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

Medieval Fantasy City Generator

watabou.itch.io

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 119 posts

Re: Medieval Fantasy City Generator

#41

Post by thom »

I love this sort of thing, but the far more interesting challenge to procedural games is engaging the player emotionally and intellectually, and giving them a sense of long term narrative progression. I'm mainly thinking of RPGs here, but it's a problem that surfaces up to this day in things like No Man's Sky. Even in non-procedural games that nevertheless allow you to continue playing in a world after all the storylines are concluded (e.g. GTA, Assassin's Creed), you still have this sense of emptiness when you realise these houses don't really have anyone in them, and there's just a city full of mostly silent people walking aimlessly around. Accumulating money or equipment isn't interesting anymore because there's nobody left to fight.

Dwarf Fortress puts in a lot of work to keep worlds and interactions rich. Even games like Football Manager are fundamentally role play, and the constantly evolving rivalries and personnel involved keep things fresh well into the game. Honestly think small but rich villages would be more interesting than massive but realistic looking cities, but this is still impressive stuff.

Re: Medieval Fantasy City Generator

#42

Post by sonnyblarney »

gonzo41 wrote: post #28
lbriner wrote: post #25

Serious application for these tools: crowded countries like the UK often talk about building new towns rather than annoying everyone is existing towns by more and more building work. Unfortunately, new towns tend to be rather formulaic and dull. With tools like these, you could start with a medieval city generator and use algorithms to apply changes that would have happened over 500 years and then build the new town…

One problem. Cars! Unless you can lay down some serious infrastructure as a constraint first hand. Driving in these types of places is always insane. Just look at Italy. It'd be an easy problem to solve by pushing for a carless city or smaller car city paradigm. But folk will want their cars.

Italy: driving down a windy, curvy, one-way road, about 5 inches narrower than the car itself, which ends at a dead end. No signage. "La dolce vita!"

Re: Medieval Fantasy City Generator

#43

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

thom wrote: post #41

I love this sort of thing, but the far more interesting challenge to procedural games is engaging the player emotionally and intellectually, and giving them a sense of long term narrative progression. I'm mainly thinking of RPGs here, but it's a problem that surfaces up to this day in things like No Man's Sky. Even in non-procedural games that nevertheless allow you to continue playing in a world after all the storyl…

The difficulty is that it is relatively easy to generate patterns that follow rules because computers are really good at it, but it is incredibly difficult to make an algorithm be creative. What we really want when we say we want an infinity to explore and interact with is that we want infinitely many new and interesting experiences, which procedural generation has been, thus far, unable to provide. This is not surprising, even most human beings aren't very good at it.

Re: Medieval Fantasy City Generator

#44

Post by [deleted] »

gonzo41 wrote: post #28
lbriner wrote: post #25

Serious application for these tools: crowded countries like the UK often talk about building new towns rather than annoying everyone is existing towns by more and more building work. Unfortunately, new towns tend to be rather formulaic and dull. With tools like these, you could start with a medieval city generator and use algorithms to apply changes that would have happened over 500 years and then build the new town…

One problem. Cars! Unless you can lay down some serious infrastructure as a constraint first hand. Driving in these types of places is always insane. Just look at Italy. It'd be an easy problem to solve by pushing for a carless city or smaller car city paradigm. But folk will want their cars.

[deleted]

Re: Medieval Fantasy City Generator

#45

Post by dstick »

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #43
thom wrote: post #41

I love this sort of thing, but the far more interesting challenge to procedural games is engaging the player emotionally and intellectually, and giving them a sense of long term narrative progression. I'm mainly thinking of RPGs here, but it's a problem that surfaces up to this day in things like No Man's Sky. Even in non-procedural games that nevertheless allow you to continue playing in a world after all the storyl…

The difficulty is that it is relatively easy to generate patterns that follow rules because computers are really good at it, but it is incredibly difficult to make an algorithm be creative. What we really want when we say we want an infinity to explore and interact with is that we want infinitely many new and interesting experiences, which procedural generation has been, thus far, unable to provide. This is not surpr…

But such a thing exists, life ;-)

Re: Medieval Fantasy City Generator

#46

Post by indigochill »

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #43
thom wrote: post #41

I love this sort of thing, but the far more interesting challenge to procedural games is engaging the player emotionally and intellectually, and giving them a sense of long term narrative progression. I'm mainly thinking of RPGs here, but it's a problem that surfaces up to this day in things like No Man's Sky. Even in non-procedural games that nevertheless allow you to continue playing in a world after all the storyl…

The difficulty is that it is relatively easy to generate patterns that follow rules because computers are really good at it, but it is incredibly difficult to make an algorithm be creative. What we really want when we say we want an infinity to explore and interact with is that we want infinitely many new and interesting experiences, which procedural generation has been, thus far, unable to provide. This is not surpr…

>What we really want when we say we want an infinity to explore and interact with is that we want infinitely many new and interesting experiences

Agree.

> which procedural generation has been, thus far, unable to provide

Disagree.

I think Dwarf Fortress (and to a lesser extent, EVE Online) has shown how to do procedural generation that does result in interesting interactions. There are four important factors in successful procedural games:

1. Granular modulation (you don't just punch a dwarf, you punch out a dwarf's left eye).

2. Diverse interactions (lava can be used to smith weapons. Or burn invaders. Or mixed with water.)

3. Persistent state as a result of the above. In a game like GTA, you can stage a one-man stand against overwhelming military force, but when you return to the site of your last stand, not a trace is left. In Dwarf Fortress, even if you lose you leave behind traces that can be revisited in future games. This is also the magic of EVE Online's alliance endgame (establishing player structures in contested space and seeing your alliance people flying there), without which I think the game loses its luster.

4. Environments small enough to build up a history. You can remember sites of memorable conflicts in Dwarf Fortress because your play space is constrained to a single tiny piece of the larger world. In Minecraft, Starbound, or No Man's Sky, your play area is so large that you never build up memories of any particular place (Starbound offsets this somewhat by having set pieces, but loses that sense of location outside of those pre-crafted zones). In EVE Online alliances settle for months or longer at a time in a particular region of space so that they develop an emotional attachment to it.

Re: Medieval Fantasy City Generator

#47

Post by erikb »

I think this stuff is interesting but not heavily moving. Every few years someone shares a tool like this. But why not have such a tool connected to something useful like a flight simulator or openstreetmaps, or in a format that game engines can use as foundation for a game? Then people could actually do something with it instead of just looking at it.

Re: Medieval Fantasy City Generator

#48

Post by swift532 »

dstick wrote: post #45
AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difficulty is that it is relatively easy to generate patterns that follow rules because computers are really good at it, but it is incredibly difficult to make an algorithm be creative. What we really want when we say we want an infinity to explore and interact with is that we want infinitely many new and interesting experiences, which procedural generation has been, thus far, unable to provide. This is not surpr…

But such a thing exists, life ;-)

Yeah, only in life we are bound by various constraints. Whether it's that you wouldn't want to be a criminal in real life, you don't want to risk your life in extreme sports or battle, or you were born too early to explore the universe.

Re: Medieval Fantasy City Generator

#49

Post by baud147258 »

131012 wrote: post #38
ivanhoe wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Medieval cities were limited by the size of the fortification walls, so streets had to be as narrow as possible to save the valuable space. You don't have such limits with this, so you can turn all streets into boulevards if you like...

please no :(

Boulevards can be very nice if you put separated bike lanes and wide walkways (perhaps with trees to provide some shade during summer).

Re: Medieval Fantasy City Generator

#50

Post by Retric »

indigochill wrote: post #46
AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difficulty is that it is relatively easy to generate patterns that follow rules because computers are really good at it, but it is incredibly difficult to make an algorithm be creative. What we really want when we say we want an infinity to explore and interact with is that we want infinitely many new and interesting experiences, which procedural generation has been, thus far, unable to provide. This is not surpr…

>What we really want when we say we want an infinity to explore and interact with is that we want infinitely many new and interesting experiences Agree. > which procedural generation has been, thus far, unable to provide Disagree. I think Dwarf Fortress (and to a lesser extent, EVE Online) has shown how to do procedural generation that does result in interesting interactions. There are four important factors in succe…

EVE Online gains most of it's value from PVP interactions even if they are remote. The random world generation is kind of meaningless backdrop to the human drama involved.
Post reply on HN