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The problem with exploration, especially at the AAA-level is that content costs a lot of money. For multiplayer-centric shooters, the cost of maps and levels c
by potatolicious 14y ago
The problem with exploration, especially at the AAA-level is that content costs a lot of money.
For multiplayer-centric shooters, the cost of maps and levels can be spread across a relatively long lifetime, millions of matches.
An exploration-based game by definition cannot recycle its content. Attempts to proceduralize world generation have been mixed - Diablo did it, but the world itself is not the focus there either, and other games have been torn to shreds for their repeated, boring automatically generated content.
Even open-world games like GTA are focused on specific locations in the game world, and you can see the amount of detail drop off precipitously outside of these areas.
Content is really, really expensive - today moreso than ever. An exploration-based, AAA-level game would have to solve a lot of completely unprecedented problems.
- Negitivefrags 14y agoProcedural generation doesn't have to be the generation of random content purely from algorithms alone. It can just be tools to automate artist work by allowing them to specify what content should be at a higher level. For example, the artist specifies that he wants a road going one way, a river crossing it and a cliff that runs along one side and the terrain generator creates the level. I have a video of this process here. The input is a graph specified by the artist as well as a bunch of other metadata that he specifies in text files: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3PRsHyyFoaM http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3PRsHyyFoaM I have done a talk on the terrain generator as well which you can see here if you like: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcM9Ynfzll0 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcM9Ynfzll0
- mark_l_watson 14y ago+1 yours is the best comment I have read so far. Higher level tools really do speed up content creation. It was a long time ago, but when I worked at Angel Studios, we put a huge effort into infrastructure tools. A high level scripting language driven generator with good fix-up editing capabilities sounds good. All that said, I would imagine that large entertainment companies have great smart creation/editing tools, but they are probably kept under wraps.
- muraiki 14y agoI just started playing PoE, and one of the first things that stood out to me was the level generation. You guys have done a great job at creating interesting environments that aren't repetitive!
- 6ren 14y agoDoesn't minecraft have a lot of user-generated content? (I don't play it, so I'm not sure if that content is interesting for "explorative" gameplay, or if it's more a series of novelty locations of varying quality.)
- DanBC 14y agoYes. There's some procedurally generated content. You could spend your life exploring that. Or you can join other servers and explore them. So, while there's not one huge world there's a huge amount of content. And it's a good fit for " “It’s a world where the most important stories are told by the players, not written by the developers.”
- nahname 14y agoMaybe this is what added to the delight of playing minecraft. Every world was a new adventure, waiting to be explored.