Sunday, December 29, 2019

Hytale as a Disruptive Technology?

So I firetrucked up some group work where we were instructed to talk about a "disruptive technology": a technology that "replaces" another (rough, lazy description). For example, transport network vehicle services (TNVSs) like Uber replace public vehicles like taxis.
Our chosen topic was facial recognition technology...which I had no idea how it is disruptive (but later found out it disrupted fingerprint recognition), let alone the definition of "disruptive technology" itself. I only wrote two lazy paragraphs with very bare-bones descriptions.
Eventually, the group leader ranted about us having lazy answers...especially me because of my excuse of tons of other school work and family matters, so she angrily did 95% of the work for us. I admit, I deserved it, but fudge it, I don't give a firetruck. I HATE school work. I don't know whether or not to say thanks and apologize though, in case the group leader may still hold a burning grudge or is a workaholic.
I did eventually revise my work based on hers, but she has commented so far on three groupmates' work (not including mine) while saying she liked two students’ parts the best. Another groupmate thinks my contribution is still "konti lang" (little only).

After reading some of the suggestions provided for us by the group leader, I had a sudden thought, "Wait, Hytale might be a disruptive technology! I might consider writing about this in my blog without the firetrucking restrictions of school work!"

Let me explain.
In the Hytale trailer, various development tools were briefly showcased, including the Hytale Model Maker (which also had its own blog post), a filmmaking tool, the "Paint the World" tools (which was briefly talked about in "Custom Content in Hytale"), and live scripting.

Right off the bat, the Hytale Model Maker (HMM) is a disruptive technology replacing CraftStudio, a block-based 3D modeling and game creation software created by Élisée Maurer, the same person who created HMM. Élisée said this about CraftStudio when it was used during early Hytale development: "[The Hytale team was] limited by what [CraftStudio] could do."
I'm not sure what the other major functional differences are between CraftStudio and HMM (besides CraftStudio's game-making features), but HMM allows a shape to be either a "box" (3D block) or "quad" (2D quadrilateral), while in CraftStudio, giving 0 width to a shape to make it look like a "quad" makes it seem glitchy and translucent.

I think of Hytale's filmmaker as similar to Team Fortress 2's Source Filmmaker (used for the official "Meet the Team" videos and Shippidge's "Starter Squad" series) or Grand Theft Auto V's Director Mode (which was used to storyboard the live-action GTA VR).
The cool thing about the Hytale filmmaker is that the user can fully manipulate character animations to get them to act exactly as desired, from facial expressions to joint and muscle movements, allowing for dramatic and lively scenes. If unarmed martial arts moves don't exist in vanilla Hytale, the user can make their own, and I love to see a kung fu or wrestling-themed animation in Hytale.
But back to disruptive technology. The Hytale filmmaker would disrupt the need for a separate 3D animation software and custom-made human models for Hytale-related films. Minecraft animations, on the other hand, required modified human and mob models to properly create lip-syncing and curved limbs.
Oh man, imagine if professors told their students to make a storyboard for a project using Hytale's filmmaker then acted on that animated storyboard in real life.

"Paint the World" would disrupt the need for mods, complicated commands, and third-party software that manipulate worlds on a large scale.
Examples of these "disrupted" technologies in Minecraft are MrCrayfish's Construction Mod, the pocket house command, and MCEdit, a Minecraft world editor written in the Python programming language.
The Construction Mod and MCEdit are heavily outdated while structure-spawning commands are a pain in the butt to learn and type from scratch because they're SO long.
I don't really understand the WorldEdit mod for Minecraft servers.
"Paint the World" does more than just copy-paste structures, as far as I know. As Otium demonstrated, it can change all blocks of a specific type to a different one (or just a different texture?) or replace a wide area of blocks with a different one like using an a brush in Photoshop or an AoE attack. No need to individually break or place blocks; otherwise, our fingers would get sore. I'd save the jitter-clicking for battle, not architecture (except in "Survival mode"). In other words...even Minecraft structure blocks are disrupted!

Live scripting would disrupt integrated development environments (IDEs) because any changes made into Hytale's code would take effect (almost) immediately for all (or specific) players without quitting the game. With an IDE, a program has to be closed before it can be re-run and have its changes shown to the user. ThirtyVirus has an example of this related to Minecraft servers in his video about quality of life features in Hytale.

Besides the artsy stuff...you know how people keep saying Hytale will kill Minecraft?
In other words...could Hytale as a whole be a disruptive technology replacing Minecraft thanks to Hytale's massive amount of content and the fact that it builds on the traits that made Minecraft and several other video games the best-sellers they are?

But we're not done yet. Oh, no, sirree.
Hytale has its own server listing. No need to waste time in a third-party server list.
Hytale has in-game avatar customization. No need to make your own skins or download someone else's to dress like a boss (though custom clothes can be created with Hytale Model Maker). Heck, you can even play as another non-humanoid mob without a mod!
Hytale auto-downloads mods in servers, so no need to install mods by yourself...especially if it's a huge modpack. Finding every individual mod in a modpack of 30+ is a huge pain in the butt considering how Minecraft mod authors do not allow distribution of their mods through modpacks--only through the authors' ad-sponsored links.
And no need to ask your friend on Facebook or Discord what server they're playing in (or randomly enter servers) because Hytale lets you know where he/she is playing right in the server browser. Save the Discord chat for the tactics and the memes, not the technical set-ups.

Lastly...could Hytale mods completely disrupt every other video game? Think about it: if Hytale's modding capabilities are as near-infinite as Hypixel Studios says, we could have a bajillion triple-A quality RPGs, open-world games, first-person shooters, platformers, beat-em-ups, puzzles, real-time strategy games, and maybe even VR games!

What's next? Playing Hytale in a car? I mean, I wouldn't go that far in case I wreck my family's car, but that would be mind-blowing.
How about using Hytale to program robots and eventually real-life military tech? Okay, I might be delving too far into sci-fi territory.

Who knows? Maybe CaptainSparklez's statement of "Hytale is not just a game, but a platform" (emphasis added) is true.
I'm holding Hypixel Studios to that standard.

Behind-the-scenes: It took me about 1 hour to write 90% of this post. School work is much less likely to motivate me to do that.

The final part of my Hytale gang wars series will be posted on January 5, 2020.

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