23 replies to this topic

[B E E L Z E B U B]

i remember playing games that had random map generators. that was great since maps were always new. would people like this feature?

[Iqfish]

The amount of developement needed to code such things is incredible.
The guys at Star Citizen are modelling every single planet by themselves, and they have a good reason for that.

Things like randomly generated maps are great, if you fly over them at 10.000 meters and can barely see the gound, because wenn you get nearer to it, you will see the imperfections.

Things like Z-Fighting (flickering textures), strange geometry and such things occur very often and I dont know that there is an procedural map generator for the CE3

Great Idea, but technologically not possible, just consider how small PGI is.

[B E E L Z E B U B]

where i come from the biggest technological ideas were thought of and created by the smallest companies. things like the USB flash drives, water drop irrigation systems, instant messaging (ICQ) and an instant dictionary (babylon) were all invented by small companies with barely any funding.
so PGI being small is not something that should get in the way of them doing great stuff. as for coding, its all about the brains, there is always a simple and short way to do things, even though its usually the hardest to come up with.
so, easy? no... but surely not impossible.

[Ghogiel]

Not impossible per say. But it would be limited in design and fidelity. Even when constrained simple height map generantion and then applying a few preset materials to slope facing, some sort of algorithm or randomly spraying some rocks about, even a simple desert would look pretty weak imo.

Ideally they would be allowing me to gather a small crack team from the community and make quality maps for the game.

[HammerSwarm]

Think about it like an Xcom game or other strategy game. You would take tiles and you would create a way to align them with various points of interest.

Picture a 3 by 3 tile grid

T = Trees, R = River, B = Building

T,B,R
T,B,R
T,T,R

rules river must be bordered by another river tile, no more than 2 building tiles, fill with trees.

The problem is that unless you have a {Scrap} ton of tiles you'll see a lot of repetition very quickly.

You can either have self contained tiles all meeting at a certain level, or you have to make sure certain tiles match certain parameters adding up to a map with more features.

Then you have the problem of balance, and how they adapt game modes.

Nothing is impossible but I'd rather see them just use the existing art assets to build more similar maps to the existing ones. Not every map needs to be a paragon of innovative game play.

You gave us 2 city maps, now just give us 2 more by blending the art assets onto some other geographic locations. Perhaps Hilly City(one large hill sloping downward, Like San Francisco) or Lake City(Large central lake)

The same buildings, the art already developed, and a new landscape. This is possible.

Edited by HammerSwarm, 19 November 2013 - 07:03 AM.

[Voivode]

Most of the FPS style games I've played with random map generators were using a handful of algorithms for map "type" and the result was only really random in texture and color. While visually appealing, it didn't actually create much random functionality.

Sadly random map generators outside RTS style games tend to be pretty bland.

[DoktorVivi]

Hellgate London did this. Sadly they didn't have many tiles / the tiles they did have were kind of uninteresting so it kind of blended together after a while.

It's a lot of work, and even more work to make it good.

[CrashieJ]

what they could do is random generate a map, and then tweak it BEFORE releasing it.

say the generator spits out a all city map, they can either delete it or tweak it before releasing it.

not what they want? Delete it.
what they want? tweak it and release it.

not that hard.

[RavensScar]

Randomised design is a terrible idea in a game like this. Think how symmetrical many of the maps are currently, and yet there are still slight imbalances in the starting locations that give one team an advantage. It also makes tactical play incredibly difficult if you don't know the terrain you're fighting on until your feet touch the ground.

I think the maps we currently have are gorgeous, and (for the most part) great fun to fight over. I'd love to see more maps, certainly, but I'm quite happy with a new map every 2 months that's been carefully designed and planned, as opposed to some randomly generated design that's ugly and unbalanced.

[Adridos]

IqfishLP, on 19 November 2013 - 05:49 AM, said:

...and I dont know that there is an procedural map generator for the CE3

There is a random map generator in CryEngine, but it's fairly limited and you're better off with a dedicated software for map terrain. Procedurally generating from a tile set of predefined shapes would have to be coded from scratch.

Edited by Adridos, 22 November 2013 - 10:40 AM.

[Iqfish]

RavensScar, on 22 November 2013 - 09:32 AM, said:

Randomised design is a terrible idea in a game like this. Think how symmetrical many of the maps are currently, and yet there are still slight imbalances in the starting locations that give one team an advantage. It also makes tactical play incredibly difficult if you don't know the terrain you're fighting on until your feet touch the ground.

I think the maps we currently have are gorgeous, and (for the most part) great fun to fight over. I'd love to see more maps, certainly, but I'm quite happy with a new map every 2 months that's been carefully designed and planned, as opposed to some randomly generated design that's ugly and unbalanced.

This. The only thing I could imagine to make these maps fair (think of how unfair Alpine Peaks is sometimes) is to create a map and mirror it, but that would look ridiculous.

[MonkeyCheese]

Karma Police, on 19 November 2013 - 05:45 AM, said:

i remember playing games that had random map generators. that was great since maps were always new. would people like this feature?

Ah reminds me of the random fractal map generator in rapid racer for the ps1

[Hillslam]

Hellgate London did this IMO phenominally.

They used a sort of 3d tiling system.

It can be done and isn't more expensive than custom map development in the long run. It is front loaded cost though.

[Koniving]

IqfishLP, on 19 November 2013 - 05:49 AM, said:

The amount of developement needed to code such things is incredible.
The guys at Star Citizen are modelling every single planet by themselves, and they have a good reason for that.

Things like randomly generated maps are great, if you fly over them at 10.000 meters and can barely see the gound, because wenn you get nearer to it, you will see the imperfections.

Things like Z-Fighting (flickering textures), strange geometry and such things occur very often and I dont know that there is an procedural map generator for the CE3

Great Idea, but technologically not possible, just consider how small PGI is.

o.O;

[Koniving]

gavilatius, on 20 November 2013 - 03:22 PM, said:

what they could do is random generate a map, and then tweak it BEFORE releasing it.

say the generator spits out a all city map, they can either delete it or tweak it before releasing it.

not what they want? Delete it.
what they want? tweak it and release it.

not that hard.

All their map making is outsourced.

Much earlier on, so was their mechs (which is why the "pilot" actually can't fit into any mech (except the Catapult) before the Centurion/Awesome.)

Unfortunately, their animations are also outsourced. Locust uses Raven animations. Commando uses Atlas + Jenner animations (third person and walk, now play an Atlas, third person and walk...familiar?) Kintaro, Thunderbolt, Trebuchet and several others use Awesome's animations. Battlemaster, Orion, several others use Highlander animations. Centurion, Quickdraw use Dragon animations (also is the reason for the Centurion's width). The list goes on.

[LORD TSARKON]

Anyone remember Soldier of Fortune II for the PC? It had a Random Map Generator for CTF... and it was a blast... I played that game for 3 years and each game was different map....

Sometimes you had weird maps though....

[80sGlamRockSensation David Bowie]

Would be an AMAZING concept


PGI skills could never accomplish this however, so its a wet dream

[Cyberiad]

Random map generator eh? Time for a history lesson: in 1985 a movie came out called Tron. One of the computer programmers working on the movie wanted to make a realistic water effect. His name was Ken Perlin and he invented what is now known as Perlin noise and also won an Academy Award for it. It has since been used in many notable 3d effects in TV shows such as the Stargate SG1 (for the Stargate texture) and Reboot (for the game cube textures).

The concept of Perlin noise is actually quite simple:
1. Random number generator fills a n-dimensional matrix with random numbers.
2. Said numbers are linearly interpolated in between to generate a smooth n-dimensional field of numbers.
3. Field is then integrated and normalized.
4. The resulting field is now random and smooth at the same time, what you get is something like blobs.

Here is what Perlin Noise looks like:


Since then there have been similar but subtly more optimal solutions, the most common and popular one being simplex noise. Using simplex noise and combining multiple layers of it together, you can generate any kind of random pattern usually seen in nature such as mountains, hills and clouds:



Since then people have done spectacular things with simplex/Perlin noise to generate whatever they want. One of the most famous examples being "Elevated", a real-time procedural-generation work of computer art, you can check out the video here:


3D terrain generated by Perlin noise can be done in real time by using the vastly parallel computing capability of a fragment shader and even run inside a web browser: http://glsl.heroku.com/e#10595.0

The example above is written entirely in a fragment shader and consists only of 497 lines of what is basically C code! (GLSL is basically C except with overloaded operators for matrix operations).

For a full technical reading on Perlin noise see: http://www.iquilezle...e/morenoise.htm

Edited by SiliconLife, 29 November 2013 - 03:39 PM.

[Randalf Yorgen]

Koniving, on 27 November 2013 - 07:33 AM, said:

o.O;

That Video is actually kind of crappy... actually really crappy. Lighting, texture, shading is all wrong but beyond that even the movement of the camera/ship/ground looked to be very sub-par. Perhaps ditching 3pv for them might be the best solution.

[Koniving]

Randalf Yorgen, on 29 November 2013 - 04:01 PM, said:

That Video is actually kind of crappy... actually really crappy. Lighting, texture, shading is all wrong but beyond that even the movement of the camera/ship/ground looked to be very sub-par. Perhaps ditching 3pv for them might be the best solution.

Star Citizen doesn't have atmospheric lighting yet for planets in fly-throughs (nor is it going to for another year). The flight simulation is hacked in there, as the game isn't even in alpha stages yet nor are ships supposed to be able to fly. Essentially it'd be like playing Mechwarrior before they even had a map, when you didn't need an engine to move.

The point of the video is to show what random map generation looks like, when the game isn't even remotely ready to start using it. When you consider that, consider the geometry and the trees and the lack of z-flutter, overlaps, etc... it's rather impressive.