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Exploring No Man’s Sky, A Computer Game Forged by Algorithms

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Re: Exploring No Man’s Sky, A Computer Game Forged by Algorithms

#91

The issue with a lot of procedurally-generated content is that overall things become same-y. Lots of breadth, little depth. When you have a set number of variable sliders, you don't have to see all the possible worlds to get a sense of how many sliders there are and what their ranges are. The problem only gets worse when moving away from planet/landscape generation (dumb matter) and getting into simulations of histor…

I've been working on combating this problem for a few years now. I'm working on a game called Spire ( http://hitboxteam.tumblr.com/ ), which is a mix of Quake and Roguelikes. Every procedural dungeon creator I've seen so far seems to just use pre-made rooms or chunks of rooms, and shuffles them around. It never feels like you're in a new world each time, it just feels like you're in the same world jumbled up. For the…

> It never feels like you're in a new world each time, it just feels like you're in the same world jumbled up.

This was always the feeling I got from games like Daggerfall / Arena Scrolls, which procedurally generate dungeons. Sure, it's technically a different dungeon each time, but in reality it's just the same set of blocks in a different order. Even the mob spawning was based on the block type, so there were few surprises by the end.

Genuine procedurally generated architecture sounds like an awesome challenge - good luck!

Re: Exploring No Man’s Sky, A Computer Game Forged by Algorithms

#92

None of these articles on No Man's Sky ever mention Noctis, which is really strange. That's clearly a precedent here worthy of mention. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noctis

Not even Spore.

We don't talk about Spore.

Re: Exploring No Man’s Sky, A Computer Game Forged by Algorithms

#93

The issue with a lot of procedurally-generated content is that overall things become same-y. Lots of breadth, little depth. When you have a set number of variable sliders, you don't have to see all the possible worlds to get a sense of how many sliders there are and what their ranges are. The problem only gets worse when moving away from planet/landscape generation (dumb matter) and getting into simulations of histor…

This guy makes PCG art: https://www.flickr.com/photos/jonathanmccabe http://vimeo.com/jonathanmccabe/

He does interesting things with fitness functions that try to vary the entropy across different regions.

Re: Exploring No Man’s Sky, A Computer Game Forged by Algorithms

#94
post #50

The issue with a lot of procedurally-generated content is that overall things become same-y. Lots of breadth, little depth. When you have a set number of variable sliders, you don't have to see all the possible worlds to get a sense of how many sliders there are and what their ranges are. The problem only gets worse when moving away from planet/landscape generation (dumb matter) and getting into simulations of histor…

A totally different type of procedurally-generated content: The physical card game, Dominion. It is a deck-building game, where players play cards to generate cash to buy cards that go into the deck that they are playing out of (which cycles endlessly). There are 6 boring and fundamental cards that are present in every game, and 10 'kingdom' cards which do interesting and clever things. The 10 kingdom cards that are…

While I don't know how readily Dominion conforms to the definition of "procedurally generated", it's interesting to consider how its lessons can be applied to creating unique experiences in repeatedly-played video games. The game is always built on the same foundation of rules (expansions notwithstanding) and every game has the same goal. The difference in each game is the selection of actions available to each player, and the thrill is in attempting to compose a more effective sequence of actions than any other player.

To make this interesting, you need both a very wide pool of potential actions, and the mechanics of each action need to be designed such that feedback loops arise naturally.

Dominion gets off easy here, as the "medium" through which different cards interact is the very simple system of resources: actions, gold, and buys. You can create an enormous selection of cards just by having any given card grant some unique combination of these three resources, and then attempt to balance the card by dialing up or down its cost. It's all very abstract, and that eases the burden on the designers.

But how do you do such a thing in a video game, where actions are usually not abstract, but specific (and as a result, limited in number)? What medium of interaction do you exploit to create the game-breaking feedback loops that are the delight of a Dominion player? Better still, how do you make it so that the interactions between actions are subtle enough that game-breaking strategies are non-obvious, making them a joy to discover?

Off the top of my head, you could start with a game that already has a huge number of actions and create a replayable game mode where you limit the number of available actions. Let's use MMOs as a concrete example. You could just take World of Warcraft, assemble four five-man parties, and then present each party with the same randomly-reduced selection of the game's classes, where each class is limited to only one or two of the three talent trees, the class' usable abilities are pared down, and the talents within each talent tree have been shuffled randomly. Each group then races to assemble a functioning party and see who can down the most bosses in a non-randomized dungeon. And instead of instancing each party, you could just pseudo-instance them: for instance, downing a boss makes that boss unavailable to kill for any other group, rewarding groups who made hasty party selections (but punishing them if their hasty selections slowed their ability to deal with the trash mobs leading up to the boss).

I dunno, I suppose it could be fun with enough effort.

Re: Exploring No Man’s Sky, A Computer Game Forged by Algorithms

#95

The issue with a lot of procedurally-generated content is that overall things become same-y. Lots of breadth, little depth. When you have a set number of variable sliders, you don't have to see all the possible worlds to get a sense of how many sliders there are and what their ranges are. The problem only gets worse when moving away from planet/landscape generation (dumb matter) and getting into simulations of histor…

Even though I am an advocate of procedural generation, I concur that this is a problem with procedural generation. Even though one algorithm can create millions of permutations, they are all based on the same algorithm (for example, you can vary the size and distance of Worley noise in many ways, but in the end it looks like variations on the same type of noise). For each really new thing you want to produce, you bas…

> Even if you were creating creatures, simply varying the amount of limbs would only produce so many interesting results.

That's exactly what I was thinking when I saw the gazelles, the diplodocus, and that oversized rhinoceros plowing through the purple forest. This is meant to be a one of infinite worlds to explore, and it's just Earth with a few tweaks.

Re: Exploring No Man’s Sky, A Computer Game Forged by Algorithms

#96
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dwarf Fortress. Read about it. Play it. Marvel at it. http://www.bay12games.com There is nothing same-y about a game where you can't hit a bogeyman with a hammer because he's too fast, but you can kick his ass with cranberry leaves because they're lighter and let you hit faster. Or, how about the elephants roosting in trees? Or the vampirism that can take over a fortress? Of the possible were-versions of most creatur…

Dwarf fortress is amazing, the algorithms it must use must be pretty interesting, it would be interesting to piece it out and open source it. Dwarf fortress also benefits from completely simplified UI. Meaning it can go really deep without worrying about how the rocks are generated. Does magnetite look like pyrite? It already looks like the scope of No Man's Land has gotten out of hand, maybe it will offer some of th…

The author open sourced his last game, Liberal Crime Squad, and its... The work of a madman. IIRC it was one ~40kloc C++ file full of globals and switch statements 6+ levels deep.

I'm sure someone's cleaned it up some now, but it made me wonder if that (unpredictable spaghetti code) is what's required for truly dynamic behavior, the kind that you see in DF and (to a lesser extent) LCS.

Re: Exploring No Man’s Sky, A Computer Game Forged by Algorithms

#97
post #96
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dwarf fortress is amazing, the algorithms it must use must be pretty interesting, it would be interesting to piece it out and open source it. Dwarf fortress also benefits from completely simplified UI. Meaning it can go really deep without worrying about how the rocks are generated. Does magnetite look like pyrite? It already looks like the scope of No Man's Land has gotten out of hand, maybe it will offer some of th…

The author open sourced his last game, Liberal Crime Squad, and its... The work of a madman. IIRC it was one ~40kloc C++ file full of globals and switch statements 6+ levels deep. I'm sure someone's cleaned it up some now, but it made me wonder if that (unpredictable spaghetti code) is what's required for truly dynamic behavior, the kind that you see in DF and (to a lesser extent) LCS.

Interesting. Perhaps, it was the output of a tool that compiled higher-level code down to C.

Re: Exploring No Man’s Sky, A Computer Game Forged by Algorithms

#98
post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Independent developers need money to fund the development, being exclusive to a platform gives you those funds, as well as marketing and various other forms of secondary support. The alternatives are a publisher (historical a pretty mixed bag, gaining control of your IP, changing the focus or name - see Divine Divinty) or crowd-funding (usually not enough to fund the entire project, unless you're Star Citizen :)).

> Independent developers need money to fund the development, being exclusive to a platform gives you those funds How exactly? You can say that releasing for a single platform reduces costs. But how can it give you more funds? Marketing isn't really bound to limiting platforms (only expenses wise, same as development). However covering more platforms gives games more exposure, so more potential sales. Cross platform t…

Console makers will sign deals giving you advance funding if you promise to make the game exclusive to their platform.

Re: Exploring No Man’s Sky, A Computer Game Forged by Algorithms

#99
post #98
post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Independent developers need money to fund the development, being exclusive to a platform gives you those funds How exactly? You can say that releasing for a single platform reduces costs. But how can it give you more funds? Marketing isn't really bound to limiting platforms (only expenses wise, same as development). However covering more platforms gives games more exposure, so more potential sales. Cross platform t…

Console makers will sign deals giving you advance funding if you promise to make the game exclusive to their platform.

I see. That stinks, but I can understand why some developers can fall for this. Crowdfunding is a good alternative to prevent such kind of lock-in.

Re: Exploring No Man’s Sky, A Computer Game Forged by Algorithms

#100

The issue with a lot of procedurally-generated content is that overall things become same-y. Lots of breadth, little depth. When you have a set number of variable sliders, you don't have to see all the possible worlds to get a sense of how many sliders there are and what their ranges are. The problem only gets worse when moving away from planet/landscape generation (dumb matter) and getting into simulations of histor…

Are there "a billion compelling and unique stories" to be told? Perhaps the reason procedural content falls down is because it's so much easier to exhaustively explore than real life. In other words, the novelty of real-world stories is an illusion borne from ignorance/inexperience.
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