.theprodukkt is a German demogroup that developed an award-winning first person shooter (FPS) video game that debuted in 2004. The game was brought to a 96K video game competition known as Breakpoint, where it received national acclaim. Additionally, the game won two German developer prizes at the Deutscher Entwicklepreis in 2006 in the Innovation and Enhancement category.
It's a Matter of Perspective
So what's so special about this FPS? It only uses 96 Kilobytes (KB) of space! That might not mean a lot to the uninitiated, so let's put this into perspective. .kkrieger, as the game is called, uses 97,280 bytes of disk space. A megabyte (MB), which comprises about 1/3 of your average MP3 file, consists of 1,048,576 bytes (B). This means that a song you are listening to right now contains 32.337 times the total memory space taken up by .kkrieger.
Now let's take a modern day FPS, Unreal Tournament 2004, as an example. This game requires a DVD to hold all 5 Gigabytes (GB) of information required for installation. If .kkreiger wanted to fill up this disk, you would have to copy it 55,188 times onto the DVD to equal the space taken up by Unreal Tournament. I know what you're thinking, "This FPS must look like garbage if it takes up so little space". Not so fast. Through the world of procedural generation, three-dimensional objects can be created with rich textures and realistic shading to yield remarkable visuals.
What's Procedural Generation?
With most video games, content is stored previously and then grabbed when needed while a user is interacting with the game. Procedural generation is different in that content is not previously stored, but generated on the fly through mathematical algorithms. Essentially, simple textures and meshes are stored that take up very little space instead of fully-designed models. Desired shapes are achieved through the deformation of simple shapes such as circles and boxes. The game generates its content on the idea that a fully-developed model can be created through a simple piece of the whole object. For all of you mathematicians out there, this is a branch extending from the concept of fractal geometry.
The game itself is separated into levels that contain creatures as well as power-ups and eventually boss fights. Every time a user enters a level, the creatures and the level itself are created using the approach described above. The result is a great-looking FPS that takes up very little space. If more games utilized this method of creation, the sky would be the limit for graphics and in-game content. For more information or to download .kkrieger, click here.
Resources:
TheProdukktt http://www.theprodukkt.com/kkrieger
Wkipedia .kkrieger http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.kkrieger
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Re: Sorry Megabyte, We Don’t Need You Anymore
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