3 ms·

I don't think generating virtual space is the issue. It's about generating interesting virtual space!

by Garlef 1y ago

james-bcn 1y ago
Yep. People have been doing this kind of stuff for computer games for decades. It's actually not that difficult. It's not clear what novel problem is being solved here.
- jsheard 1y ago
  Yeah but those traditional procgen techniques don't use AI, and this one does use AI. They solved the problem of them not being AI enough for the AI era. AI!
- agravier 1y ago
  Do you have some particular piece of software or tech demo or game in mind with interesting very large generated 3D worlds?
  - sirtaj 1y ago
    Valheim and No Man's Sky are ones I've played recently.
  - SiempreViernes 1y ago
    In Mario 64 there is a staircase you can run up forever, granted it looks the same no matter how long you have Mario run up the stairs, but that certainly fits "big but uninteresting 3d world."
    - bogwog 1y ago
      > big but uninteresting 3d world. I know 'interesting' is subjective, but your comment is demonstrably false. Just type "mario 64 staircase" into youtube, and look at the hundreds (thousands? millions?) of videos and many millions of views.
      - f17428d27584 1y ago
        People are interested in it as a form of trivia. It is extremely uninteresting from the perspective of the player and more importantly how the word was actually used, which was in reference to the quality of world generation. Redefining “interesting” just so you can provide a completely irrelevant “correction” is bad faith trolling.
        bogwog 1y ago
        Not sure why you're so defensive about this. I'm not trolling. Whether something is interesting or not is subjective, which is my point. You might think you know why that staircase is interesting to people (it's just trivia), but that's just your opinion. This is a tech community, so you're obviously unimpressed by the technology used to make it, but most people don't care about that at all. There's no secret formula to culture. Some programmers and AI people seem to think there is some magic AI model that will be able to produce cultural hits at the click of a button. If you're a boring person, you're not likely to "get" why something is interesting, or why that part can't just be automated away. No technology can help with that.
  - antonvdi 1y ago
    Minecraft surely fits those criteria.
  - NBJack 1y ago
    Age of Empires got me into tinkering with content generation. The flexible map rules were fantastic in making this possible. Minecraft is of course the poster child for very large worlds of interest these days. Dwarf Fortress crafts an entire continent complete with a multi-century history, the results of which you can explore freely in adventure mode. Most of the recent examples of 3D worlds like the post tend to do it through wave function collapse.
    - omnibrain 1y ago
      > Minecraft is of course the poster child for very large worlds of interest these days. Minecraft used to create very interesting worlds until they changed the algorithm and the landscapes became plain and boring. It took them about 10 year until the Caves and Cliffs Update to make the world generation interesting again.
jpalomaki 1y ago
” The generated scenes are walkable and suitable for navigation/planning evaluation.” Maybe the idea is to create environments for AI robotics traini ng.
rootlocus 1y ago
Or at least coherent.
analog8374 1y ago
Consider the levels generated in any roguelike. Consider the patterns generated by cellular automata. Both tend to stay interesting in the small scale but lose it to boring chaos in the large. For this reason I think the better approach is to start with a simple level-scale form and then refine it into smaller parts, and then to refine those parts and so on. (Vs plugging away at tunnel-building like a mole)
- anthk 1y ago
  Nethack/Slashem and DCSS, maybe. The levels are made to fit under 80x24 terminal with maybe a max of 7/8? -can't remember- rooms per level. The worlds from Cataclysm DDA:Bright Nights are pretty regular, and you have an overworld, labs, subways...
- nonethewiser 1y ago
  >Both tend to stay interesting in the small scale but lose it to boring chaos in the large. I think that's a good way to put it. I started writing a reply before reading your comment entirely and arrived at basically the same conclusion as this but more verbosely: > For this reason I think the better approach is to start with a simple level-scale form and then refine it into smaller parts, and then to refine those parts and so on. It seems hard to get away from having some sort of overarching goal, and then constantly looking back at it. At progressively smaller levels. Like what is the universe of the thing you are generating randomly. Is it a dungeon in a roguelike? It it meant to be one of many floors? Or is it a space inside a building? Is it a house? Is it an office? Is the office a stand alone building or a sky scraper? Perhaps a good algorithm would start big and go small. - assume the universe to generate is a world - pick a location and assign stuff to generate. lets say its a city - pick a type of city thing to generate. lets say its an sky scraper - etc. going, smaller and smaller - look at the city so far. pick another type of city thing to generate based on what has been generated so far - look at the world so far. pick another type of thing to generate Or maybe instead of looking back you could pre-divide into zones. But then, if you want to make an entire universe (as in multiple worlds), you need to just make random worlds which leads to your original problem (boring chaos at large scale) like this or go up another level to more intelligently generate. Point being, you need some sort of top down perspective on it.
keyle 1y ago
You reminded me of this https://book.leveldesignbook.com/process/layout https://book.leveldesignbook.com/process/layout And Valve I think used to have a series on level design, involving from big to small and "anchor points", but I seem to have misplaced the link.
otikik 1y ago
Indeed, this has been described in the past as "The Oatmeal Problem" [1] [1] https://www.challies.com/articles/no-mans-sky-and-10000-bowls-of-plain-oatmeal/ https://www.challies.com/articles/no-mans-sky-and-10000-bowl...
- zparky 1y ago
  Important to note that article was written 9 years ago and NMS has received numerous content updates since. There's a lot more to the game now.
  - nsxwolf 1y ago
    There is, but the procedural generation part is not what makes it fun to me. It's what you create and how you choose to "live" in the game. It really is like the real universe - isotropic, the same in all directions - it only takes a few hours to be overwhelmed by how pointless it all seems, knowing there's an infinity of anything you discover elsewhere. Once you build a base or create some goal for yourself, it becomes interesting.
- xwiz 1y ago
  Kate Compton's GDC talk: https://www.gdcvault.com/play/1024213/Practical-Procedural-Generation-for https://www.gdcvault.com/play/1024213/Practical-Procedural-G...

I don't think generating virtual space is the issue. It's about generating interesting virtual space!

by Garlef 1y ago

I don't think generating virtual space is the issue. It's about generating interesting virtual space!

Yep. People have been doing this kind of stuff for computer games for decades. It's actually not that difficult. It's not clear what novel problem is being solved here.

jsheard 1y ago
Yeah but those traditional procgen techniques don't use AI, and this one does use AI. They solved the problem of them not being AI enough for the AI era. AI!
agravier 1y ago
Do you have some particular piece of software or tech demo or game in mind with interesting very large generated 3D worlds?
- sirtaj 1y ago
  Valheim and No Man's Sky are ones I've played recently.
- SiempreViernes 1y ago
  In Mario 64 there is a staircase you can run up forever, granted it looks the same no matter how long you have Mario run up the stairs, but that certainly fits "big but uninteresting 3d world."
  - bogwog 1y ago
    > big but uninteresting 3d world. I know 'interesting' is subjective, but your comment is demonstrably false. Just type "mario 64 staircase" into youtube, and look at the hundreds (thousands? millions?) of videos and many millions of views.
    - f17428d27584 1y ago
      People are interested in it as a form of trivia. It is extremely uninteresting from the perspective of the player and more importantly how the word was actually used, which was in reference to the quality of world generation. Redefining “interesting” just so you can provide a completely irrelevant “correction” is bad faith trolling.
      - bogwog 1y ago
        Not sure why you're so defensive about this. I'm not trolling. Whether something is interesting or not is subjective, which is my point. You might think you know why that staircase is interesting to people (it's just trivia), but that's just your opinion. This is a tech community, so you're obviously unimpressed by the technology used to make it, but most people don't care about that at all. There's no secret formula to culture. Some programmers and AI people seem to think there is some magic AI model that will be able to produce cultural hits at the click of a button. If you're a boring person, you're not likely to "get" why something is interesting, or why that part can't just be automated away. No technology can help with that.
- antonvdi 1y ago
  Minecraft surely fits those criteria.
- NBJack 1y ago
  Age of Empires got me into tinkering with content generation. The flexible map rules were fantastic in making this possible. Minecraft is of course the poster child for very large worlds of interest these days. Dwarf Fortress crafts an entire continent complete with a multi-century history, the results of which you can explore freely in adventure mode. Most of the recent examples of 3D worlds like the post tend to do it through wave function collapse.
  - omnibrain 1y ago
    > Minecraft is of course the poster child for very large worlds of interest these days. Minecraft used to create very interesting worlds until they changed the algorithm and the landscapes became plain and boring. It took them about 10 year until the Caves and Cliffs Update to make the world generation interesting again.

jpalomaki 1y ago

” The generated scenes are walkable and suitable for navigation/planning evaluation.” Maybe the idea is to create environments for AI robotics traini ng.

rootlocus 1y ago

Or at least coherent.

analog8374 1y ago

Consider the levels generated in any roguelike. Consider the patterns generated by cellular automata. Both tend to stay interesting in the small scale but lose it to boring chaos in the large. For this reason I think the better approach is to start with a simple level-scale form and then refine it into smaller parts, and then to refine those parts and so on. (Vs plugging away at tunnel-building like a mole)

anthk 1y ago
Nethack/Slashem and DCSS, maybe. The levels are made to fit under 80x24 terminal with maybe a max of 7/8? -can't remember- rooms per level. The worlds from Cataclysm DDA:Bright Nights are pretty regular, and you have an overworld, labs, subways...
nonethewiser 1y ago
>Both tend to stay interesting in the small scale but lose it to boring chaos in the large. I think that's a good way to put it. I started writing a reply before reading your comment entirely and arrived at basically the same conclusion as this but more verbosely: > For this reason I think the better approach is to start with a simple level-scale form and then refine it into smaller parts, and then to refine those parts and so on. It seems hard to get away from having some sort of overarching goal, and then constantly looking back at it. At progressively smaller levels. Like what is the universe of the thing you are generating randomly. Is it a dungeon in a roguelike? It it meant to be one of many floors? Or is it a space inside a building? Is it a house? Is it an office? Is the office a stand alone building or a sky scraper? Perhaps a good algorithm would start big and go small. - assume the universe to generate is a world - pick a location and assign stuff to generate. lets say its a city - pick a type of city thing to generate. lets say its an sky scraper - etc. going, smaller and smaller - look at the city so far. pick another type of city thing to generate based on what has been generated so far - look at the world so far. pick another type of thing to generate Or maybe instead of looking back you could pre-divide into zones. But then, if you want to make an entire universe (as in multiple worlds), you need to just make random worlds which leads to your original problem (boring chaos at large scale) like this or go up another level to more intelligently generate. Point being, you need some sort of top down perspective on it.

keyle 1y ago

You reminded me of this https://book.leveldesignbook.com/process/layout https://book.leveldesignbook.com/process/layout And Valve I think used to have a series on level design, involving from big to small and "anchor points", but I seem to have misplaced the link.

otikik 1y ago

Indeed, this has been described in the past as "The Oatmeal Problem" [1] [1] https://www.challies.com/articles/no-mans-sky-and-10000-bowls-of-plain-oatmeal/ https://www.challies.com/articles/no-mans-sky-and-10000-bowl...

zparky 1y ago
Important to note that article was written 9 years ago and NMS has received numerous content updates since. There's a lot more to the game now.
- nsxwolf 1y ago
  There is, but the procedural generation part is not what makes it fun to me. It's what you create and how you choose to "live" in the game. It really is like the real universe - isotropic, the same in all directions - it only takes a few hours to be overwhelmed by how pointless it all seems, knowing there's an infinity of anything you discover elsewhere. Once you build a base or create some goal for yourself, it becomes interesting.
xwiz 1y ago
Kate Compton's GDC talk: https://www.gdcvault.com/play/1024213/Practical-Procedural-Generation-for https://www.gdcvault.com/play/1024213/Practical-Procedural-G...