Would it be possible?

[kuddlesworth9419]

To render an entire game and every possible outcome you make in said game before you play it so when you play the game all it is doing is decoding images. A bit like a click adventure except taken to an entirely different level. It would also take a very powerful supercomputer to render all possible outcomes.

[WoodenMarker]

Yes, it's possible. Interactive novels are an example.

[eelnico09]

By the time you finish rendering the game, Ubisoft would've released all the patches to fix AC Unity.

[Jerakl]

By the time you finish rendering the game, Ubisoft would've released all the patches to fix AC Unity.

Nah, some of them would break other things so they would have to patch those and patching those things might break other things.

 

etc

[kuddlesworth9419]

Yes, it's possible. Interactive novels are an example.

Nah more like a traditional FPS game for example but everything has already been rendered for you. You just play as normal.

[WoodenMarker]

Nah more like a traditional FPS game for example but everything has already been rendered for you. You just play as normal.

There isn't much difference between that and an interactive novel other than the number of options available. It would just take more resources.

[kuddlesworth9419]

There isn't much difference between that and an interactive novel other than the number of options available. It would just take more resources.

Yea but it would mean you wouldn't need a good PC anymore. And you could probably reach unattainable resolutions and framerates. All a dev would need is 10 something years and a super computer. 

[WoodenMarker]

Yea but it would mean you wouldn't need a good PC anymore. And you could probably reach unattainable resolutions and framerates. All a dev would need is 10 something years and a super computer. 

The amount of speed necessary to be able to sort through all of the images fast enough would be ludicrous. You'd need much more than just a good PC.

[Humbug]

The problem is for a complex 3D world (think modern AAA game) even if you pre-render every possible outcome and store it on your supercomputer; they cannot be retrieved fast enough. Even RAM disks are not that fast.You would probably need everything stored in GPU memmory. And on a GPU with 10 terrabyte VRAM.

[kuddlesworth9419]

The problem is for a complex 3D world (think modern AAA game) even if you pre-render every possible outcome and store it on your supercomputer; they cannot be retrieved fast enough. Even RAM disks are not that fast.You would probably need everything stored in GPU memmory. And on a GPU with 10 terrabyte VRAM.

I was thinking more of the future not present day.

[Humbug]

I remember playing wolfenstein 3D as a 7 or 8 year old kid.

At the time I assumed that the game dev artists had drawn every single frame in the game and stored it in the game files. I used to wonder what a painstaking process it must have been to draw millions of images to represent every possible sequence of events, LOL.

I did not understand that the game game engine actually rendered the map in real time.

[Guest]

You can usually substitute CPU usage for large amounts of disk space. Yes, this could work, but it would take up tons of space.

 

Something that works this way is a rainbow table. When cracking a password, there are two ways to brute force (that is, guessing every possible combo of letters and numbers until you get it right). You can have your computer generate all the combinations while it is trying to crack it (this takes up lots of CPU power but no disk space) or you can create a rainbow table, which is basically a huge file that lists all the possible combos, the computer then just has to "copy and paste" them into the password field. This method takes up massive amounts of disk space but little CPU power. Some rainbow tables can be as large as 10 TB in size or maybe even bigger. What you are describing is very similar, except instead of a list of passwords, it is a massive database of images. If you were to do this, it would take unrealistically massive amounts of disk space, but in theory, I suppose you could get really high frame rates. Of course, this isn't taking into account the time it would take the computer to actually locate the correct image.

 

Another thing that works kind of like this are DCPs, that is a Digital Cinema Package. These are the versions of movies theatres get. Basically, unlike normal video files, a DCP is just a massive database of JPEG2000 images that are just projected in order. A DCP for a full length film is usually around 200 GB. This should give you an idea of the amount of disk space we are talking about. 200 GB for a film that you can't freely move around in. Now think about how large a video game would be like this. Even a really short game like Half Life 2: Lost Coast would be far larger than this. Most likely hundreds of times larger than this, if not thousands.

 

If you are interested in this sort of thing, the original Myst game (which is a large point and click game) worked this way. That is also an amazing game and I recommend it highly!