The XML-ization of Videogames, Part II: A Chat With Spore Senior Development Director Eric Todd

re: The XML-ization of Videogames, Part II: A Chat With Spore Senior Development Director Eric Todd

supergg2k — Tue, 27 May 2008 15:51:45 GMT

These last two articles make me wonder why we don't see more of this in games today. I was really disappointed that All Pro Football used formulas for custom uniforms and teams instead of creating a downloadable / shareable profile. I am fairly certain that the raw data would take a very small amount of hard drive space the hooks to "bake" the data with the creator tools within a title shouldn't be a huge stretch.

re: The XML-ization of Videogames, Part II: A Chat With Spore Senior Development Director Eric Todd

N'Gai Croal — Tue, 27 May 2008 16:22:38 GMT

@supergg2k: That's a very good point. At one time, EA Sports was working on this thing they called EA Sports DNA, where you could create a player once in, say, Madden, and then use that player model across all EA Sports titles. It was Mii before the Mii. I even think there may have been plans for some RPG-type levelling up of your player character. I remember thinking at the time that it was one of EA Sports' coolest initiatives to date. Thanks for raising this point--I'm going to shoot EA an email about it and see if I can get someone to talk about why it never really came to fruition.

re: The XML-ization of Videogames, Part II: A Chat With Spore Senior Development Director Eric Todd

slayoyayo — Tue, 27 May 2008 18:23:31 GMT

i just found my new favorite journalist. amazing thought provocation. keep it up, n'gai!

re: The XML-ization of Videogames, Part II: A Chat With Spore Senior Development Director Eric Todd

N'Gai Croal — Tue, 27 May 2008 21:11:31 GMT

@slayoyayo: Thank you kindly.

re: The XML-ization of Videogames, Part II: A Chat With Spore Senior Development Director Eric Todd

HeyMarkD — Wed, 28 May 2008 15:49:40 GMT

Hola N'Gai,

I remember when you brought this up on the 1UP Yours Podcast a while back. I thought it was an interesting, thought provoking idea then and still think so now. This actually kind of reminds me of id's (successful) crusade with the "id Tech 5" making it possible to render the same assets on different platforms without the dev having to rewrite code. I wonder who will be the first to successfully pull something like this off across all platforms including handhelds because I think this just makes so much sense. If Echochrome wasnt a Sony exclusive I would say that it's a perfect candidate (especially for a the DS's touchscreen). LBP seems like such a shoe in though for a PSP mother-daughter relationship with the PS3.

Keep up the great work, man.

Cheers,

-Mark

re: The XML-ization of Videogames, Part II: A Chat With Spore Senior Development Director Eric Todd

nevelator — Thu, 29 May 2008 14:36:49 GMT

So it all boils down to space and processing contrstaints on the portable devices. If there was a way of using an 'asset hierarchy' where the more sophisticated machines would have a full set of assets for a given hierarchy and the mobile devices have a cut down version. The XML descriptors may be sharable amongst different platforms easier.

At this point in time nobody is expecting a mobile/portable game to look the same as a console one.

re: The XML-ization of Videogames, Part II: A Chat With Spore Senior Development Director Eric Todd

Absolut — Thu, 29 May 2008 20:54:20 GMT

Interesting article. I'd love to see more of this cross-platform interoperability in games, yet I see 2 major problems with creating a DS/Mobile version of Spore that uses the same XML for characters as the PC versions.

1. If the mobile version isn't as capable, how do you edit a creature that was created on a more advanced environment, and still preserve it's detail? If a creature on PC was textured, but the DS only supports single colored parts, would it save the approximation after you edited, or would it try to preserve some of the original data? If I end up making a Green Spotted Lizard, and then on the DS it turns into a green lizard, if I add fangs on the DS then bring it back to the PC, will it be a green spotted lizard with fangs, or a green lizard with fangs, as I saw on my DS?

2. If Spore gets updated, via expansion packs or downloadable content (and we know Will Wright loves expansion packs), this creates a requirement that any character created with any of the new parts from the expansions will not be compatible with the mobile versions.

re: The XML-ization of Videogames, Part II: A Chat With Spore Senior Development Director Eric Todd

supergg2k — Fri, 30 May 2008 16:37:39 GMT

@Absolut - There are going to be trade offs. You may not have the same features on a handheld that you would on a PC. For example, you could edit your monster's color on a handheld but not polka dots. Or a better example would be putting a custom texture/bitmap on an object on the PC but not having that look carryover to a handheld.

Features would be very difficult to make consistent across systems, XML data by design makes it easier to provide consistency and portability.