Hey. PC gamers. In case you've forgotten, you need to know that one of the most exciting PC games in development at the moment isn't coming from Valve. Or from id, or from Relic, or from Creative Assembly. It's coming from Eskil Steenberg. He's at work, single-handedly, on the MMO Love, which although difficult to describe, basically amounts to a co-operative MMO, built atop procedurally-generated worlds, that plays out like a summer cocktail made from Populous, Spore, shooters and everything in between. At the link below you'll find the game's debut trailer, and while you're watching it, remember: everything you see is the work of one man.

Love: Debut Trailer [Rock, Paper, Shotgun]

I just got out of a brief interview with Diablo III lead designer Jay Wilson, where we discussed a few things about the role of gender in video games and the new rune system in Diablo III, but the whole time I was in there I couldn't take my eyes off of his t-shirt. I've seen it around the convention, but this was my first chance to see it up close. Behold, the new logo for Diablo III. I really dig the ponies.

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Love is an MMO under development that makes use of procedural algorithms - that is, code that generates graphics, levels and characters based on a set of parameters. It places a heavy burden on the programmer, but it means a group (or single) coder can get away with not having artists, designers and level builders. Which is a good thing, as there's just one guy behind Love. His name is Eskil Steenberg.

A basic example is the dungeon-building code in the first Game A Week, Wizkill. Using hard-coded rules, the game produces unique, random levels that resemble something a human could make, given the time.

So what makes Love particularly special, apart from its breath-taking visuals and natural-looking environments? From the Wired story:

Players can rearrange trees and boulders, reconfigure buildings, or hollow out new caves in hillsides. The gorgeous vistas are also subject to natural phenomena like erosion, thanks to Steenberg's tectonics system.

There's another MMO in development - Infinity: The Quest for Earth - that uses procedural algorithms to generate content, and was originally a one-man show. The difference is Infinity uses its algorithms to pre-generate its universe, rather than to constantly create and alter unique environments.

Indie Game Developers Enlist Algorithms to Do the World-Building for Them [Wired]

What is love? Is it an emotion? A chemical reaction? According to developer Eskil Steenburg, Love is a first person not so massively multi player online procedural adventure game, which is a real mouthful. At it's heart it is an online roleplaying game with low system requirements, randomly generated monsters, and a graphical style purposefully meant to look like concept art. Dig deeper and you'll find an entire world at your fingertips. The folks at PC Gamer recently had a chance to demo the game and were blown away.

The technology behind Love means that the game is editable like nothing we've seen before. Eskil points his mouse at a wall and clicks - then stretches the terrain back and forth, terraforming at will. Then he fires a gun at the side of a wall and it's blown away - digging a cave into the side of a cliff. He then trots through this tunnel, dropping into pastures on the far side.

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From the Best of Craigslist in Raleigh, N.C., here's an ode to true love that, to non-gamers sounds about like Survivor's "The Search is Over." But this should melt the heart of any girl who has taken controller in hand and crusaded against unrelenting hordes of enemies, wondering if there ever was a boy out there who considered her just as worthy of the fight.

"Oh GameStop Girl, how you make my heart meter skip a beat. If you were being held captive in a mountain fortress by a ruthless mutant mafia gangboss and I had to fight my way through 16 levels of fire-breathing undead ninjas with swords the size of small ponies, I would find a way, even if, after every level, a small man continued to taunt me by saying that you were in another castle. EVEN IF."

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The clip is a little old, but also largely unseen, so up it goes. This is some early, early footage (complete with introductory commentary) of Love, Eskil Steenberg's one-man MMO project that we've spoken gushed over previously. Yes, the vid's quality is awful, but even still, once you get to the bits where the sun's out and you can see the whole world wavering like some gorgeous virtual landscape painting, you'll be glad you watched it.
[via Massively]

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