Procedural Content Generation

STOCKHOLM, SWEDEN (March 1st, 2010) On the 25th of March, LOVE, perhaps the most ambitious video game ever made by a single person, will be released.

LOVE is a first person cooperative persistent world game where players build settlements and venture out in to a world of adventure. Set on a small planet with a wide range of geographical landscapes, including canyons, fields, forests, glaciers and deserts, LOVE players experience an ever-evolving world with erosion, tectonics, changing wind and sea levels, and new, breathtaking vistas to explore. Using advanced procedural generation technology the game evolves while you are playing it to create new content and adapt to the players actions. The dynamic environment lets players create their own architecture by raising and lowering the ground, creating tunnels in addition to placing and connecting objects in a complex infrastructure.

Five different AI Tribes will also build their own settlements that players can attack but the AI can attack back and destroy player settlements.

Full Story: LOVE Beta Ends, Real Experience Begins - Bitbag

In the game, players jump from building to building in Boston and perform stunts, weaving around the city to accumulate points, and making split-second decisions. "Aaaaa!" then throws in the spectators: As a player "falls," they can give fans a "thumbs-up," or a "less appropriate" hand signal to protesters. Miller worked on the game's voiceovers and skits, and programmed code that built its levels, while Chadwick took on developing models, textures, and concept drawings, and added aesthetic touches to the levels.

 "WPI's IMGD program provides these incredibly bright, intelligent, and creative students an education that focuses on more than just their immediate areas of study,"Lambe noted. "IMGD project work is a great example of WPI's strengths; it's an amalgam of logic, art, sound, and storytelling, which is great blend of technology and the humanities." In the past two years, WPI students have placed in the top 3 in former Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling's 38 Studios Massachusetts Game Challenge (MGC). The contest, which is on hiatus this year, asks students to submit their original videogame creations to win prizes. In 2009, two WPI student teams placed in the top three, which was opened that year to colleges and universities from across the United States and Canada. In 2008, a team of WPI first-year students placed third in the contest's inaugural year.

"The fact that so many of our students are already shining in the game industry – and they haven't even yet graduated from WPI -- is a sign of how high the quality is of the students that are being attracted to the IMGD major," said Professor Mark Claypool, director of WPI's IMGD program.

Full Story: WPI Students Garner Credits for Helping to Create New Video Game - WPI News

The contributors present various applications, technologies, trends such as participatory sensing, the Internet of Things; networked gameplay and the use of procedural content generation; to new ways of doing business, e.g. the company as a managed network; to the interplanetary internetwork.

Don Nelson is the moderator and Program Manager for the CiscoSP360 Blog. He is a member of the Service Provider marketing team at Cisco Systems, Inc. Don has more than 10 years of experience in web site development, design, information architecture, and web-based marketing. In 2008, he transitioned from webmaster to exploring and managing social media marketing for B2B.

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Full Story: Internet Predictions: From Participatory To Interplanetary Internetworking - SYS-CON Media (press release)