It's fascinating. Yeah. So

Damien Valentine 42:43
they corrected it, they moved it to where it should have been. And then, yeah,

Phil Rice 42:48
that's what he's done with space engine as well, is that he can actually, as we learn more and he gathers more data, he can go in and tweak it, yeah, to and I think with with space engine, there's a little bit less pressure there, because there's no gameplay hinging on anything, right? It's not like a important destination or something, so he can just tweak it. But with a game, it might be a little bit different if it's they do visit, right? So

Damien Valentine 43:15
they update things as things are discovered, or if new information about a real place is discovered, they'll update that in the next game patch. Like they won't do it the next day or anything, because it takes them right to develop it, but they will put it in. I think it's a nebula was discovered, and they they changed the shape of it to match the real like when that new NASA telescope, the runs really good came in. I think they took some nebula photos, and they adjusted the nebula in game to match it and stuff like that.

Phil Rice 43:41
Oh, wow. That's fascinating. Takes a lot of foresight to to have built it with that capability to it's the James Webb to update it in that way. Yeah, yeah, knowing that that data is going to be, you know, continuing to flow in faster than ever in the coming decades. That's very, very, very smart of whoever thought of of David Braven is being able to blend the procedural and the fixed. Yeah, very smart stuff. But

Damien Valentine 44:10
David, the guy that runs the company, and is the creator of the elite games, he's really into astronomy, so I think he deliberately said, let's make it so we can keep updated. Because, you know, really interested in that.

Tracy Harwood 44:22
It's a passion project, then lovely.

Phil Rice 44:24
I'll close with one bit of news that is just kind of funny and interesting. It's, it's a month old now that by the time this episode comes out. But apparently Elon Musk is the number one Diablo four player in the world. Real. Yeah, he

Damien Valentine 44:41
just say that was actually the genuine. It's

Phil Rice 44:44
documented. I, from what I understand, it's, it's, it's official now has something to do with a particular achievement that he did within the game that is, like, notoriously difficult or something. So I, you know, I think that's how the ranking is. Is just. Current. But it's not being disputed. It's, it's being it's being kind of poked fun at of you know, how the heck does he have time to do that? But yeah, anyway, well, yeah, that's all our news. For

Tracy Harwood 45:12
listen, if you have got ADHD, that's what you can do. Yeah,

Phil Rice 45:17
yeah. That's probably the secret there. For sure, it's

Tracy Harwood 45:19
a skill. It's definitely a skill to have that Yes. Anyway, all

Phil Rice 45:23
right. Well, that's that's our News episode for this month. If we miss anything important, or if you have any comments on on any of this new stuff, be sure to drop us a comment wherever you see this podcast posted, or drop us an email at talk, at completely machinima.com on behalf of myself, Phil rice and my co hosts, Tracy Harwood and Damian Valentine and Ricky who will be back with us shortly. Have a great rest of your month and a great day bye bye.