The Future is Procedural

[Shamus Young]

Procedural graphics will never beat custom graphics ever. I don't care what the argument is. It is just never going to happen. Cheaper is not better. I am a 3d modeler and a texture artist. No computer generated crap is ever going to beat what an artist can do as long as that artist has the skills. What procedural graphics are good for are things like trees and bushes. The grunt work no artist wants to do or should be made to do. But for environments and characters procedural is never going to cut it better than the artists.

1) I never claimed procedural graphics would "equal" , much less "beat" human-made stuff.
2) Procedural stuff STILL requires artistic input. It just changes where the artist makes their contribution and how it is used.
3) "Grunt work" is the perfect thing to give to the code. There's a lot of grunt work in making gamespace, and the thrust of the article was that it should do the grunt work so that artists could focus on the creative tasks.

 

[fedpayne]

And yet I still can't find this game to buy on the PC. I know it exists I've played on my friends copy.

Dude, it's on Steam.

Great article, I'm really for a game like this - as in, a shooter or RPG. One of my favourite things about Fallout 3 was wandering the wasteland, and exploring, and if we could get a computer to make nice, big, varied spaces between little commuinities made by the developers and artists then I'd love it.

 

[Generic_Dave]

I never play racing games (Wipeout being my one exception) and I have been revved up about FUEL since I first heard about it last year, and for the simple reason of Procedural Landscapes. The one problem may be that rather than move the money saved by this to improve other sections of the game, we'll just get games that are made more cheaply with the same amount of gameplay merely spread over a larger area and sold on to us at the same price...

One hopes the shareholder will not be the only one to benefit from this...

 

[Ancientgamer]

We've kinda come full circle haven't we? I remember back when games like daggerfall all used huge procedurally generated maps. Then they started giving way to hand crafted levels because they got so bland. Now we're getting compromise it seems.

 

[Shamus Young]

The Future is Procedural

Procedurally generated worlds are offering new possibilities to gamers, but are they set to overtake the handcrafted worlds of old?

Read Full Article

Am I making a huge mistake in assuming that this type of technology is not very good for creating interactive or destructible environments?

It's hard to tell. Really, nobody has tried yet. I know a lot more about procedural tech than dynamic / modifiable tech, and I'm having trouble picturing where the serious conflicts will arise. Certainly if FUEL was dynamic (let's say you could re-shape the surface at will) then it would have to store the "changes" you made to the default world. If someone altered the ENTIRE surface (thus changing the whole world) then your changes would be somewhere near the 192GB figure I mentioned in the article. You'd be right back to having a non-procedural world.

In a lot of ways this tech is like BSP's in 1992. It's cool, it's fun, but it's hard to picture all the things that might eventually be done with it.

Edited for clarity and grammar.

 

[whaleswiththumbs]

I am not sure that procedurally generated terrain and environments could ever take off and be as good as those created by humans. The algorithms would have to get very advanced to make it look really good. But if they could do it, and some games do, it would allow such huge worlds.

http://www.infinity-universe.com/Infinity/

Looks like it will be cool, and it is all completely procedurally generated.

Yeah It seems that procedural for the most part, is currently only being used by people building universes. Kindof sad they are the only ones getting the amazing aroma procedural bread, but right now it seems that Valve is happy with their hand made steaks, while everyone else plays with wrong combinations of low-value steak and bread. But steak is still steak, if your willing to pay you'll get whats worth the money. Thanks Shamus for letting me use a food metaphor.

 

[Nincompoop]

...the final size of the gameworld comes to 196,608,000,000 bytes of data, or about 196 gigabytes. You would need a stack of around forty DVD disks just to hold the terrain.

Or 4 blu-ray (dual-layer) disks, take that, stupid Microsoft! ...

OT: Thanks for this, I had no idea this sorta thing was even possible. I'm so gonna check this "Procedural Coding" thingamajigger out!

I really hope games would be doing this more. As Mr. Young said, games like Fallout 3.

I always enjoy a humongous world I'll never really get to explore.

 

[wasalp]

Have a look, and remember to pick up your jaw when you leave: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cNu4CluFOcw

this could be cool for dnd...or is the whole point of dnd using your imagination...

 

[Lord Thodin]

I gotta say Shamus makes a good point. The idea of an open landscape THAT large from now on would be amazing. The fact that we can do it makes it even better. Im just afraid that, as Shamus pointed out in his video, that you would have repeats of alot of the same things. This for me might draw me out of the experience. However Im sure if a team was paid to make thousands of different trees then use the procedure method, Id be fine.

By the by, great article Shamus.

 

[Kilo24]

The Future is Procedural

Procedurally generated worlds are offering new possibilities to gamers, but are they set to overtake the handcrafted worlds of old?

Read Full Article

Am I making a huge mistake in assuming that this type of technology is not very good for creating interactive or destructible environments?

From my understanding, to get around that you can just save the affected environment explicitly (like in normal games.) Having a large amount of affected areas will eat up space, though.

I'd imagine that a system could be developed to apply any worldwide changes you've caused during the time it takes for the game to generate new elements, as long as the worldwide changes are easy to code.

 

[domicius]

I think that Spelunky has essentially sold me on procedural games. It's a cute little platformer where the levels are procedurally generated, so they're always different. They *are* themed, so the first few are a proper "cave", the next are sort-of tropical caves, and then ice caves etc etc

But since it's different every time you play it, it remains fresh and fun. And there always seems to be something new to discover around the corner. And that's quite impressive for "just" a platformer.

 

[WickedArtist]

Admittedly I originally dismissed the notion of procedural generation as the herald of bland, meaningless content, but giving the article another read and thinking about it a bit further has changed my perspective.

With game worlds becoming more detailed the demands increase for time, effort and resources to add these details. Procedural generation has matured over the years, and offers potential relief to the steep requirements of building a detailed game world.

Not all games would benefit from this method. Game worlds do more than just provide meaningful content to look at, they are also the environments in which you play and interact, and these environments can define the experience. I reiterate the idea of "no formula for success": content can be added, thrown out or altered to better suit the gameplay experience. Creating content "on the fly" has the danger of generating content that is unsuitable for the experience, ignoring what I might call the "human factor".

Games can vary greatly, from the likes Half Life - which offers us a linear but meticulously crafted experience, where the environments are built to suit the purposes of gameplay, atmosphere and narrative - to the likes of Fallout 3 - which offers an open-ended world based on sandbox exploration, where not every single region demands (or at all needs) so much attention - and beyond. Needless to say where procedural generation fits in better.

Procedural generation has matured since the days of Daggerfall and its kind, and may mature further. If nothing else, this article points out an interesting development of technology that may benefit the game industry. There is no "good" or "bad" about it, like anything it can be used into poor results just as well as it can be used to create quality work.

On a side note, there is one thing I fail to understand and it's the excitement about the notion of gargantuan worlds. Even if procedural content allows the creation of such massive worlds, what exactly does it promise us? I can't see the benefits here, and the only picture that comes to my mind is a lot of blandness: it's like taking a lump of butter and spreading it over way too much bread. Maybe we can get ourselves a bit more butter, or better ways to spread it over the bread, but it's still too much bread. Maybe I'm missing something here, but I think games should try to embrace their limitations, spending their limited resources for quality rather than quantity. I see procedural content as the possibility to save time and effort that can be better spent elsewhere, not as a method to just create a whole lot more bland than we currently can.

 

[Angron]

i foun this very interesting, being a person whos looking into the games industry... but i havent heard fo this before now...its quite nice...

but i was looking at being one of those expensive level designers myself
luckily it doesnt look like it will be completely replacing hand made levels, although it could make the jobs even more crowded :S

 

[Helicockter]

Elite was mentioned (the planet names and histories were procedurally generated from a seed number; they were the same every time, but not stored on the tiny disc), but the best example from that era is the metroid-like adventure platformer Exile. A game pushing the limits of its system so much that there wasn't space for a status screen (it was all conveyed with sound and in-game cues) managed to generate a VAST 2D cavern system for your little dude to explore. Stored in the form of a seed number and a procedural algorithm, the bulk of the game world was simple caverns, but a number of areas were given additional attention, with the in-game division between the procedural and hand made areas representing natural caverns and human-built installations in those caverns.

http://www.stairwaytohell.com/gamehelp/MAP-Exile-BC.png MAP!

as you can see, an interesting side effect is several totally inaccessible areas which are completely surrounded by rock with no way in or out.

I believe Worms uses a similar system for the "random" maps; obviously they're not all stored as images, and if you type in the same password/code number, you get the same landscape

Im just afraid that, as Shamus pointed out in his video, that you would have repeats of alot of the same things. This for me might draw me out of the experience. However Im sure if a team was paid to make thousands of different trees then use the procedure method, Id be fine.

Just procedurally generate the trees you won't notice if there are only a few different leaves, trunks and branch groups on different levels, if they are put together in a fairly random/convincingly pseudorandom way, every single tree will be completely different. scatter in some hand designed "hero" trees for important areas, and you'll get a really convincing forect.

 

[Dhatz]

if the future wasn't procedural, we'd get stuck with canned animations and unimaginative AI for ever. For now the procedural euphoria animations are barely capable of stupid standing in one place, we haven's seen em walk(other than being pushed by some deus ex force) nor jump nor stuff(if you think euphoria=endorphin,you R an AZZhoal!)
EDIT:the person above me read my mind, but my point is that we could easily use many instances of one object each with fixed seed to have different texture layouts. And with some blending on edges, a rowof them coul look like one model. Unlike in RAGE, this would generate nonrepetitive teturing without labor.
EDIT2: you ppl reminded me of procedural map from True Crime, that sucked major ass(aside from the map it was tha physics and the unbeatable final fight in flames that ruined it).

 

[Lord Thodin]

-snip-

Good point.

 

[CrystalShadow]

Ah procedural content. I recently realised it could go a long way to helping me out with a few problems I've been having...

And these demos only go to show what can already be accomplished.

Still... If you take all of this to it's logical conclusion, sooner or later most people in the games industry become redundant. XD

Of course, that depends on getting 'procedural' content generation (and probably many other things besides.) to be much more effective.

Think past just procedurally generated terrain, and you realise you get into the realm of AI.

Getting a computer to generate the 'story', pacing and all manner of other things is possible too.

The early results are likely to be total rubbish, but then, the same applies to your average human artist/writer/programmer/craftsman or whatever.

Look at some of the first things they made, then at their much later works...

Granted, computers have a lot to learn, but don't count them out just yet. - We're only just getting to the interesting period, but it won't get better unless people actually attempt to get a computer to do any of these things humans have generally done...

 

[Ronwue]

The prospects are extremely interesting with this. It takes a lot of the developer's work concerning the world off his hands... and while I see procedural generated terrain as not random, does that mean that two payers will have two slightly different takes on the map? Cause that would be awesome...