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This is cool, but my big problem with games using techniques like this is that they tend to end up feeling soulless. I guess it would be fine for a game where t

This is cool, but my big problem with games using techniques like this is that they tend to end up feeling soulless. I guess it would be fine for a game where the players create the soul of the game during the course of play (something like a Civilization game, or maybe an economic-focused RTS or MMORTS). But for games where timescales are short and you're not going to build anything yourself, map designers are better off, you know, designing.

rcfox 15y ago
What do you mean by soulless exactly?
- alecbenzer 15y ago
  Determining when a game has "soul" seems like a difficult trait to qualify objectively, but generally speaking, I think you can just sort of tell when games feel like they have that special touch put in by a human designer. IMO, TF2 (and most other Valve games) demonstrate "soul-ful" level design pretty well.
- scott_s 15y ago
  My favorite part about games is the ability to explore. I love the feeling of discovery. For reasons I have difficulty explaining, this feeling of discovery is dependent upon my assumption of intent in everything I see. If I believe everything I see is arbitrary, then I get no satisfaction out of discovery. It's a fine line, because also important for the feeling of discovery is the illusion of being in a real place. So I want a place that is designed, but not constricting. Skyrim is great about this. When I discover something in Skyrim, I know that a human being decided to put it there - which means that if I think this thing is connected to some other thing in the world, then, yes, it probably is. Skyrim has little touches like this, where even minor caves and huts have a story behind them. Perhaps another way of looking at it is that I'm discovering someone else's story, but I have agency the entire time. If everything I see is randomly generated, then there's no story to discover.
  - spacemanaki 15y ago
    I know it's brought up again and again, because it really is the perfect counter example to this, but have you tried Dwarf Fortress? If you get past the ASCII art there's a tremendous opportunity for discovering really rich stories that just kind of bubble up out of the chaos of DF's various simulations going to work. I think part of the reason it has been so successful (in its own way) is that people share these stories and retell them to other players, which results in something closer to collaboration between player, game engine, and game creator. It boils down to taste, but I find it much more interesting and awesome. It's definitely different from the kind of purposeful designed stories that are hidden in Skyrim, but I think it's a promising place for game devs to explore, especially if a large team of writers and designers isn't in their budget.
    - scott_s 15y ago
      I have yet to try it. I was fascinated by the depth of the simulation back when I read this: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2793615 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2793615 But as you said, that's a very different kind of game. Part of the reason I have not tried it is that I would have to play it on a computer. When I play games, I want to sit on my couch, looking at my tv.
    - rcfox 15y ago
      Dwarf Fortress really lends itself to creating narratives. From the DF dev log: I visited a tomb today as the adventurer Cadem Renownletter to see how well the game retains the position of skeletons and treasures as I move them around. During the process, a mummy boxed me in the ribs, broke my finger, bit my hand and shook it around until the hand came off. The mummy then animated the hand and they both attacked me. The hand scored the killing scratch, earning the name "Drippedsieged, Cadem Renownletter's left hand" and earning the tomb an additional defender against further testing. Its middle finger is still broken.
  - hythloday 15y ago
    Skyrim (6 instance designers) is good to contrast with Oblivion (1 instance designer) because they're by the same developer in the same game timeline--Oblivion instances have a lot more pointless content, like a bridge that leads to a blank wall with no rewards. I think you can almost certainly procedurally generate "soulful" content, but we're not there yet.
- Natsu 15y ago
  I'm not quite sure, but I will say that big, procedurally-generated games tend to feel "empty." There might be small islands of uniqueness, but they're surrounded on all sides by areas that are bland and indistinct. But some execute this better than others. Freeing designers from having to figure out where to plant trees or how to do landscaping so that they can work on the story is a good thing. Watering down your game with bland, empty, cookie cutter content is bad.
lbotos 15y ago
I agree about being potentially "soulless" but a counter-argument is if you generate the landscape and then let a designer come in and make logical choices of where to place designed elements and the flow of the map I think it would be awesome. Like real life! :) I sometimes feel like designers just design one path or design a stronger single path but this approach lets it be more natural.
groby_b 15y ago
These tools are awesome for generating a) A first draft of a map. Just build _something_ so you can playtest. Shape it up as time goes by b) Fleshing out all the areas the player is less likely to see. I'd say about 80%-90% of map space don't directly influence gameplay and are just there to give you a feeling of a complete world. When I was futzing with that stuff, I used to call it "Computer-assisted content generation" instead of "automatic content generation" or similar. Bonus points: Communicates to the designers/map builders that you do the work to help them, not to get rid of them ;) (Edit: fixed typo. Or grammaro, really ;)
- daeken 15y ago
  I've long believed that procedural content is not the end people were thinking of it as, but a means. Rather than treating it as "the way content is created", it should be built into the tools used to create content. Imagine this: You create a new area in your game tool. You're presented with a blank map. You generate a random terrain based on some parameters, then you go in and start painting. You paint some forests, some cities, etc. Then once you have the high-level map, you can zoom in and start painting trails in the forest, specific buildings in the city. Where there are forests, you'll see a random mix of trees, rocks, etc. Your trails cut through this and meander a bit randomly, send off some forks automatically. But you have the power to override this anywhere you want to, e.g. to put in specific things related to quests or story. By mixing high-quality procedural generation with designer input and direction, I believe you can achieve great things. In fact, I think it's the only way we can reduce development costs while keeping standards of quality up; with the budgets involved in AAA titles, it's the only way I see forward.
  - DanBC 15y ago
    Yes. I like the way that Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup does it - they have a bunch of carefully crafted dungeons with procedurally generated stuff too. (http://crawl.develz.org/wordpress/ http://crawl.develz.org/wordpress/)
  - groby_b 15y ago
    Spent quite some time working on something like that. (With a rendering backend that can only be described as insanely brilliant. Sadly, that was not my doing ;) It's a bummer our studio got closed :(
roqetman 15y ago
I understand what you mean, but I think it comes down to what level of detail gets generated. As an example, my kids and I are often amazed at the landscapes and other things generated in minecraft.
vibrunazo 15y ago
A computer program will only do what it's told. It's only as creative as the programmer. It is only as soulfull as him.

rcfox 15y ago

What do you mean by soulless exactly?

alecbenzer 15y ago
Determining when a game has "soul" seems like a difficult trait to qualify objectively, but generally speaking, I think you can just sort of tell when games feel like they have that special touch put in by a human designer. IMO, TF2 (and most other Valve games) demonstrate "soul-ful" level design pretty well.
scott_s 15y ago
My favorite part about games is the ability to explore. I love the feeling of discovery. For reasons I have difficulty explaining, this feeling of discovery is dependent upon my assumption of intent in everything I see. If I believe everything I see is arbitrary, then I get no satisfaction out of discovery. It's a fine line, because also important for the feeling of discovery is the illusion of being in a real place. So I want a place that is designed, but not constricting. Skyrim is great about this. When I discover something in Skyrim, I know that a human being decided to put it there - which means that if I think this thing is connected to some other thing in the world, then, yes, it probably is. Skyrim has little touches like this, where even minor caves and huts have a story behind them. Perhaps another way of looking at it is that I'm discovering someone else's story, but I have agency the entire time. If everything I see is randomly generated, then there's no story to discover.
- spacemanaki 15y ago
  I know it's brought up again and again, because it really is the perfect counter example to this, but have you tried Dwarf Fortress? If you get past the ASCII art there's a tremendous opportunity for discovering really rich stories that just kind of bubble up out of the chaos of DF's various simulations going to work. I think part of the reason it has been so successful (in its own way) is that people share these stories and retell them to other players, which results in something closer to collaboration between player, game engine, and game creator. It boils down to taste, but I find it much more interesting and awesome. It's definitely different from the kind of purposeful designed stories that are hidden in Skyrim, but I think it's a promising place for game devs to explore, especially if a large team of writers and designers isn't in their budget.
  - scott_s 15y ago
    I have yet to try it. I was fascinated by the depth of the simulation back when I read this: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2793615 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2793615 But as you said, that's a very different kind of game. Part of the reason I have not tried it is that I would have to play it on a computer. When I play games, I want to sit on my couch, looking at my tv.
  - rcfox 15y ago
    Dwarf Fortress really lends itself to creating narratives. From the DF dev log: I visited a tomb today as the adventurer Cadem Renownletter to see how well the game retains the position of skeletons and treasures as I move them around. During the process, a mummy boxed me in the ribs, broke my finger, bit my hand and shook it around until the hand came off. The mummy then animated the hand and they both attacked me. The hand scored the killing scratch, earning the name "Drippedsieged, Cadem Renownletter's left hand" and earning the tomb an additional defender against further testing. Its middle finger is still broken.
- hythloday 15y ago
  Skyrim (6 instance designers) is good to contrast with Oblivion (1 instance designer) because they're by the same developer in the same game timeline--Oblivion instances have a lot more pointless content, like a bridge that leads to a blank wall with no rewards. I think you can almost certainly procedurally generate "soulful" content, but we're not there yet.
Natsu 15y ago
I'm not quite sure, but I will say that big, procedurally-generated games tend to feel "empty." There might be small islands of uniqueness, but they're surrounded on all sides by areas that are bland and indistinct. But some execute this better than others. Freeing designers from having to figure out where to plant trees or how to do landscaping so that they can work on the story is a good thing. Watering down your game with bland, empty, cookie cutter content is bad.

lbotos 15y ago

I agree about being potentially "soulless" but a counter-argument is if you generate the landscape and then let a designer come in and make logical choices of where to place designed elements and the flow of the map I think it would be awesome. Like real life! :) I sometimes feel like designers just design one path or design a stronger single path but this approach lets it be more natural.

groby_b 15y ago

These tools are awesome for generating a) A first draft of a map. Just build _something_ so you can playtest. Shape it up as time goes by b) Fleshing out all the areas the player is less likely to see. I'd say about 80%-90% of map space don't directly influence gameplay and are just there to give you a feeling of a complete world. When I was futzing with that stuff, I used to call it "Computer-assisted content generation" instead of "automatic content generation" or similar. Bonus points: Communicates to the designers/map builders that you do the work to help them, not to get rid of them ;) (Edit: fixed typo. Or grammaro, really ;)

daeken 15y ago
I've long believed that procedural content is not the end people were thinking of it as, but a means. Rather than treating it as "the way content is created", it should be built into the tools used to create content. Imagine this: You create a new area in your game tool. You're presented with a blank map. You generate a random terrain based on some parameters, then you go in and start painting. You paint some forests, some cities, etc. Then once you have the high-level map, you can zoom in and start painting trails in the forest, specific buildings in the city. Where there are forests, you'll see a random mix of trees, rocks, etc. Your trails cut through this and meander a bit randomly, send off some forks automatically. But you have the power to override this anywhere you want to, e.g. to put in specific things related to quests or story. By mixing high-quality procedural generation with designer input and direction, I believe you can achieve great things. In fact, I think it's the only way we can reduce development costs while keeping standards of quality up; with the budgets involved in AAA titles, it's the only way I see forward.
- DanBC 15y ago
  Yes. I like the way that Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup does it - they have a bunch of carefully crafted dungeons with procedurally generated stuff too. (http://crawl.develz.org/wordpress/ http://crawl.develz.org/wordpress/)
- groby_b 15y ago
  Spent quite some time working on something like that. (With a rendering backend that can only be described as insanely brilliant. Sadly, that was not my doing ;) It's a bummer our studio got closed :(

roqetman 15y ago

I understand what you mean, but I think it comes down to what level of detail gets generated. As an example, my kids and I are often amazed at the landscapes and other things generated in minecraft.

vibrunazo 15y ago

A computer program will only do what it's told. It's only as creative as the programmer. It is only as soulfull as him.