Procedural generation

Why is Procedural generation a thing in games? I feel like it's one of the worst mechanics a dev can put into their games.

Pic related is a good example. A friend of mine gifted it to me. The aesthetic is really nice but the gunplay is pretty bad because of a shoehorned in skill system.

I would've been fine with this but I got bored really fast due to how repetitive the levels are and how they all feel like premade rooms stapled together. I don't feel like I'm in a "place" like I would in something like Duke Nukem 3D as much as just an abstract video game world.

Why is this fun to people? I feel like I'm seriously missing something here. I still remember stuff like secret areas and traps being in games like Quake and wanting to replay its levels over and over. I honestly don't get it.

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Level design is too hard.

go and download dwarve fortress and tell me again procedural is shit, then kys retard.

Shit procedural < shit level design < good level design < good procedural

Don't blame procedural, blame shit developers making shit procedural.

Basically, if done right it offers a lot of replayability. Shit like procedurally generated enemies sounds most promising of them all. The problem is that most of developers don't do it right. However, this begs the question of "How to do procedural generation right?" which everyone here is encouraged to answer.

You know how cool people used to wear fedoras, and then retards started wearing fedoras because they thought it'd make them cool, and now fedoras are something that retards wear?
Same thing, except with game design instead of headwear.

procedural is just a tool, like sugar.

if the cake base is shit, some sugar layer wont fix it.

look up spelunky for a good example of semi procedural done right.

So does just replaying the levels on a harder difficulty. To me it doesn't really mean more replayability as much as just padding a game's length out. Similar to how Skyrim advertised "unlimited quests" and really just had randomly generated "go here, do this" quests with no context. It feels like trying to do less work and advertising it as a "endless video game"

Procedural generation has been a thing since Gateway to Apshai.

download a good roguelike like nethack retard.

kys retard.

Can you be less mad and actually explain why? I still don't see why I should care about it other than it ruffles some feathers when I point out it's dull and repetitive.

because you haven't played games where procedural is done right, like nethack, spelunky and DF.

I'm not seeing an explanation. I know reading comprehension isn't your strong suit but that doesn't mean I'm just going to play random video games I have zero interest in.

kys nigger.

We're not exactly seeing an explanation from you as to why it's shit either.

It's in there because Minecraft ended up selling more copies than Skyrim. It accomplished more financially with one guy using procedural generation than an entire team working traditionally. Same reason they copied Minecraft's model of selling the game before release as "alpha".

Because devs are lazy and customers are retarded.

Procedural generation is kind of a mixed bag because in its implementation it means that there is a fixed limit in level complexity as well as a lot less depth than a hand crafted level. In games where it's done right it's usually because of a mixture of procedural elements (Dwarf fortress, Nethack) as well as the reaction of that mixture to the players input. Otherwise Procedural level design is akin to having infinite saltine crackers. Sure there's loads of "content" but it doesn't hold up to a well cooked meal.

Does asking questions about procedural generation summon people with Downs syndrome or something?

I'd say it's the same problem that "open world" games have nowadays. Instead of being smart and using it in small bursts or in minute ways to keep it both fun, and contained, Devs use it way too liberally and it ends up being a repetitive, boring mess

Good procedural generation rely's on minute changes that make each room slightly different, and by that I mean variables in each room that will always change. Instead, most opt for the lazy way and just make a bunch of "unique" little rooms and glue them together in a hallway of, boring, poorly designed rooms that lead to a new level of boring, poorly designed rooms with a different paint job. Ultimately it comes down to whether or not the developers are actually good at level design, and nowadays, if the game has the "procedural generation" tag, it likely means they're using it as a crutch to hide their poor level design skills.

Can't say I've seen anyone really pull it off well though, so maybe I'm too cynical or full of shit

kys

Procedural generation is only good when there's a lot of things to generate and a lot of material. If your procedural generation means 4 walls, 4 enemies and 4 rooms per level, this isn't going to make a fun game.

Didn't Notch promised to make minecraft "just like dwarf fortress"? Where his idea disappeared after console ports?

This, the more things that can, and do change on each run through, the more it will seem seamless, Binding of Issac is a good example of having a shit ton of variables with enemies, items, bosses, etc.

Right about when he started taking his vactions.

If the game can potentially become more or less difficult depending on enemy distribution (think Megaman), procedural generation can give you more replayability since you have unexpected situations being thrown at you all the time. If the game sets time limits, procedural also makes perfect sense.
Good procedural generation can be great, it depends a lot on how many values you can alter in order to limit the outcome, you can go from lazy fully procedural, to procedural based on a full array of databases like Outerra and everything in between. You can also mix and match, having different kind of procedural for different areas/levels and even handmade levels mix into procedural.

How about making preset rooms but randomizing their contents first time a player enters it? Would that work?

Thats pretty much what I was getting it, yah, I like that approch more than randomly placed premade rooms with static assets, which is far too common IMO

I listed DF as an example loser. DF is interesting because near everything is randomly generated, from the personalities of the dwarves to the terrain to the types of sentient races and artifact types. Toady mostly works on making randomized systems work with each other which is one of the main selling points of Dwarf fortress.

isn't that how spelunky does it?

That's more or less what rogue legacy does that, to an extend.

Nigger that's pretty much what procedural generation is, except the location of the premade room is random and the loot as well. Honestly RNG shit is better for passcodes in game as it forces the player to go the location where the passcode is instead of either looking it up in a guide or punching it in from memory.

I was gonna say something, but is a hell of a lot more succinct.

Also, fuck Evolution and Dark Cloud 2. I played it and beat both, i have every right to call them shit.

That game looks like a complete rip off of Ziggurat, down to the flying skulls and little bowmen.
I'm basing my knowledge on those two screenshots, so I could be completely wrong.

There we go then, good application of all things procedurally generated. I wonder if we can squeeze procedurally generated enemies somewhere in there. I've heard Julian Gollop is trying that in his new game, Phoenix Point.

The voice acting and humour are shit. The devs probably felt a regular Egyptian setting was too drab, so they dug around in the big hat of TV characters and came up with The Redneck. It doesn't look, feel, or sound like a game made by rednecks or people who live near them, more like something made by inner-city fags who saw a redneck on television once or heard fellow fags whispering about the intolerant white subhumans living outside their concrete urban strongholds.

there is no such thing as good procedural
lol

There are simple shit that could be done easily. For example bullet hell games with some variations to the projectile the enemies fire (bouncing, fire effect, explosive, etc) and you could have that on different enemies with different movement patterns and so on.

Procedural generation isn't awful by itself, but for some reason like 99% of devs who make "retro" FPS games rely on it instead of making actual levels, which was one of the appeals from those old shooters, the only people who still know how to actually make old-school FPS levels are the modders of those games.

Because those are just a result of bad procedural generation.
You know what else gives off that feeling? bad level design.

Procedural generation is my favorite thing in the world. It really upsets me that it has gotten such a bad name from retarded devs like this. This isn't procedural generation. I mean, it LITERALLY, OBJECTIVELY IS NOT PROCEDURAL GENERATION. It is random generation. HUGE difference. This game has hand-made rooms, and they are just randomly stringed together. Nothing procedural about it whatsoever.

Actual procedural generation makes amazing shit like Dwarf Fortress. That's what actual procedural generation is. It's also infinitely harder than hand-crafting levels, despite what a lot of anons here like to meme.

The problem is that they never seem to understand that proper procedural generation is basically (using the rooms idea, it's not truly limited to rooms) making hand made rooms anyway, just making them by making a system that 'hand makes' them instead of you. Shit procedural is making a system that fails to make believably hand made rooms.

As some user said, the same shit happens with open world maps. They think it takes away some of the required skills and knowhow to level design when it actually demands to be fucking outstanding at it in order to have a levels that really work along with the objective without relying on the hard limits that non-open world maps offer.
If you're shit at designing levels, you will be shit regardless of the design approach you use.

No it's not.

I don't want to sound like a shill, but the guys at Outerra are doing procedural trees and buildings (buildings assigned according to OSM data, but the buildings themselves are procedural), both things with multiple LODs. It is possible, you just need to be good and know what you're doing.
Game development has never been as accessible as it is now: Model and texture making tools are more efficient than ever, 3rd party game engines have never been as productive and as accessible as they are now, funding options have never been as plentiful. There is no excuse to bad results other than bad developers and a shitty industry that backs/helps a lot of people based on nepotism.

There's absolutely nothing that can top hand crafted good level design.

I'd shill for Outerra any day, that shit looks amazing and has for a long time. At least if they paid me >60k a year I'd shill for them, right now I'll just say it looks amazing and put the offer out there. You can contact me at the enclosed email, devs. Because that shit is totally real.

But you're limited in scope and variety, which is something you really need depending on other game design decisions (example: Rogue-like game). If you can memorize level layout and enemy disposition, you can reduce the difficulty.
You can have both too, so your claim is retarded no matter how you put it.


Nah, they have no interest in marketing, they wouldn't pay for shills.
The solution for railguards will be used for train rails too and it's already being used for the individual link tank thread with next to no impact on performance. This shit is simply amazing, the Slovaks behind it are true coding wizards.

Good procedural generation tops hand-crafted any day. It is not humanly possible to even compare to good proc gen.

Not even baiting the hook.

I'd say it depends. If you're making the house of some relevant character on a very story driven game, hand crafted is going to be better. If you're making an extensive map for an open world game, handcrafted will not only demand a lot of manpower, it will also end up with an unnatural results when compared to good procedural generation. Again, depending on gameplay elements, procedural generation can add replayability by making the map change to keep the player from memorizing layouts.
It also comes with the added benefit of triggering speed runners.

Anything procedural will never have unique content. It may have unique permutation of old content, but nothing actually NEW. That's why good hand crafted will always beat procedural. Procedural will never have unique and interesting quests. Procedural will never have new scripted encounters. Procedural will never provide an actually intelligent level design that could compare to good handcrafted one. It'll always be the same old shit rearranged a bit differently. That may not be bad with graphics, but it certainly is bad with things like level design or quests

Fuck off back to halfchan.

What the fuck do you think it is that human devs do
It's just the same shit with way more variables and a sense of direction, both of which are easily possible to give as instructions to a generation system
The only- the only reason procedural systems are bad is that they don't have enough time devoted to them

What part of mix matching you're not getting? Procedural has a place on way too many things to just dismiss it and it's leaps and bounds better for natural landscapes. You can have handcrafted areas and/or buildings mixed with procedural, have some specific quests on handcrafted maps and others on open areas, you can script events on procedurally generated areas too.
You're trying to hard to look at this as a competition when each option is a tool for map design. It's a childish way to look at the issue.

so just like your post?

I guess it's true for story-driven games. I never really care much about those, though.


This is where you're wrong. You're just thinking of lazy devs doing """procedural""" generation. Just look at No Man's Sky. Everyone was calling that procedural generation, when in reality it's just a bunch of fucking assets MADE IN BLENDER, that are randomly placed and mutated. That's not good procedural generation. There's not actually much randomness in good proc gen. You use randomness to make sure things get mixed up, but the whole point of proc gen is that everything made is made for a reason. You start with a randomized seed, but from then on, everything placed is placed for a logical reason. Creating that logic is where it gets VERY hard, and why lazy devs just don't do it and do random generation instead.

I have yet to see a single procedurally generated quest that isn't dogshit, or a procedural level that is at least decent.


You sound like fucking Todd Howard with his infinite, procedurally generated quests.

Exactly. And since logic is fully deterministic and thus predictable, you end up with predictable content. Even with a randomized seed, you will still end up with the same kind of shit in different arrangement.

I would LOVE to see you predict the couple hundred years of history simulation a Dwarf Fortress world goes through when being generated. Predict all the river and valley formations after the erosion, how successful which civilizations are doing after hundreds of years of wars, how the mountains can block the weather system from letting it rain on one side, the life of a necromancer before he became a necromancer, built his tower, and wrote the book of life, and where he kept it, etc etc.

Procedural + handcrafted shit is the way to go. Not all procedural shit is bad but relying on it too heavily would make a terrible game.

what the fuck is even the difference between the two

And how much fucking time do you think the infinite fetch quests in skyrim got?
Oh I'm sure they spent plenty of long hard minutes working out those two variables

imho, procedural generation is best suited for aesthetics. When assisted by competent artist or level designer procedural generation can add variation without sacrificing aesthetics and keeping the file size lower than it would be otherwise.
For example, if someone wanted a grassy landscape, each individual blade or cluster of grass isn't going to be placed by the artist, an artist may model a couple of blades of grass, but then the programmer is going to write a tool that let's the artist specify an area they want grass, and the computer put grass there with some variation grabbed from Perlin noise or something.
This is how Star Wars Galaxies worked, just more complex and more layers. They procedurally generated the terrain, but the artists and designers could assign rules to specific locations on the map to guide the procedural generation to create cliffs, mountains, or valleys in certain locations.

I don't see how anyone could argue against procedurally generated textures purely because they are procedurally generated. Poorly made procedural textures exist, of course, but so do well made procedural textures and poorly made hand crafted textures.

For things like dungeons, think we have yet to reach a point where even guided procedural generation can match, let alone exceed, hand crafted levels. I don't want to say it's not possible, but it's going to happen it will take a very dedicated developer doing stuff we haven't seen yet, and if they release the game 90% of the workload is going to have gone into that system.

Target AND location? With TOTALLY STATIC EVERYTHING ELSE? What will the minds at Bethesda think of next!

Even with procedural generation I don't see how it could achieve the same resonance as something like a handcrafted level could.

Like for instance there's a level in Quake called Ziggurat Vertigo which is unique since there's no gravity. It's a very memorable level and it subverts your expectations a lot. I remember when I first played it my first reaction was "wtf"

I can't imagine a randomly generated program creating something like this purely by random unless the developer specifically wanted non-gravity levels and programmed those in. It's a unique level because it feels so out of place and random despite being completely intentional.

I want to love Ziggurat but the repetitiveness of the levels in the procedural generation gets real old, I've played like 5 hours and I've seen some rooms well over 15 times with little to no changes.

Also the RNG can make things way too hard/easy, slimes + high fire rate low damage are absolutely ridiculous, shrines can make a boss fight trivial if you get lucky, and some weapons like the ice shotgun spell are straight up better than everything else.


Random generation:
Procedural generation:

Speaking this way about Dwarf Fortress should be a bannable offense.

why design stuff when you can make the game do it for you? normalfags still fall for the procedural meme cuz they think it will really make things different every time

ok then

This is your problem, you can't imagine things. It would take them putting in the potential to have zero-g environments, but literally every other bound of the procedural generation system would be programmed into the system the same way essentially. It won't generate a level that's not within (intentionally or unintentionally) the possibilities given to it by the developer, but that's not a criticism of procedural generation so much as a criticism of how video games and computers in general work (and not one we can currently do anything about).

There doesn't have to be any randomness in procedural generation other than arguably the initial factor like the size of the planet. Everything else can be based off of an existing number through an equation, like in that example its "if the biome is tundra and there are less than x wolves then spawn a baby wolf at a female wolf who is at least 10 and has the least number of babies." No part of that involves rolling a number.

It's more like

The sounds in vid related are still procedurally generated, even though the sounds aren't random.

That's what I'm referring to. A procedurally generated system wouldn't think to create a random level like that unless it was specifically programmed to.

A person can create a unique level that's completely unlike every other level in the game and delivers a sharp contrast to it.

To me that just reduces the overall possibilities. Like eventually you're just going to see the same amount of wolves regardless of how many times you load the level. Which increases the sense of artificiality.

And that same person can do the same thing for a procedurally generated level. I think you're under the impression that procedural generation is there to replace the creative process, that's both retarded and awfully shortminded.

I simplified it massively, look at how Dorf does it. It wouldn't have an equation like the one I wrote, it would just simulate an entire ecosystem which leads to far crazier things than you can imagine. See: dfstories.com/

I'm not saying procedural generation is objectively better than doing things by hand, but it's quite different from pure random generation.

lol no it just picks species out of a hat

A person can create a unique level that's completely unlike every other level in the game and delivers a sharp contrast by creating a system to create unique levels completely unlike every other level in the game, too. You can use the procedural generation selectively, you can make the options broad enough, you can use it in certain conditions and not others. Both methods require the developer's input and intent to achieve anything, but the procedural method could also expand upon it, creating additional levels of equivalent quality by way of an automated process he can utilize or not as he chooses, and that process can be as complex as is required to produce the result desired.

Well it does with civilization. And while it doesn't simulate the ecosystem with anywhere near the detail of your fort it does factor in more than just a random number.

Given how many games come out with procedural generated elements that come across like they just implemented it to make the game longer, it's hard to not see it that way.

Sure but to me that's just an extension of it and not a true replacement. As in you could program such a level into the game but eventually if you replay the game enough times you're just going to encounter another similar but different level. Unless you program it so that it only occurs in such a ridiculously low margin that barely anyone sees it.

Either that or you introduce elements that run the risk of ruining the experience. Like there's a reason most of these games severely limit the randomization since you can risk having things like "I want a really hard level that pushes the player to succeed" to the player spawning in a level where there isn't enough ammunition to kill the boss monster. Being able to test these elements reliably is a huge factor.

I liked the game

Aside from boss variety, it's better than Ziggurat in every way.

\>>12460281

There's a special place in Heaven for people like you.

FTFY


Anons, there is this thing called "redefining meaning of words". As was pointed out, retarded devs managers, PR fucks and marketers started using a technical term to sound smart.

Just deconstruct the phrase: "procedural" means either there is some procedure (a strict, linear sequence of steps, or a path following a tree or something else along those lines) is involved, or a procedure (function) from a programming language is involved. Considering the term came from video game development, it is the latter. The latter includes the former in its definition, of course, but it is more specific. I hope I don't need to do the same for "generation".
So "procedural generation" means creating something using some kind of building blocks using very specific instructions on how to put them together. The process does not, in any way shape or form, mandate randomization.
Don't remember if the tag works on Holla Forums, but here you go:
PMYTEXTURE MakeComplexTexture(DWORD someArg1, char someArg2[]) { SecureZeroMemory(pTextureGen, textureGenSize); pTextureGen->someStuff1 = MakeSimpleTexture1(someArg1); pTextureGen->someStuff2 = MakeSimpleTexture2(someArg2[0]); pTextureGen->someStuff3 = MakeSimpleTexture2(someArg2[1]); return pTextureGen;}

And yes, the fad you're talking about does involve procedural generation, but it's very primitive. But the stuff you're upset about is excessive and unimaginative randomization.

Your criticism being 'You might eventually run into samey stuff' is made all the more retarded by the fact that if you made the level directly and never employed procedural generation there would only be one level to run into to begin with. I'm not mad, I'm just disappointed.

I'm pretty sure in his commend he's calling those people "retarded and shortminded". Just because he's not 100% against procedural generation doesn't mean he's 100% for it in every situation either.
This is the downside of arguing with like 5 people at once, we all have different views on what is and isn't OK for procedural generation, and you have to generalize so you end up misrepresenting our arguments.

I do have to ask, can you think of any instance where procedural generation is OK? Are you fine with the procedural generation commonplace in the demoscene?

ok then

There are infact areas I can think of where it can be useful. Usually in very background detail things like enemies in games having a more randomized appearance based on various factors.

Generally it's stuff that you wouldn't necessarily pay close attention to. I have played games where very minor elements like that were randomized with an algorithm and I didn't mind it.

Super House of Dead Ninjas.
Much fun.

Dungeons of Dreadmor
Trap Evasion and Trap Disarming are split between 4 different perks. So if you want to ninja your way past traps, you won't have the perks needed to actually for combat.
Shiggy the diggy.


Risk of Rain.
This turned me off of randomly generated games for a long time.
Pic related. I've no clue why they're like this though.

Spleunky
Poison snake? Boomerang fucks? Aliens? Expect to have a shotgun waiting for you.

What's the point of learning the ins and outs of a game when some random bullshit completely smokes you out of the blue?

Which person?

Because games that did it right exist and are super successful, so hacks wanna piece of the pie thinking that making it work doesn't require skill.

You realize that you regenerate health with every X steps, right? Just walk around in circles in a safe area for like 30 seconds.

You regen per turn. You don't have to move, just wait turns. There's even a button that speeds up time until you're healed up IIRC.

Yeah, I just don't remember whether there is a skip turn button or not. Haven't played it in a year or two. It's not every turn though, new characters normally regenerate some number of HPs every 2 or 3 turns, IIRC.

I took the Vampire Perk. It's how I died with health in my inventory.

Isaac's generation is actually incredibly simple
It literally uses the "bad" practice outlined in a post from earlier, where the floors are just a bunch of premade rooms stitched together
It doesn't even have complex floor layouts since the rooms are all just squares aligned on a grid

Don't remember what it does. Not even from which "class" it is.

Wow you're a fucking genius.


It's not humanly possible for you to say something coherent.

Isaac is all about enemies and abilities. Limited amount of room layouts is not a detriment to the game.

Looked it up. The skill is shit so you could be either taking it a a challenge (and you'd not complain in that case) or you didn't realize you'd need another skill to support it. Emomancy probably would work okay-ish with it, but it's pretty bad as well.

If I had only know it was that shit at the time, would have saved me so many runs of frustration.

That's roguelikes for you. Endure. In enduring grow strong.

Rooms can be stretched and 4 times as big now.
Have you played afterbirth at all?

They're still all the same pre-made rooms though.

You could make a roguelike with fixed map and it would still qualify as a roguelike. Hell, even an outer wilds approach could work wonders for a roguelike.

And neither of those things are procedurally generated, what's your point

They are?

Isn't dorf fort more of a sandbox with no real end until you decide to blow it all up or the game goes on too long and some giant unstoppable evil destroys everything for you? I don't really consider those kinds of things games in the same way I don't consider legos a game, just a toy. That's not to say it isn't a really good toy.

Enemy types might be shuffled per room or might be static per specific room mutation, I don't remember, but items just draw from standard drop pools

I think you picked a terrible example. Don't bullet hells need to be created manually to ensure that they're possible? It'd be much more difficult to make the RNG programs that ensure that you can reach the exit in most rouge likes, and those don't even always work.

I can't play most games that use procedural generation, especially rogue likes. My autism requires that I do all the things, and if there are infinite things to do, I short circuit. Since that's essentially real life, that's probably why I play games, as they take away the infinite choice and my inability to do everything.

What did you expect from an endless run homie :^)?
Your own fault.
git gud
Yes, it's shit.

There are separate pools for rooms and means to acquire them(like breaking a health station and slot machine would yield a different result).
Not that I have anything against your case of isaac actually having not really interesting generation.

There are relatively easy pathfinding algorithms that can make sure that there is always a path from point a to point b for any kind of input. The problem comes along the way when something isn't taken into account or when you write an a bit shitty code.
Not really. See the pathfinding algorithms part. If Bullet hells were static then there wouldn't be much challenge replaying them, since you could just simply memorize the blind spots.

No exactly. Spelunky has a library of templates that it randomly tiles together in a level then draws a line from the exit to the origin to clear blocks in order to make a clear path. Enemy and breakable placement is randomized though.

You guys do realize that "procedural generation" actually means randomly choosing something from a large pool and throwing it at player?
I think there is like one or two games that are procedurally generated in pure meaning of the word, i.e. from code and without using preset parts like room parts, enemies or even textures or models.

That part is simple enough, but a key factor is speed. Sure there may be a physical open path from point A to B around the bullets, but can the player avatar move quickly enough to follow that path?

Also I made a typo
than the*

I've only really played 2hu and it mostly is except for a few small bits. Unless you're talking about enemies or bullets that react to the player, but I don't consider that procedural, just standard ai. Not procedural generated =/= static. There's still challenge because even knowing the patterns it's very difficult to navigate.

Literally every game has drop tables user
That korean grinding mmo you waste your life on isn't "procedurally generated" because you have a 0.3 percent chance to get something cool from a raid boss

I don't want to talk semantics or take part in your arguing shenanigans. You have a point, he has a point, so I don't care either way about who turns out to be more right in the end.

Weighted pathfinding algorhithms. Not that it matters much since there is usually an excess amount of freedom given to the player. And by excess I mean more than 1 frame room for error.

I don't care if it's procedurally generated or randomly generated. If it has rng involved somewhere and you can't record a macross that could replay the game perfectly on every machine, then it isn't static.
I'm not saying that there would be no challenge, I'm saying that challenge wouldn't be interesting if it all comes down to frame perfect memorization.

Procedural generation is a tool that ASSISTS in making assets for a game, but it should not be the ONLY THING that makes those assets. Procedural generation should be used like, "Okay, I've handcrafted a level, now take that level, reduce it to its constituent parts, and rearrange it differently to make more levels", not like: "Make several entire levels out of nothing for me, kthxbai."

It's literally the exact same thing as the problem with the overuse of CGI in movies, and for literally the same reason (it's cheaper).

Can't you read?


I mean when dude claims that BOI isn't procedurally generated, but Diablo apparently is, there gotta be argument.

Can't you read? I'm not interested in arguing with either of you on that topic. Might as well just give him an advantage by saying that you are such a massive idiot.

Isaac levels are generated to a slight extent
It's just shit
Nobody ever claimed otherwise

...

BoI is pretty shit with how items are weighted so you rarely ever get fun combos, and some combos are completely impossible. Anti-birth is a pretty okay mod though. The newest official 5 dollar dlc fucking ruins the game with the portals and stone fatties.

The item weighting is a good thing, it prevents you from just being OP as fuck all the time, and a lot of item combos can just override other items you have. If it wasn't weighted it would feel more samey as brimstone + mom's knife overrides almost every other tear effect in the game. I will agree with you on the newest DLC. I refunded that hot garbage immediately.

Yeah, but when you're trying to unlock the last few things, and you need to beat the levels quickly in order to do that, you can spend dozens of hours without accomplishing anything. Gets mundane as fuck fast. Not to mention, it's not just hat certain items are very rare, but others are very common. Many items show up way too often, making things even more monotonous. Also, relying on bullshit RNG with a 1/fuckhuge number chance to spawn that new thing you just worked to unlock is garbage.

its all the same shit
fun

So you you just go into the thread to post offtopic shit? Talk about massive idiots.


Really?

Dorfs has no win condition, and no lose condition (even a fortress where everyone is killed can be retaken over by a new embark so it's not a true Game Over) so it cannot be a "game". You're right that it is a toy, and the use of procedural generation in it only works because it's so simple.

Chess is a game, legos are not. Synonym means similar, not necessary equivalent.

Is this your first time on imageboards? Did you came straight out from some 2006 forums to think that this question has any weight? Please refrain from posting until you acquire some common sense.

every single game you will play until you decide to stop. does it really matter if you keep going back to the same save file?

Don't you think that it's somewhat ironic that you have to tell someone how being a shitter is perfectly fine and that he should, in fact, only post if he becomes one? Not that "2006 forums" were some promised land, but current year AIBs are sewage filters, for the most part.

Depends entirely on the game. You can have a game with stupidly narrow and well defined sequence of actions needed to take in order to succeed or you could have a fully random game with wiggle room to test the flexibility of the player rather than their memory. Movement patter could be reflected on one part of the enemy (let's say it is a shape, hull shape defines movement) and another part of the enemy could defined the bullet fired (front cannons or whatever), the game could mix-match parts and then give you a random spawn on top.
Not having a chance to win is not necessarily a bad thing, it depends on how the game uses defeat (you could get to keep some sort of progress and dying could be a natural part of building up your path to whatever ultimate goal you have in the game).

Big developers really want procedurally generation because they can just use a algorithm to make "huge open worlds" and "infinite dungeons" but really it's just so they can cut staff. No more level designers just get a handful of modelers to make a bunch of "tiles" and stick them together.

Indi developers like it because it can cut years of development because no longer must they play test a whole world after building(U+200B was here) it, and then bug fix it.

So short answer, buzzwords and it makes it cheaper.

Remember when memetical generation was only starting to became a mainstream thing and .kkrieger was a thing?

That'd be a really shitty roguelike.

I'm not telling anyone to be a shitter, I'm telling to get a grasp of what's happening around you and stop pulling me in an argument I don't want to be a part of. How hard to get is that?
More over, it's exceptionally infantile to expect a discussion on the topic to not delve into other related topics, it's like you don't even know how simple act of talking works. That's what I've tried to say with "2006 forums".

I'm pretty happy playing random maps in Master of Magic for decades already. There is absolutely nothing new to me in the game I haven't seen yet, and that doesn't bother me in the slightest.

...

ayo hol up is this the game which actually simulates the whole planet? How does this game fare on toasters anyway?

Yes. If you 100% a JRPG and you start a new save file, you are unlocking and doing mostly the same shit over again. If you start fresh with Dorf and Legos, you're generally doing some completely new.


No. A perfect run must be possible or I will have an aneurysm. Not being able to avoid taking Mindflayer/Winter Lantern damage in BB aggravated the hell out of me until I found out there was a trick to it. Poison swamps still irk me.

It is stupidly well optimized considering what it does. Very GPU bound, as long as your GPU isn't complete garbage it will do alright. It's on OpenGL, AMD performance isn't as good as it should.

Yes, it is autism.

Adventure mode almost always quickly gives you some direction. If you're too soft in the head to find a worthy goal interactive electronic entertainment may not be your thing.

I think there's nothing inherently wrong with proc gen, rather how it's used and if it works with the existing gameplay. Some will use it as an excuse for level design by generating a noise map and placing tiles accordingly. That's shit.
I think a good way to use it is to put together different pre-made map pieces, like Spelunky or Vagante, and using a rough level base. That way you still get a good degree of randomization, without the gameplay suffering for it.

Same thing. It's a toy, not a game. I'm not saying it's bad or that you can't make up your own goals, but doing so is no different than making up goals with legos.

With the ammount of work modern games put on useless flair and detail, making maps that would rape your favourite game levels would be easy as fuck. but gamers are retarded and just want to go from point A to B as fast as possible and watch the next cutscene.

Look at the new Dude sex, we could have sandbox games with whole cities with everything acessible if the devs just put time into it.

he is right
that means the map would be fixed you retard ,not the events or the locations that appear on it nor the frequency that those may appear or not

Level design is much more than just pre-placing geometry. There's a lot more that goes into it, especially at the professional level. Like every level in Ratchet and Clank for instance was planned out with a graph and various forms of concept art before it was created for the game.

There are very subtle aspects of level design not a lot of people are aware about that separate good levels from shitty amateur ones. Things like flow and conveyance. Like how it feels to run around the levels and if the level is adequately telling you where to go. In a lot of custom levels for games players just do things like make the hallways too small which makes players feel claustrophobic. Or they make your objectives in really strange areas that players had no idea they were supposed to go to. This sort of thing requires lots of playtesting and is a very time consuming process to make areas in a game seem memorable.

You'll find what separates good level designers from shitty amateur ones is how much planning they do.

all im hearing you say is that devs are about pandering to retards

Yes, really
Isaac has a bunch of simple pre-made rooms put together on a grid to make a floor
Rooms can be empty little squares, or they can be cluttered big squares with lots of one or two types of enemies
Oh, but don't forget those L-shaped rooms and I-shaped rooms, those were clearly a major addition that took the game in an entirely different direction

I mean I have a hard time mentally separating Isaac from Dorf Forts that's how drastic and complex this level generation is, it's a far cry from something like Necropolis which does the exact same thing but in 3D, and everyone hates 3D which must be why people universally hate that game's level gen- they just didn't have the prophet-like vision to make a game the way the greatest game dev to have ever lived Edmund McMillen would

There's plenty of games with shit conveyance that I've played. Like if you play something like Marathon you'll notice how easy it is to get lost in that game due to how mazelike the levels are. By comparison in something like Doom there was usually a clear direction you were supposed to go in.

You guys are full of shit. You might have a leg to stand on if the only genre you play is sandbox or simulation. Anyone who plays real time games where terrain is actually a factor and isn't something to be bent to your whims will tell you that it doesn't work for everything.
Platformers, shooters, action/adventure, horror, racers, etc. will always perform better with handcrafted level designs over procedural. Games like Dwarf Fortress work well with procedural because you have to tools to mold everything in your environment to your needs. In a sense, the level generation of Dwarf Fortress is somewhat arbitrary when you consider that, as long as the embark spot matches your parameters, you can make nearly any location work out. This does not apply to other genres where level design is something that makes or breaks your enjoyment of the game.

Marathon is such an odd duck level design-wise, especially 2, which although generally better than the first game, focused a lot more on exploration. You frequently ended up with levels where you don't even have to go through like half of it. One level in particular even gave you a dotted route to follow if you wanted to complete it ASAP while the level itself was huge. You might sometimes find some hidden ammo and shit while exploring, but it's often lost on the enemies you encounter. If I remember correctly, this was the Cathedral level where you had to go around the level like this. Aside from the directions given to you by the text terminals, the levels don't always do a good job of pointing you in the right direction. This is especially made more confusing if you consider Marathon is crafted in 4D space where certain level spaces overlap with eachother, which makes the automap rather difficult to read.

You've sort of got a point, mostly
Tracks in racing games usually aren't very complex, more about artstyle and maybe a simple gimmick than anything else

Spelunky ranks among many people's favorite platformers ever

Eldritch is a piece of shit that seems like it was thrown together over a weekend for some sort of gamejam but it's the scariest game I've played in a long time
Granted, I fucking hate horror games

There are plenty of good 2D shooters with procedural generation, 3D is a different story but maybe stuff like Spire can turn the trend around on that

And it'd be pretty fucking sick if a company like Platinum or FROM made a serious attempt at a 3D Gauntlet-style game

No, it's either cats, or death by attrition from carp or sponges.

there better be a radically different game than the one i'm thinking about otherwise i hate to be the bearer of bad news but you may be experiencing the early stages of autism

What
It's nothing like minecraft

He's obviously referring to the graphical style.

That only applies to the blocks in the environment
And even if it looked exactly like minecraft that wouldn't make it a minecraft clone

procedural generation doesn't need to be random. You could have procedural generation that yields the same thing every time.

Like the sort of technomancy used to fit .kkrieger in less than 98kb.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.kkrieger

Procedural generation isn't bad, you usually don't notice it unless it fucks up. Look at Path of Exile, Dominions 4 and Factorio.

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