

New Nintendo DS Game -- Create Any Object You Can Think Of - noaharc
http://www.joystiq.com/2009/06/05/hands-on-scribblenauts/

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endtime
>Andrew created a teleporter in an attempt to instantly apparate to the
Starite -- instead, it took him to a medieval world where he was besieged by
shadowy assassins. He tried distracting them with candy -- really, Andrew? --
then created a fairly anachronistic nuke. The nuke didn't detonate, however,
so andrew created a laser rifle to take out the assassins. One of his lasers
grazed the aforementioned WMD, and blew up the entire level.

If the game can consistently do things like that and actually keep the
gameplay fresh, it will be amazing. But I'm worried that after spending more
than 15 minutes with it, the facade will fade away and a few underlying
patterns will start to show. I would love to be wrong, of course.

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jrp
>>Justin fed the man _pomegranates_ until he fell victim to an overstuffed
slumber. He created some _lemonade_ , which the man then poured down his
gullet -- level complete! Randy created a _coffee shop_. It appeared, the man
ordered a cup o' joe at the carry-out window, drank it -- level complete!

I'm very interested about the freshness. Speculation: did they take a load of
probable phrases from the dictionary and describe how each will function in
the level? If the objects are to interact with each other at all, the data
necessary seems to grow too quickly. So, I'd like to see how (and to what
degree) they were able to describe this much of the real world.

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endtime
My understanding is that you can create any object in the database at any
time, that the objects interact with each other according to general rules,
and that they have on the order of 10,000 objects.

But the example you gave...it sounds like all you need to do is give the guy
something to drink. It's nice that you can do that with lemonade or water or a
coffee shop, but I don't think it will be fun if it's not challenging, and
that doesn't sound challenging.

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mikeytown2
It's cool to see this hit HN; one of my good friends has been staying up late
writing code for this game. <http://chuckskoda.com/>

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rms
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RTEUbtgpIgo>

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nazgulnarsil
but you know...we need photo-realistic graphics to enjoy our games >_> I don't
understand the obsession with doing realistic things in ever more realistic
settings when it seems preferable to do insane things in impossible settings.

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sachinag
It's impossible to overstate how much this game became the talk of the press
lounge on the last day of E3. People are rooting for this game the way they
rooted for Katamari and Portal. There's a lot of love for the depth of the
database, but the gameplay has to make sure it doesn't feel like a gimmick by
level 220 (or 270 - I've seen conflicting reports).

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thorax
When I saw Scribblenauts on E3 coverage my thought was immediately:

I want to stop everything I'm doing and make a game quite like this, but for
the iPhone or Flash and allow anyone to make things for it (like a wiktionary
of 2d "mobs" and items).

The video I liked most was:
<http://revision3.com/coop/showfloor/#seek=636:839>

Of course, I've got too much on my plate to do that right now, so maybe
someone else will. :)

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guns
This makes me want to go play nethack.

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polkaraver
> In all of these scenes, only a few items we tried to create didn't appear.

That's not "any object you can think of", is it?

