Hard Light Productions Forums
Off-Topic Discussion => Gaming Discussion => Topic started by: Luis Dias on December 09, 2013, 01:06:55 pm
-
So there's this new thing making an appearance with this trailer.
Ahhh yeah.
I like it!
-
Very kitchen sink-y. I like the art but I don't understand why so many developers these days seem to think gluing a space sim to an FPS is the holy grail of game design.
-
You can have your cake and the shooter brosephs too?
-
"Every atom procedural"
....
The very first words in the trailer, and possibly one of the boldest, most ambitious statements I've yet seen in game design. My jury's still out on how smart/stupid/ambitious/crazy/feasible the procedural generation is, but I will say that I really like the art style.
One actual minor quibble: I'm not convinced that the displayed footage is actually coming from in-game, since the HUD doesn't update at all during the clip. Hopefully that's just an oversight, because if the game can do what is displayed and implicitly promoted, it'll likely be a technical marvel.
-
So... do I get to make nukes? The whole atom thing sounds more like a "poetic" description of the whole system. (Probably very small cells)
-
"Every atom procedural"
....
The very first words in the trailer, and possibly one of the boldest, most ambitious statements I've yet seen in game design. My jury's still out on how smart/stupid/ambitious/crazy/feasible the procedural generation is, but I will say that I really like the art style.
Ohhhh dear. Procedural generation's such an indie buzzword these days that when I hear the term all I can think of are the all-too-frequent pitfalls that ensnare designers who go to it as the One True Solution to content generation.
-
They've said very little about it actually, so I'm still suspicious.
-
I am not suspicious, just curious. I am extremely conservative about trailers of anything really, I just wanted to share this interesting heads up.
If anything it's a neat concept and a good artistic direction. And if the Limit Theory guy can by himself do whatever it is he's doing right now, well it is in the realm of possibility that a whole team can do this kind of stuff.
If they can deliver it however it's a very different question. Wait and see!
-
My problem is the concept is just that -- neat. The kind of thing you'd chat about in idle conversation and say "oh yeah that would be awesome" because you don't have to confront all the problems of building one functioning game from your super comprehensive procedural generator once you've spent years perfecting it, let alone two.
-
They've said very little about it actually, so I'm still suspicious.
This.
As much as I'd like to be sold on this from that trailer, they actually showed very little in the way of interaction.
--
Ohhhh dear. Procedural generation's such an indie buzzword these days [...]
Indie-buzzword is such a snarky buzzword, these days.
I will say that good procedures (http://www.sea-of-memes.com/LetsCode1/LetsCode1.html) are rather difficult to come by in games touting the Procedurally Generated attribute, with developers usually using the term to mean 'simple randomization that fits together'. But there's no reason to throw the baby out with the bathwater (unless, you know, that's what you're into) over a term. 90% of everything is crap, after all.
-
Well we have a possibility that this is a little more than just chatting. Given the increasing pc performance and the amount of knowledge of procedural algorithms already existent out there, I don't find this as impressive an achievement at all. I think it's a matter of time until a game dev would be successful at it. It also strikes me as appropriate that is a small dev team trying this approach. An AAA dev team would try to do the "design everything by hand" approach.
-
Oh, hey. RPS link (http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013/12/09/first-look-no-mans-sky/#more-179362) with a more in-depth view.
::EDIT::
So, wait. It's not a multiplayer game. But if someone depletes a planet of a valuable resource, the same planet in my single-player game will also lose that resource?
:wtf:
Can I opt out of that ****?
-
Well we have a possibility that this is a little more than just chatting. Given the increasing pc performance and the amount of knowledge of procedural algorithms already existent out there, I don't find this as impressive an achievement at all. I think it's a matter of time until a game dev would be successful at it. It also strikes me as appropriate that is a small dev team trying this approach. An AAA dev team would try to do the "design everything by hand" approach.
The problem here isn't technical barriers, it's one of design focus. It's very, very easy to get sucked into procedural generation; to build some exquisite bottom-up framework for generating a world which the player will never interact with because they can only experience it as a static landscape, and then assume that a functioning game will just kind of drop out of that at the end. Opening the trailer with 'every atom procedural' does not inspire me with confidence that these people know to avoid that trap.
-
I don't understand why so many developers these days seem to think gluing a space sim to an FPS is the holy grail of game design.
It's quite simple, really... which is closer to the holodeck: a space sim, or a space sim where you can step out of your cockpit?
It should come as no surprise that this results in so many terrible games; as BloodEagle quoted below, 90% of everything is crud.
-
i take everything back this game has the best potential for griefing of anything ever made
-
i take everything back this game has the best potential for griefing of anything ever made
Might I ask why?
-
coz "procedural generation shenanigans" and a wide misanthropic view of humanity in general :D.
He sees a glass of water and not only dismisses the water that is inside of it (dishwasher detergent, no doubt), he will complaint that the glass is probably made of a plastic that was found on some hell hole of a garbage dump somewhere in Bangladesh.
And he's probably right! I just point out that there's a glass of water there that could have some potential, and I like water is all.
-
no i'm saying this because the environmental devastation you wreak upon the procedural shenanigans will be persistent and transmitted to other players. read the rps article, if you wipe out a species it's wiped out for everyone
-
It needs to be "genocide" for it to be transmitted at all.
And I think they'll work out the details of that thing. I think those kinds of spoken things are not to be taken canonly. I am perhaps even more skeptical than you on this! They'll see if it conveys a good gaming experience or not.
Really, that is the last thing on my mind that can break this thing. I am way more worried about the consistency of this procedural generated galaxy, they show a leaf, then a beach, then a island, then a planet, then several planets and asteroids and the whole galaxy is mentioned. And supposedly, any changes you made to the world will be "saved". Well. I see a lot of potential "SimCity" kind of shenanigans happening here. Or worse!
-
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013/12/10/interview-no-mans-sky-and-procedural-generation/#more-179478
We are designing a set of rules, we’re not designing a game, [...]
:wtf:
When a game designer tells you that the game he's making isn't a game, it's a very bad sign.
-
I understand what he's trying to say though. There's a difference between game design in games where you have to draw every single "level" and game designs where you just have to design the architecture of the game (and the "game" is the end result). His comments make sense in the "procedural generation" shtick.
-
And make no mistake: Having a procedural universe generator is just one part of the whole thing. There's still a lot of actual gameplay that has to be designed and tested before this is marketable; Something like the Universe Sandbox can get away with not really having gameplay, but a project like this (or Limit Theory) has to have compelling gameplay in addition to being this giant sandbox.
As mentioned in the interview, this is much the same approach to game design that Minecraft took. Instead of designing a world and gameplay systems that allow you to interact with that world, games like these separate the two. This means that unlike a game like, say, Mass Effect, where the world design is heavily influenced by the game design, here the connection between the two is much weaker.
-
What makes me excited about this is the art design direction. The "Journey" feeling it gives to me, uplifting and optimistic, even the music design is that way, really puts a smile in my face.
Also, I enjoyed this talk by their artist last year:
-
A good proceduraly generated space sim is long overdue. I just hope that with at least four such games in development (Elite: Dangerous, Limit theory, No mans sky, Infinity:Battlescape) someone will get it right..
-
As mentioned in the interview, this is much the same approach to game design that Minecraft took.
Not a very comforting comparison, as Minecraft was on the design level a total shambles. I think it's the main reason I'm so dour about all these procedural games being made nowadays.
-
"Not a very comforting comparison"
Just look at how minecraft was so amazingly badly received by anyone really.
-
And it did not have to be. Being the first virtual lego blocks on the block was the only real reason Minecraft survived, it had very little to do with its qualities as a game. Even now as a game the community's created far more viable mods than then Minecraft has ever been standalone.
It shouldn't make you feel good to be compared to Minecraft because the niche is filled and the room for people who can't work out how to make a game but stack blocks real good is gone by now.
Take Starbound as an example. They knew how things stood and they put much more effort into the game side of the house than earlier productions of the platforming construction sort because they knew that was running out of room.
-
I just disagree with you on the notion that lego isn't a game.
-
Legos are definitively toys, not games.
Not that I'm saying Minecraft isn't a game, mind you. (Although, I do feel like Minecraft is a much stronger toy than it is a game, and every update that tries to swing it in the other direction makes it a little less fun to play)
--
I suppose this could turn out one of two ways.
Either it's a really fun game that lasts for a year or so before the player-base completely ruins it or it's a well-done bit of simulation that gets boring after the first few minutes or hours.
My chief concern, as mentioned earlier, is the persistent and propagating changes feature. I'm pretty sure that that is going to be the most critical, potential point of failure
-
You may be right about that.
Personally, I detest this (unspoken but implicit) mental framework of "this ain no game it's a toy therefore its bad somehow". I loved Doom when it came out, but the really great moments of it (to me) were precisely before the game started out and just let me explore it. The grunty zombies and monsters were more of a distraction to overcome for me to get to more amazing vistas that this gorgeous engine was providing me with.
There are games right now that don't have "win states". And perhaps the purists hate that ****, I couldn't give a rat's ass about that. I think it's a disservice to games and toys and whatever that we constantly try to tunnell games into this really focused and short canvas of what is a game and what is not a game. Then the same people complain it's all about COD and whatever. Well what did you expect if you are so demanding of a perfect definition of what a game should be, how it should behave, the proper themes, etc.,etc.?
-
Toys aren't bad. Toys are fun.
But toys don't have rules, and games do.
That's pretty much the one thing everyone agrees on when fighting that meaningless battle over the definition.
I (personally) recognize that there is a distinction between Interactive Entertainment and Video Games, and that that isn't a good thing or a bad thing.
-
Toys have lots of rules. Lego is filled with rules. They just don't have any win states (although even this can be argued: one can definitely say that when you finish to make the model of the Lego that comes inside a box, then you "won" that game, but it's stretching quite a lot).
I wasn't ranting against your point, I think I agree with your concerns regarding this game (or toy or whatever).
I just hope someone makes a game like this eventually and it really works and it's awesome. OK, or a "TOY" or whatever!
-
Just look at how minecraft was so amazingly badly received by anyone really.
Because its basic gameplay mechanism is brilliant. The rest of the game, especially after late alpha? Not so much. I said 'on the design level' for a reason.
-
Minecraft needs design levels as bad as legos need gamerules which is to say not at all.
The problem with Minecraft was the very expectation that people insisted on having (including the creator himself) it as a "game" with "game mechanics" and all the traditional mindless stuff that everyone else had.
Nevermind about all that. I think this "No Man's Sky" is well designed from the start in that "win state" front. It's objective is to travel the galaxy from one corner to the other (or the center or wtv). This is a good starting point for a game win state, and it's really well suited for a game type that appreciates exploration and discovery. The theme is "journey" and although there's a clear purpose and objective to the game, you can go about it in any way you want and how fast or slow you want. I think that is real solid (as long there isn't any "time counter" to this).
Take Mass Effect 2 as a counter example. Although you could explore anything you wanted and choose to take any missions you liked, there was always this strange gap between the clock running thing on the plot and the "waste any time you want doing every single mission you want" thematics. Which kinda ruined the experience for me, who wants to waste time playing some stupid side game when THE WORLD IS ABOUT TO END? And yet we are both asked to take the clock seriously and stressfully and not at all, depending on the situation.
I think that if they take the approach that "Journey" gave (and extend it, naturally), I think they'll be really OK in this design level thing.
-
Because its basic gameplay mechanism is brilliant. The rest of the game, especially after late alpha? Not so much. I said 'on the design level' for a reason.
I was about to say, there once was a time when Minecraft was a very cool sandbox experience, where you had a vast world, and a set of tools that allowed you to leave your mark on it. By expanding the whole thing to include what amounts to endgame content, that cleanness was kinda ruined.
Ultimately, if you are going to go the Minecraft route of incrementally updating your game, I think it's a bad idea to leave people in the dark about what the actual, completed game is supposed to look like. I get the feeling that Mojang never started out with a good idea of what the finished game would look like, but just added stuff until it seemed "complete" to them; If these guys have a better plan, and if they are able to communicate that plan to us early on, I think some of that backlash that Minecraft suffered from can be avoided.
-
Minecraft needs design levels as bad as legos need gamerules which is to say not at all.
The problem with Minecraft was the very expectation that people insisted on having (including the creator himself) it as a "game" with "game mechanics" and all the traditional mindless stuff that everyone else had.
That's EXACTLY WHAT I'M SAYING. Minecraft's creative direction was, especially after late alpha/early beta, increasingly at odds with the thing that actually made it fun.
-
Oh sorry. Slightly awkward everytime I am aggressively agreeing with someone without realising it.
-
While I do agree that there were elements of Minecraft's later development that moved away from the initial sandbox focus, they never really actively took away from what was there previously, and even then there were additions of block and construction types along the way that allowed you to do more. I think that the most recent update, 1.7, is probably the biggest contribution to the sandbox in years, as there are now a myriad of new biomes to explore, and whole new classes of blocks to use.
-
While I do agree that there were elements of Minecraft's later development that moved away from the initial sandbox focus, they never really actively took away from what was there previously,
IMO they definitely did. The big one was the revamp of the terrain generation for the adventure update which really dulled the joy of exploration by making the world a patchwork of largely-identical biomes and sprawling, tedious setpieces; but there were other things too. A lot of fruitful corner-cases in the engine were removed: boatvators were greatly nerfed, and all the weird and wonderful intricacy of boosters was replaced with a bland, simplistic facsimile (and nobody bothered to fix the fun solution, powered minecarts, for well over two years!). Oh, and how could I forget the hunger system, a mechanic which actively punishes free exploration. I might just be speaking from nostalgia here but Minecraft delivered best on its potential somewhere around beta 1.2 and 1.5 for me.
-
As far as No Man's Sky itself goes, today's Diecast (http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=21815) has a segment on it (at 48 minutes in). I can't listen to it right now but Shamus Young is the official internet procedural generation guy so I'm sure he'll have something worthwhile to say about it (the errant signal guy is also there if you like him).
-
I think there is some nostalgia, or at least personal preference, going on there, but I think this thread was already derailed enough as-is, so we should probably drop the topic.
-
As far as No Man's Sky itself goes, today's Diecast (http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=21815) has a segment on it (at 48 minutes in). I can't listen to it right now but Shamus Young is the official internet procedural generation guy so I'm sure he'll have something worthwhile to say about it (the errant signal guy is also there if you like him).
Wouldn't find this any other way, thanks I'll curiously listen to this.
/Done. Bah, irrelevant ignorant discussion about... ahhh... podcast shenanigans? k.
-
-snip-
So, wait. It's not a multiplayer game. But if someone depletes a planet of a valuable resource, the same planet in my single-player game will also lose that resource?
:wtf:
Can I opt out of that ****?
What if you disconnected your computer from the internet after downloading, or modified your HOSTS file?
-
Being the first virtual lego blocks on the block was the only real reason Minecraft survived
"First virtual lego blocks on the block" would most certainly not be Minecraft (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockland) (and that wasn't even the first, either).
-
Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuc k :(
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/130830-No-Mans-Sky-and-Joe-Danger-Developer-Hello-Games-Suffers-Flood
Goddamn, loosing all your work on Christmas' eve has to be the ****tiest way to loose all of your work.
-
They didn't lose their work, they lost their hardware.
-
According to GameStar, a German gaming print magazine, they did lose some crucial harddrives along with their backups when their hardware got flooded. The only thing unclear remains how big of a setback it was and if we are talking just a few days or quite a bit of weeks of progress.
-
Being the first virtual lego blocks on the block was the only real reason Minecraft survived
"First virtual lego blocks on the block" would most certainly not be Minecraft (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockland) (and that wasn't even the first, either).
wow... that looks..more impressive than Minecraft.
but it seems it has no other gameplay elements other than building
-
Josh Parnell, developer of Limit Theory:
I have watched it many times now, and after this many watches, there's one thing of which I'm sure: it's going to be a fun game. For some reason, every time I watch the video, I just think, "these devs really have a good handle on fun." Everything just looks fun. Hard to explain, but it feels as though every detail of the game is centered around giving the user a fun experience, from the beautiful planet surfaces to, for example, the short amount of time that it takes to get back into space, to having ships gratuitously flying through the atmosphere, to blasting holes in things, to the obviously-Frank-Hebert-inspired sand worms :D
I go out on a limb and declare these games (Terraria, Limit Theory, No Man's Sky, heck even Minecraft, etc.) as the frontrunners of a new paradigm in games onwards, ones that react and go to the opposite direction of the most common Stanley Parable types of games, where every single narrative, twist and interaction with the game has been thoroughfully pre-written on a railtrack.
I am probably hyping this too much and am absolutely sure the skeptics will burn me by saying this. I am also pretty aware of the huge heterogeneity in games right now. However, I've been burying my thoughts into a "lets see" for too long and I have to put into words what is in my heart.
When I saw Limit Theory for the first time, I began to wonder whether if there's a good alternative to the usual multimillion process of creating gaming titles that will always take the safe route, but when I saw that NMS trailer, it hit me right in the gut. This is the exact same feeling I had when I first saw Doom on a computer. Regardless of any gameplay shenanigans that could have occurred in that game, I was instantly mesmerized with the possibilities that the engine was providing us with.
This new generation of games, that I will still take as intermediate towards a paradise of my own imagination, has turned possible due to several recent tools, like the great processing power available to us now or the existence of Kickstarter and other kinds of venues for indie projects.
In my imagination I foresee a new level of gaming, one where gaming design is more of a design of rules of the game as well as the rules of how the world is built, including rules on how characters should act and speak. And then the computer does the rest. Imagine NPCs actually reacting without script to whatever it is you are doing and saying, and behaving on their own with their own attitudes and agendas. Throw out thrilled railtracks and bring back exploration, discovery, actual surprise.
-
I don't think you're wrong at all. I think the curated game narrative will probably still have a place, but personally I suspect that the real strides in game storytelling and design will come from exactly the angle you're highlighting - games that provide rule sets to generate a system.
-
I think you completely missed the point of The Stanley Parable.
-
No, I think he got the point of The Stanley Parable.
-
this is not even close to a 'new paradigm', simcity came out in the eighties for ****'s sake
-
There are many game genres, and although I can see your point regarding simcity and both its "procedural generating" stuff and the simulation part, I don't think simcity fits here. We are talking about a first person non railroad track exploration experience, not an "I'm god now" (or manager) stuff.
I was quite enamored with simcity spinoffs back in the early 90s. SimFarm, Sim Earth, Pizza Tycoon, Railroad Tycoon and of course Transport Tycoon (my favorite)... I still remember rollercoaster tycoon and some similar games like that. I'm not talking about those things.
-
-snip-
In my imagination I foresee a new level of gaming, one where gaming design is more of a design of rules of the game as well as the rules of how the world is built, including rules on how characters should act and speak. And then the computer does the rest. Imagine NPCs actually reacting without script to whatever it is you are doing and saying, and behaving on their own with their own attitudes and agendas. Throw out thrilled railtracks and bring back exploration, discovery, actual surprise.
I immediately thought of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. when I read this.
-
Well, the whole thing that crossed my mind is probably not a view that it's healthy discussing in here, but here we go...
Basically, this sort of thing seems to me to be very similar what Derek Smart had in mind when he was developing BC3000 etc, an open world where the player could define their own experience within it, you could even throw that kind of mentality back to Elite, though there was far more roaming and far less interaction involved in that case, and rumours of non-existent ships also kept people searching the game. The problem the BC series faced was that the hardware simply wasn't up to the envisioned job, so what came out was a compromise between the desire of the creator and the ability of the system.
What I think we've seen in the last few years of the evolution of possibility with regards to this sort of game. It's still finding its feet, but the increase in speed and flexibility means that systems are far more capable of realizing the procedural sandbox dream. I don't think it's quite settled down yet, right now, the ability to generate several billion slightly similar worlds seems more important than being able to generate a few thousand unique ones, but without actually playing this game, I cannot say whether this really addresses that as it claims or not.
-
There are many game genres, and although I can see your point regarding simcity and both its "procedural generating" stuff and the simulation part, I don't think simcity fits here. We are talking about a first person non railroad track exploration experience, not an "I'm god now" (or manager) stuff.
Oh, OK, I see what you mean now. I wouldn't classify those games as having a procedural 'narrative', though: they don't really have any narrative or storytelling aspect at all, just a personal record of exploration.
-
No they don't, at least yet. That's one of my pipe dreams waiting to be accomplished. Perhaps. Some day. And I think it all starts with this mode of thinking and departing the whole Stanley Parable game design book.
-
See, the thing for me personally is, while I can certainly appreciate the advances in procedural design that have been made, and I've put who knows how many hours' worth of fun innto Minecraft over the years, I still much prefer a tightly-scripted linear gaming experience (like FS2, for instance) over a "get dropped in a sandbox and do whatever the hell you want" affair. I take more value out of seeing some specific design realized than in having to make my own fun, but again, that's just my personal tastes. I do think we still have a long way to go overall, including some absolutely massive advances in game AI, before a procedural game could produce anywhere near the amount of immersion that a completely-scripted one would.
-
Well, the closest I've seen to procedural 'storytelling' as such is what appears to be emerging with Dwarf Fortress, where full histories are developed for characters in pre-game generation. I suppose, in a way, the problem with storytelling is that our AI technology needs to advance about as far as our parallel processing has, in other words a story is as much about the NPC reactions to a situation as the situation itself. At some point it always has to fall back to some kind of scripted behavior, and the lower level in the AI that script occupies, the more predictable the overall pattern becomes (as an example, think Mass Effect 2 vs Skyrim).
-
Reading this discussion on emergent storytelling as opposed to just procedural stuff, I am reminded of the Mount & Blade games.
They provide a very solid framework of gameplay and rules, but also have established characters, places, and relationships all in play by the time you start. From there, you're free to take your character on any number of routes, finding interesting situations and making your own stories. All it takes is a little bit of imagination to impose your narrative over the events unfolding (much like we're all doing with the various LPs over the years).
-
Reading this discussion on emergent storytelling as opposed to just procedural stuff, I am reminded of the Mount & Blade games.
They provide a very solid framework of gameplay and rules, but also have established characters, places, and relationships all in play by the time you start. From there, you're free to take your character on any number of routes, finding interesting situations and making your own stories. All it takes is a little bit of imagination to impose your narrative over the events unfolding (much like we're all doing with the various LPs over the years).
Someone said Mount&Blade ... oh the joy!!! So I'm not the only one loving that series around here.
Emergent storytelling indeed is one big thing for the future. But I believe it will stay in a niche. Growing, yes, but never quite overcoming scripted storytelling. For emergent storytelling, you need imagination. That is not always as easy as it was. If you don't believe me, try playing Wasteland1 again. ;)
-
I think your insights are all right of course. There's still a bit of a blur in my head to what is really changing here. I do think it's more than just creating tools that empower a developer to do his own game with a lot less resources at hand, although that's probably the majority of it. The idea that AAA games have to spend hundreds of millions of dollars into production with hundreds of top designers, artists and coders and then have to sell at least 5 to 10 million copies to get profitable is hurting the landscape of games massively. Top suits begin to take control of the game direction and no wonder most of the AAA titles have been borefests from planet Mediocria, dumbed down and homogeneously idiocratic. Hey, just like Hollywood!
I long for the creative destruction that will wash away this mess. And the only way to do it is precisely to create intelligent and thoughtful procedural (or not) generating code that will outsource the biggest workloads in the design and creative process. Again, it's a pipe dream, just like having a real strong AI, for instance, but I think that if a pathway of babysteps with great benefits all the way up is found and cared for, then it will become a reality.
This is why I compare this with Doom. 3D already existed in previous games, but this was the ice on the cake that showed how it could work and how it could scale to the fidelity we have nowadays to the point that you didn't need to be a brilliant genius to "get it". They all got it and started doing little things that complemented each other and improved the 3D experience one baby step at a time. And now we have Frostbyte, UE4 or Crytek, etc.
The only way it will work this way however is if a game like NMS or some ulterior title really blows away the mind of everyone who plays it long enough to make the point. And the fact that this game looks like fun incarnated is extremely important in that direction.
-
Well, I'm with Mongoose on this one. Yes, this whole new area of game development is nice and exciting, but I don't believe it will wipe away everything else, or even that it should. Surely the gaming market is large enough to accommodate both big lowest-common-denominator games and small indie efforts?
I mean, I likes me some big budget AAA stuff. Games like Uncharted, or Tomb Raider, or Mass Effect, or The Last Of Us, or Saint's Row. I would be sad if that mode of storytelling would just vanish into thin air.
-
Yes well I love Mass Effect. Love it. But the thing is, have you looked at their game design process? Just the VA is mind boggling.
Now they do want to scale that up. For instance they proudly state that the entire Citadel DLC from ME3 has more options, choices, dialogues, etc than the entirety of one of their previous games. Now consider the madness of that, and think about why was the plot of ME so tightly knitted, so hard to disentangle. Why ME2 suffered from all that "Now you are in a terrorist org and that's just great!" and had to continuously endure what was a railtrack experience with some tonal differences, when we were promised a world of "deep choices and deep consequences".
Do you honestly believe they can scale this up? Already in ME2 they had to "pimp it up" with awkward details (like boobs, "slut walks" and dumbed down gags and plots) to make people more "willing" to buy it (wink wink). Perhaps this is always a tendency in any capitalist endeavour, you always tend to sell out in minor ways then bigger ways (the whole ME3 is to me a big sellout towards the "safe zone" of "post-apocalyptic" landscapes), but I also think it's a side effect of the bloatization of the game design process.
Because I wonder. Mass Effect introduced really top notch tech regarding faces and eyes, etc.... but can it live up to LA Noire, for example? No, of course not. So should the next titles live up to those things? Well, regardless of what I or you might feel, I think they will try it, bloating even more the process (now it's not only about VA, or "arms and legs" motion tracking, it's also about tracking your ****ing micro-expressions and what not). If they don't, they'll be left in the dust in some way (compare the trailers of the new Witcher to the new Dragon Age... already DA looks "dated" ahhh shmucks. that can't bode well!). I think this trend is a suicidal one.
So I really do think they'll need a massive creative destructive blow from a different angle.
-
Yes, but how does that translate into procedurally generated, mechanics-driven games taking over the entire industry?
There's always going to be a market for the big loud modern military shooter, or its descendants. There's always going to be people like me who will want to have a superbly crafted, entirely planned out experience a la TLoU or the other games I mentioned.
Now we have this new wave of game design, which concentrates on getting that big cool experience without having to invest tons of money into designing every single piece of the puzzle. There's certainly a place and an audience for those too, hell, I count myself in it, but does that automatically mean that all other forms of gaming should die? Or that the industry has to contract so much that it loses the ability to deliver the Mass Effects or Uncharteds or Gears of Wars?
Most of these projects, like No Man's Sky or Limit Theory or Enemy Starfighter are passion projects, made not to appeal to the broadest possible audience, but built to be the ideal experience for a small targeted group. Which is totally cool, it's not like we're doing anything different in this place, after all. But if all of gaming were to be like that, I fear that we would be losing a lot of common ground in the greater gaming community. Fewer shared experiences, as it were.
For me, it comes down to this: I don't care if a game was made by a lone man in a cave, programming stuff by tying bits of art and code to carrier pidgeons, or whether it was made by a big multinational corporation that spent the budget of a mid-sized city on it. All I care about is "Am I having fun playing this", and so far, I have to say that I can't honestly tell you whether I had more fun playing Hotline Miami, or something like GTA San Andreas.
-
Yes, but how does that translate into procedurally generated, mechanics-driven games taking over the entire industry?
Oh no, I think it doesn't quite do it like that. It should be something different than either Stanley or NMS. It would be something that could be manageable, directable, but also surprising and un-railroading.
There's always going to be a market for the big loud modern military shooter, or its descendants. There's always going to be people like me who will want to have a superbly crafted, entirely planned out experience a la TLoU or the other games I mentioned.
Yes, well I caveated this particular speculation with the admission that games are and should be heterogeneous.
Now we have this new wave of game design, which concentrates on getting that big cool experience without having to invest tons of money into designing every single piece of the puzzle. There's certainly a place and an audience for those too, hell, I count myself in it, but does that automatically mean that all other forms of gaming should die? Or that the industry has to contract so much that it loses the ability to deliver the Mass Effects or Uncharteds or Gears of Wars?
Most of these projects, like No Man's Sky or Limit Theory or Enemy Starfighter are passion projects, made not to appeal to the broadest possible audience, but built to be the ideal experience for a small targeted group. Which is totally cool, it's not like we're doing anything different in this place, after all. But if all of gaming were to be like that, I fear that we would be losing a lot of common ground in the greater gaming community. Fewer shared experiences, as it were.
This is a whole separate discussion, one where I don't really disagree with at all. When I refer to a certain shift of paradigm I refer to certain waves of change that do affect several entertainment industries, whether we like it or not. For instance, DOOM forever changed the landscape of games; HBO changed the landscape of TV series; CGI changed Hollywood, etc., etc. And these waves of change always start from the ground up. The big projects always aim for something safely profitable, and wouldn't touch this "procedural generating" stuff ever. GTA was done by a really small crazy dev studio, for example, and it did change the gaming landscape too.
I kinda compare this NMS experience vs say Tomb Raider or TLoU with for instance the DOOM experience vs the "point and click" movie games from the early 90s. While Doom was really inferior to the "narrative" and "plot" and the whole "immersive" experience of us being inside a kind of a movie, DOOM offered us total freedom of space with our camera. And while "point and click" still remains with us, guess what kind of game was the more important regarding the gaming industry ever since?
For me, it comes down to this: I don't care if a game was made by a lone man in a cave, programming stuff by tying bits of art and code to carrier pidgeons, or whether it was made by a big multinational corporation that spent the budget of a mid-sized city on it. All I care about is "Am I having fun playing this", and so far, I have to say that I can't honestly tell you whether I had more fun playing Hotline Miami, or something like GTA San Andreas.
Well this is handwaving about fun. Which is fine, I guess. My particular version of "fun" is something that strives for different experiences. "Fun" isn't disconnected from my more intellectual parts of the brain, for instance. Yeah, Hotline Miami seems really fun and "edgy" but it bores me too. I played "that game" with the original GTA and GTA2. Fifteen years ago.
-
PS: Curiously as a small evidence here's a small list of "upcoming" space sim games made in nov 2013 (yeah it included X Rebirth), and the thing that caugtht my attention was how so many of them mention this procedural stuff in really different ways. The quality and style vary quite a lot, but that's a really good thing.
-
I think the thing is, there is a kind of 'Theory of Everything' about gaming out there, whether you are calculating a mathematical equation, or simply pulling a card off a shuffled deck, whether you are driving a Tank towards and enemy base or simply typing 'Go North', whether the challenge is roll the entire world into a moon sized ball within a time limit, or to rescue the Presidents' family within a time limit, there are certain parameters that must be, if not met, at least acknowledged.
However, a simple randomization of those values does not assure a coherent or enjoyable result, there needs to be underlying 'guidelines' to direct those parameters so that they work in tandem with each other and make a theme, there's always going to need to be some kind of programmer-defined control to the algorithm (hence the procedure in procedural).
The closest I've seen to 'mainstream' procedural generation is work by Will Wright or Sid Meier, which quite often using a mixture of pre-generated and semi-randomly generated content such as in Spore. I think the problem with larger distribution companies is that what they think they are is the equivalent to a movie studios producing blockbuster CGI movies that the player just happens to be involved in. There's nothing wrong with that at all, it's fun, but in those situations you can control everything, the music, the lighting, the dialogue etc to present a specific mood and draw the player in, to me it's not so much about the game itself, which is often simplistic and based on a very old gaming model, but rather the experience of playing it.
I do think we are a long long way from a procedural-based system being able to create that level of emotional investment in its own stories, there's a big difference between the two types that needs to be bridged. Players of story-led games expect the story to finish and be resolved at some point, procedural gamers basically want the opposite.
-
That's why I brought the point and click movie games in the 90s. I remember playing some in my friend's house (I can't recall the titles) and they were amazing. Real actors, real sets, great adventures, really immersive, etc. Doom offered a really dumbed down experience in relation to that. But at the same time it was something so profoundly different and adventurous, that asked you to look at that world with your own eyes and movement and camera, that it completely blew away the other genre. The first was costly and cumbersome in the making, the second was trivial by comparison once you have the tech.
As you are right, the hard thing is to create the right tech, the right "procedures", the right design methodologies, the right level designs that come with that kind of tech. No longer about designing levels or particular puzzles but rules of levels and generators of puzzles. This is obviously the big question in these kinds of games, will the programmers be able to sucessfully create a "generator" of fun? Of diversity, not numbness, of creativity, not bore?
It's like designing not the thing itself, but the meta-thing. It's a different kind of design, but nevertheless should be done with the same spirit.
I dream of the equivalent of Mass Effect that will be truly exploration based, intelligent and interactive.
-
Just wanted to add, the other reason large companies are less likely to get involved in this sort of thing is that their bottom line counts on people buying their new releases. If you create a game that is capable of generating content to a high level, then you are lengthening the play-life of that game by a vast amount, which in modern commercial thinking is considered a bad idea.
I'm not certain I agree with that position, since a lot of these companies rose to prominence primarily on one or two titles (Rockstar, Bethesda, even Blizzard - not that all these companies are necessarily prime examples of this, Blizzard DO use procedural generation in Diablo for example, and Bethesda are obviously incredibly fond of their entire series), but that seems to be what the general marketing opinion is for a large swathe of the entertainment industry.
-
This game is a stunner, absolutely beautiful. Congrats to Hello Games for these shots I only hope the game lives up to them!
-
Is on PS3 as well?
-
Nope. There's no way to make a game with No Man's Sky's scope within the confines of the PS3 (and there's also the small issue of Hello Games being a small indie dev without the ressources to make a port to a different hardware anyway)
-
The PS logo threw me, I understand :nod:
-
Just wanted to add, the other reason large companies are less likely to get involved in this sort of thing is that their bottom line counts on people buying their new releases. If you create a game that is capable of generating content to a high level, then you are lengthening the play-life of that game by a vast amount, which in modern commercial thinking is considered a bad idea.
Not really true.
-
Procedurally generated content and hand crafted / storytelling based content are entirely different niches that can and will hold their own.
While procedurally generated content can provide enticing "playgrounds" they have about as much a chance generating an "enticing story" on their own as a chatbot has writing a new bestseller. I.e. None.
Saying the one would replace the other sounds as silly to me as saying people will stop reading books because they are playing Lego now.
i.e.: Entirely different experiences.
-
Yeah, procedural content is not all that threatening because players do get bored with it unless it hits a very specific note.
-
Procedurally generated content and hand crafted / storytelling based content are entirely different niches that can and will hold their own.
While procedurally generated content can provide enticing "playgrounds" they have about as much a chance generating an "enticing story" on their own as a chatbot has writing a new bestseller. I.e. None.
Saying the one would replace the other sounds as silly to me as saying people will stop reading books because they are playing Lego now.
i.e.: Entirely different experiences.
Note, there's nothing stopping you from writing a hand-crafted, complex story set in a mostly procedurally-generated world, with locations and such partially randomized. Case in a point: TES: Daggerfall. An absolutely titanic world (the size of England), huge, convulated storyline and thousands of procedurally generated sidequests. I haven't seen anything like it since, but it's right at the "golden mean" of procedural/handcrafted dilemma. I think that's the way to go, TBH. High-quality procedural-generation with restrictions put on it so it always generates a world in which the plot can happen. Important locations can be hand-crafted, though one needs to be careful as not to make it too obvious. Generic, randomized NPCs mixed with unique ones are already a common approach, and this can easily extend into the whole game world.
That said, I don't know of any game besides Daggerfall that would fully take advantage of incredible power of this approach. Maybe because actually creating such a game would be a huge challenge, and Daggerfall also exemplifies potential pitfalls of this approach. Namely, it's very hard to test, balance and anticipate every possible interaction of world and story, which can create unexpected situations. Also, to fully take advantage of such a world, the story should not be lineal and allow the player significant freedom. Daggerfall pulled that off (the main quest tree is as wide as it's tall :) ), but it's hard and somewhat unrewarding for the devs (you know that most people probably won't see half the work you done due to branching).
-
PS4 Went ahead and took one of the few games I had any interest in years hostage. Damn it, by the time it goes PC, if it does, it will probably be beyond my interest horizon...
-
I'd say that Dwarf Fortress adventure mode dwarfs (pun not intended) Daggerfall, but Daggerfall is a great example of the strengths and weaknesses of procedural generation.
It's also a case where a combo (main quest and capitals hand made, rest of world is mostly procedural) would have worked best. But "theme park" world design seems to have taken over most RPGs.
Still, imagine Skyrim's art assets used in a Daggerfall style world generation...
-
I'd say that Dwarf Fortress adventure mode dwarfs (pun not intended) Daggerfall, but Daggerfall is a great example of the strengths and weaknesses of procedural generation.
There's only a mild difference in capability between the systems these two games were built on. Dwarf Fortress also doesn't even bother with permanent generated cities and dungeons. As far as I know, there isn't a single city/dungeon/whatever that every single Dwarf Fortress world shares, which is the whole point of Dragon's post.
tl;dr Daggerfall isn't 100% procedurally generated and that's a good thing.
-
Exactly my point. Procedural generation can't do everything, but it doesn't have to be used for everything, either. A fully procedural game like Dwarf Fortress or Evochron Mercenary has to capture player by gameplay only - there's no place to experience a story. On the other hand, it's perfectly possible to set a story in a mostly procedural world. It can range from a scripted main quest with randomized locations to a handmade world built "on top" of the procedural engine. And I wish more games were like that. Another neat trick is running a procedural generator once and then fixing the seed, meaning you can make a handmade event/environment in a procedural (but nor randomized) location.
Still, imagine Skyrim's art assets used in a Daggerfall style world generation...
Believe me, I did. :) This was kind of what I hoped for for TES: Online, but it doesn't seem to live up to these expectations (well, that, and it's a bloody expensive subscription. Hopefully it'll go FTP someday before it dies...), at least, not yet. Skyrim's radiant quest mechanic already resembles what Arena and Daggerfall could do - namely, randomly generate minor, if a bit repetitive quests. While making cities the size of those in Daggerfall might be a bit beyond today's hardware (remember how many inhabitants they had!), it should be possible at some point in the future to match the scale of Daggerfall with then-modern graphics.
-
(http://v.cdn.cad-comic.com/comics/cad-20140613-fcec5.png)
-
http://www.joshandjayshow.com/nomansskybeta/
-
http://www.joshandjayshow.com/nomansskybeta/
:yes:
Got three reds in a row ;7
-
Looks pretty but what's the actual gameplay. The starfighter combat didn't seem that compelling.
Will wait and see.
-
The thing with the game is that sounds suspicious that a small company like Hello Games with no experience in anything like this will decide to go and build his own game engine to make the game, that does not make sence to me.
It looks like Unity to me, hell it even has the same particles fog/sun effects and 2D grass like Planet Explorers.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1bXANFZkcO4
1:14 you can see the grass is a "2D always face me".
-
It's definitely not Unity. And it's definitely homemade. Even if it used Unity they would have had to build a lot of technology on top of it (the procedural "no loading screen" stuff).
You speak as if people are incapable of producing 3d engines, it's not that hard to do, a lot of documentation is available nowadays. A lot of libraries are available. Look at the Limit Theory dude, who is barely an adult and yet he single headedly built his own 3d engine and it's quite a beautiful one. This is not the 90s anymore.
It looks like Unity to me, hell it even has the same particles fog/sun effects and 2D grass like Planet Explorers.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1bXANFZkcO4
1:14 you can see the grass is a "2D always face me"
Of course, these are standard billboard procedures. Even advanced engines like CryEngine are full of 2D billboards, and all these particle effects are standard.
-
Yeah, building your own 3D engine is remarkably easy these days. There's tons of how-tos and middleware out there that you can use; and what Luis says is also true. Unity isn't well-suited to build an infinite world (as the KSP devs found out), if you try to build an infinite world game using it, you'll be spending so much time hacking up workarounds that building your own engine will end up faster and easier.
-
Im not so sure yet, i played a lot of Unity games(hell im doing one) and i can smell them.
Also why so sure its that easy to make an engine? it took Egosoft 7 years to build up the really bad X-Rebirth + game engine, a way bigger company, with a lot more experience making a way simplier game.
The are 2 mayor problems with Unity with an infinite world 1) buggy 64-bit physics 2) old Physx lib, i may add old mono lib too. These problems are going away hopefully in Unity 5.
-
Im not so sure yet, i played a lot of Unity games(hell im doing one) and i can smell them.
Also why so sure its that easy to make an engine? it took Egosoft 7 years to build up the really bad X-Rebirth + game engine, a way bigger company, with a lot more experience making a way simplier game.
Egosoft had a lot of experience with making a terrible game engine. It took them 4 sequels to get to the point where their old game engine had a tolerable user interface.
Egosoft is a really bad example of anything, basically.
-
Actually they're a really good example of how not to do things, like design a UI.
-
I disagree, X2 and all X3 has been good games, X-R is the result of them not wanting to risk making an X4 due to cost.
-
Im not so sure yet, i played a lot of Unity games(hell im doing one) and i can smell them.
Also why so sure its that easy to make an engine? it took Egosoft 7 years to build up the really bad X-Rebirth + game engine, a way bigger company, with a lot more experience making a way simplier game.
Because making a game engine is really easy now compared to ten years ago. The APIs have changed and been simplified over the years, we now have a bunch of standard libraries that we didn't have back then, and there's a large community of game developers out there willing to share the tricks of the trade.
-
Genre-spanning-knowledge. Like a Meta-HLP?
That makes me feel warm and fuzzy.
-
Don't forget they had already made their own 3d engine prior to this (their "joe danger" was also home made).
-
From the latest awards show:
and
-
So this was kinda way more interesting than what they (didn't) show at E3:
-
Exactly my point. Procedural generation can't do everything, but it doesn't have to be used for everything, either. A fully procedural game like Dwarf Fortress or Evochron Mercenary has to capture player by gameplay only - there's no place to experience a story. On the other hand, it's perfectly possible to set a story in a mostly procedural world. It can range from a scripted main quest with randomized locations to a handmade world built "on top" of the procedural engine. And I wish more games were like that. Another neat trick is running a procedural generator once and then fixing the seed, meaning you can make a handmade event/environment in a procedural (but nor randomized) location.
Still, imagine Skyrim's art assets used in a Daggerfall style world generation...
Believe me, I did. :) This was kind of what I hoped for for TES: Online, but it doesn't seem to live up to these expectations (well, that, and it's a bloody expensive subscription. Hopefully it'll go FTP someday before it dies...), at least, not yet. Skyrim's radiant quest mechanic already resembles what Arena and Daggerfall could do - namely, randomly generate minor, if a bit repetitive quests. While making cities the size of those in Daggerfall might be a bit beyond today's hardware (remember how many inhabitants they had!), it should be possible at some point in the future to match the scale of Daggerfall with then-modern graphics.
Look at how many inhabitants Assassin's Creed 1's cities have.
-
They managed to get themselves into Colbert's Late Show!
Still no release date yet... :(
-
Im following this game for some time now. As soon as preorder shows up, im going for it - even if it means starving for a month!
-
I originally believe No Man's Sky would sorta crash and burn - but seeing how its going, I'm actually impressed and bemused by the Colbert segment.
Stay classy Colbert, 'cause Jimmy Kimmel sucks dicks when it comes to covering gaming media.