[MUD-Dev] Neverwinter Nights

[rayzam]

----- Original Message -----
From: "John Buehler" <johnbue at msn.com>
To: <mud-dev at kanga.nu>
Sent: Thursday, June 07, 2001 2:03 PM
Subject: RE: [MUD-Dev] Neverwinter Nights

> rayzam writes:

>> From: "John Buehler" <johnbue at msn.com>
>> To: <mud-dev at kanga.nu>
>> Sent: Wednesday, June 06, 2001 2:35 PM
>> Subject: RE: [MUD-Dev] Neverwinter Nights

>>> And as for seeing things that you shouldn't be able to see,
>>> that's just a matter of applying some rendering code.  Figure
>>> out what the character perceptions should be delivering to the
>>> character - and thus, to the player - and render as appropriate.

>> Try what you propose. It'll feel like looking through wraparound
>> glasses that are horribly smudges/coated except for the center
>> region. You'll have to move your head around to see whats going
>> on. It's not easy, it's not fun, it's far from automatic, it's
>> not natural.

>> It's not a viable design.

> I'm not talking about modeling a foveal region that has a 10
> degree field of view and then peripheral vision out to 180
> degrees.  That would be like having a flashlight at night and
> having to wave it around in order to see anything.  I'm talking
> about having an area of high quality vision and an area that the
> character must rely on auditory clues - along with a transition
> between the two.  I have every intention of assembling a prototype
> and tuning it to be entertaining to play.

Interesting. Though I would say to use the auditory cues in a 3d
sound system, to localize sounds outside of the screen. That gives
the effect of objects making sounds outside of the visual
field. including behind the player.

The question remains with how you're going to handle the high
quality and low quality vision with transition zone, on a standard
monitor. Even a 21" monitor doesn't give enough real estate to pull
it off easily. Unless you're planning to compress 180deg field into
the monitor size? I've not had a chance to use a compressed display
like that. Has anyone, and is it easy to remap/become immersed in
that frame of reference?

Furthermore, my other point still stands. Something may be in the
periphery but has an internal representation that's much better than
what you're suggesting.

Example: I walked into this room. I'm now in front of the computer,
looking at the monitor. I can still see the tissue box that's about
85 degrees away from straight ahead. I 'see' it's colors and shape,
keeping my object recognition of it high. However, it is at the edge
of my peripheral vision [which extends to about 95 deg away], and
I'm not actively getting that information. Though I'm not actively
processing it's colors, I saccaded to it a few times, I'm covertly
attending it, and thus, in my visual representation, it's still got
those colors. It sounds like you're suggesting that would be grayed
out. I never thought you meant to only have 10 degrees of the visual
field in high quality and the other 180 degrees in gray. Just that
in our 'low quality' visual area, we persist the features we've
gained by saccading around the visual field.

What I see happening is this: I'm playing the game, a sound comes
out of the left side of the screen, and there's this gray object
moving there.  Sounds become attached to [to the point of
mislocalization] a nearby salient object. So I 'hear' the sound as
coming from the gray object. Naturally, my eyes saccade to the
object. But it's a low quality gray object. I then have to move the
character's POV till the low quality gray object is in the high
quality area.

To emulate this natural process, you'd have to have the avatar's
eyes saccade to that location. That is, have the POV rapidly change
to that location for a few hundred milliseconds and then back to
where the player actually had the view.

I don't want to just criticize, so I'll make some alternate
suggestions:

  1) multiple monitor support! :) Actually, this was one of the few
  new MS features that I thought would be good for games. Primary
  monitor straight ahead.. pull out your old 14/15" monitors and
  place one on each side. Games could support this. High on the cool
  factor. High on the tiny niche factor.  Probably not worth the
  development time and money.

  2) Consider the area outside of the monitor, your low quality
  area. Have sounds localize outside of the screen [if the objects
  moving on the screen have associated sounds, then even ones to the
  sides of the monitor, let alone in 3d space around it] will be
  mapped to 'outside' locations.

In general, we turn our heads and eyes to look at anything over 20
degrees from the direction of gaze. People can get this 40 degree
total range [20 degree to each side] to be the size of the monitor,
based on distance from it. In fact, a person general won't sit so
close that they have to turn their head to look around the
screen. Thus, it becomes more natural to tie together a saccade [eye
movement], with a bigger motor movement, i.e. the head turning.

Then the player only needs to remap the combined eye with head
movement to an eye with 'mouse' movement. It becomes a natural
combination.

rayzam

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