Scribblenauts

[DarkwingChuck]

From 5th Cell, makers of Drawn to Life and Lock's Quest



Write. Anything.
Solve. Everything.

IGN preview

[Kefka Jr.]

Re: Scribblenauts

THE ONLY LIMIT IS YOUR IMAGINATION

and also the programmers' imagination

[Alex]

Re: Scribblenauts

Looks neat, but Drawn to Life was pretty disappointing. And boring.

[Sivart the Sloth Trencher]

Re: Scribblenauts

This game lets you make beavers? I'm sold.

[Loki]

Re: Scribblenauts

Looks neat, but Drawn to Life was pretty disappointing. And boring.

Yeah but Lock's Quest is amazing and you're a terrible person for never even giving it the time of day.

There's towers and defense and somehow it's not boring and lame. Wonders!

I've got high hopes for Scribblenauts.

[simple man]

Re: Scribblenauts

Looks neat, but Drawn to Life was pretty disappointing. And boring.

The games not disapointing it was just a fun ride for a video game.It wasnt the best though. DTL is what i call a base game...something to start up a company to make many fun games..

i have yet to buy locks quest...

[DarkwingChuck]

Re: Scribblenauts

Joystiq has an interview with the Creative Director.

A couple interesting bits:

Have any items turned out to have emergent uses in-game that you didn't expect?

Oh, all the time. Last week someone gave a bazooka to an elephant, who picked it up with its trunk, and then Maxwell threw a rock at the elephant to see what would happen. Of course the elephant got upset and started shooting randomly to defend itself. It wasn't very accurate - it's an elephant using its trunk to shoot a bazooka after all. But after all those explosions Maxwell didn't survive the ordeal. Still it was pretty funny though.

Here's the obligatory question: are these five items (basically just five nouns off the top of my head): Library, tailor, nutria, ebelskiver pan, pantsuit, summonable in-game?

I thought nutria was some kind of food, but I looked it up in our list and it's there. Alternatively, it's called a coypu. I mean, honestly we have so many words in the game now, without checking our database, there's no way I'll know what's in there. But everything you said is in the game already. Though ebelskiver pan is a great try!

[DarkwingChuck]

Re: Scribblenauts

[Perversion]

Re: Scribblenauts

I've been espousing the virtues of this game for the past few months to anyone who will listen. And I've only been basing that on the one interview I read.



As I mentioned in another thread (probably Lock's Quest), this, along with Heavy Rain and flower WILL be in my top 5 of 2009. I really can see no conceivable way that this can not be brilliant.



In fact, I think along with flower, this game will be looked back upon a decade from now as a single title that really destroyed the paradigm of what gaming is and was focused squarely on what gaming is possible of being. If this turns out anywhere close to what the developers are stating, I foresee this game as being the first baby step into what gaming will eventually evolve into years and years from now.


I'm seriously psyched for this game, moreso than any other game in recent memory. Games come, games go, but this will stand the test of time.

[DarkwingChuck]

Re: Scribblenauts

Sheesh, just give the developers a handy j and get it over with.

[marcus]

Re: Scribblenauts

I'm glad they went through the pain of putting hundreds of words complete with in-game definitions in the game. I wonder what happens if I write kwijibo or pull a loki and write "jackinape."

I wish more developers focused on these emergent games. Watching funny things happen in Dwarf Fortress, Noby Noby Boy, and Spelunky is the best.

[Perversion]

Re: Scribblenauts

When I saw marcus posted, I thought for sure I was in store for some diatribe about unrealistic and lofty expectations on my part. Oh, wait...I'm waiting for Mora for that.



And as I alluded to above, yes, I think emergent gameplay will be the wave of the future. It pairs very nicely with user generated content.



And hundreds of words? I think you're grossly underestimating how many words are actually gonna be in this thing.


After I read the interview, I was literally dumbstruck by how much work must have gone into this. Although, apparently, there's a HUGE database of sorts that the developers are drawing from (that the programmers created, of course), into which they can plug any noun that exists in physical form, specify a few characteristics or variables (more than likely more than few, actually), and the program spits out realistic (as far as the game allows) physics, behaviours, etc. In this manner, every single item does not have to be programmed from scratch. If it did, we'd be waiting on this three years from now.

[marcus]

Re: Scribblenauts

When I saw marcus posted, I thought for sure I was in store for some diatribe about unrealistic and lofty expectations on my part. Oh, wait...I'm waiting for Mora for that.



And as I alluded to above, yes, I think emergent gameplay will be the wave of the future. It pairs very nicely with user generated content.



And hundreds of words? I think you're grossly underestimating how many words are actually gonna be in this thing.


After I read the interview, I was literally dumbstruck by how much work must have gone into this. Although, apparently, there's a HUGE database of sorts that the developers are drawing from (that the programmers created, of course), into which they can plug any noun that exists in physical form, specify a few characteristics or variables (more than likely more than few, actually), and the program spits out realistic (as far as the game allows) physics, behaviours, etc. In this manner, every single item does not have to be programmed from scratch. If it did, we'd be waiting on this three years from now.

i have a hard time believing this. you're trying to tell me that they've created an algorithm that takes words in the english language and creates an in game object that accurately represents said object?

like, the game magically knows what a beaver looks like and how it acts?

[Perversion]

Re: Scribblenauts

Apparently, marcus, you aren't interested enough in the game to even bother clicking the link to the interview Chuck (explodewhatever) posted. Because the whole process is explained in the interview, and I have no reason to believe he's lying or exaggerating.



And, no. There's no algorithm that knows what a beaver looks like. The artists still did need to make that graphic. However, apparently, the algorithm or whatever it is takes into account different variables concerning any item (living, predator, prey, weight, etc) to determine how it would behave in the game world under different circumstances.



I'll grant you, I read this a while ago now, and did not read it again when this topic got bumped, so maybe my facts are not 100% accurate, but that's pretty close to what I remember reading. Which is why this game immediately shot to one of my most anticipated games of 2009. Seriously, just the sheer imagination to create a working system like this, to me, is nothing short of genius.




EDIT: I'll recant PART of what I just stated. What I remember reading was not linked to in the above post. I read it somewhere else. Give me a bit and I'll see if I can find the interview again.


EDIT 2: That was quick. Yeah, that interview from Joystiq does not do this game justice. This interview, though, will blow your mind. It IS four pages long, but if you can manage to get through the whole thing, you'll understand exactly why I'm "giving the devs a handy j."



Again, first time I read that interview, I was completely dumbfounded...I couldn't even begin to fathom how something like this is even possible, ESPECIALLY considering the limitations of the DS. Which again feeds into why I think this game will be a defining moment in game history (most likely in retrospect), because if something like this is possible on the DS, just imagine what would be possible on a system like the PS3 or its successor.

[marcus]

Re: Scribblenauts

And, no. There's no algorithm that knows what a beaver looks like. The artists still did need to make that graphic.

yeah, this is kind of what i'm talking about. obviously they have a team of programmers flipping through a dictionary or whatever and creating all the graphics that could *possibly* be used in the game. thinking about it on a superficial level, whatever program they're using doesn't sound too complicated. for example, you have an object that acts as an arm, an object that acts as a leg, an object that can be climbed, an object that can be fly, and they're all related to each other and it's all pieced together based on the object in question. kind of like how spore works.

and yeah, the guy doesn't talk about the process at all.