Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Spaceship Generator

github.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 132 posts

Re: Spaceship Generator

#41

Post by hacker_9 »

duncanawoods wrote: post #25

I don't really like most procedural generation. It has no meaning and the results are not intellectually stimulating. At best you can't spot the pattern and parameters but you usually can after a few examples. An idea I am more interested in is that you generate requirements and use an optimiser to solve the actual design. This way, there is a hidden "why". With some study, a human might be able to discern why x is s…

Do you have any practical examples of what you mean? It seems obvious, but getting a computer to understand requirements, and also solve for them and build a realistic 3d model? Seems like an impossible task for current technology.

Re: Spaceship Generator

#43

Post by geofft »

y4mi wrote: post #30
hetfeld wrote: post #22

There is an error in script. seed = 'tweer' obj = generate_spaceship(seed) Python can't redefine functions as variables. Seed is a function.

i'm not the author but i frequently code in python and am unable to understand what you're saying from that snipped of code. 1. you can overwrite everything in python 2. seed has been set to a string 3. obj uses the value of previously set 'seed' variable, which should be a string at that point. its not a good idea, like overwriting the id variable, but it should work... and just in case somebody wonders: its still p…

Yes, that's correct.

    >>> from random import seed
    >>> seed(10)
    >>> seed
    >
    >>> seed = 50
    >>> seed
    50
    >>> from random import seed
    >>> seed
    >
(You can't get it as __builtins__.seed because it's not a builtin, but you can re-import it from random to get it back.)

Re: Spaceship Generator

#44

Post by throwaway13337 »

duncanawoods wrote: post #25

I don't really like most procedural generation. It has no meaning and the results are not intellectually stimulating. At best you can't spot the pattern and parameters but you usually can after a few examples. An idea I am more interested in is that you generate requirements and use an optimiser to solve the actual design. This way, there is a hidden "why". With some study, a human might be able to discern why x is s…

Your idea is interesting so I tried to think of things that employed it in the past.

Basically, you're arguing for stronger creation tools for a narrow domain.

The spore creature creator seems to be an example. It was awesome for the variety and I wish that portion of the game could have been taken up more my the industry as a content creation tool for devs.

At the same time, models in spore look pretty same-y - as is the problem with all procedural content.

Still, same-iness is not always a bad thing.

Re: Spaceship Generator

#45

Post by MaulingMonkey »

Retr0spectrum wrote: post #21
moron4hire wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are severely underestimating the effort good procedural content takes.

And perhaps you are severley underestimating the effort large-scale world assets take to create. I agree that doing procedural generation properly takes a lot of work, but there's a reason that AAA open-world games like GTAV cost hunderends of millions of dollars to develop.

There's a reason that AAA open-world games like GTAV are using rather limited procedural generation, too.

The problem is that to create N pieces of satisfyingly unique procedurally generated content, you need M pieces of content that were carefully designed within additional restrictions to make them combineable in various fashions - making them harder to create. Then you add code to glue that all together. If you think M=0, that just means you've hardcoded your content in code.

When N >> M - e.g. you're generating thousands of similar-yet-distinct roguelike levels, trees, etc. - procedural generation can pay off.

But even for large-scale world assets, it's frequently the case that N < M. Making the content non-procedurally is going to be cheaper - fewer limitations to worry about, and fewer pieces of content to actually generate. A few clever tricks - rotating, retexturing, tweaking a base model, etc. - let you make a lot of non-procedural content without creating each piece from scatch, and lets you stretch that content to appear like you have more variations than you actually do.

Re: Spaceship Generator

#46

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

maxander wrote: post #6

I saw the headline and initially assumed it would be some droll Game of Life invention. Then I thought, no, maybe its some automatic sci-fi art generation script. And I was rewarded! Procedural generation like this is quite possibly key to the future of indie games- if you don't have the team to design large sets of art assets, its important to be able to put something pretty out there using your own wit. (A good exa…

That would be No Man's Sky®.

Re: Spaceship Generator

#47

Post by Koshkin »

duncanawoods wrote: post #25

I don't really like most procedural generation. It has no meaning and the results are not intellectually stimulating. At best you can't spot the pattern and parameters but you usually can after a few examples. An idea I am more interested in is that you generate requirements and use an optimiser to solve the actual design. This way, there is a hidden "why". With some study, a human might be able to discern why x is s…

Yes, this is the eternal 'intelligent design' vs. 'natural process' question, in a new light. I agree that artifacts look more convincing if they are designed (by a human), but there is still no reason to object to using a computer to help generate a multitude of variants of something based on the original design (constraints), from which one can choose what they like. At the same time, there is nothing wrong with (much) less involvement on the part of a human in generating natural objects - landscapes, trees, planets, or even animals, as nobody has designed (originally) these things in the real world.

Re: Spaceship Generator

#49

Post by quietplatypus »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #32
dave2000 wrote: post #16

> Start with a box. And end with some boxes stuck together.

This is a pretty standard 3D modelling strategy, unsurprisingly, called "box modelling". You can create an incredible amount of things with box modelling. Including, obviously, a lot of spaceships. I built several crud spaceship designs with box modelling back in school. The main key advantage, is all of your 'parts' are built off of a single object in the editor, and aligned perfectly. The other thing though, you ca…

Yeah back when I made 3D models of star trek spaceships (trekkie in your name significant?) that was one of the go-to methods for making the shuttles, smaller craft, borg (obviously), but stuff like Voyager and the Enterprise-E you would often resort to more advanced lofting/spline patch based techniques and work off of a sketch.

Re: Spaceship Generator

#50

Post by hyperpallium »

moron4hire wrote: post #23
sowbug wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But it does scale better, doesn't it? Seems that would be the case if more tools and libraries like this one were open-sourced.

Not really. The problem with procedurally generated content is making interesting iterations. Sure, you can have a million space ships just as easy as one, but will anyone care about them? It is a different sort of work, but of equal effort, to "just" modeling the content.

Even most landscapes on Earth (reality is "procedurally generated" by the laws of physics) are pretty boring. Spectacular documentaries must travel far to reach the interesting ones.

Interesting procedural generation may require strong AI, because it must model how it is interpreted by us.

Post reply on HN