236 replies to this topic

[Rhaythe]

MTs Cavia Porcellus, on 29 December 2015 - 11:01 AM, said:

Elite Dangerous apparently uses it too. Result? nothing but the same crap except that the planet has a different color and the sky looks different.

Well, in its defense, all of the photos sent back by Curiosity, Spirit, and Endeavor all looked the same to me too...

[Mister Blastman]

Imperius, on 29 December 2015 - 09:53 AM, said:

I've already said I want procedurally generated maps for the longest time, but it sadly would only be possible for PVE. Since the whole game is server based this won't work.

I still suggest they use them for all the CW planets so each planet can have its own map.

It absolutely is possible for a server based game. All that needs to be shared between the clients is the seed.

MTs Cavia Porcellus, on 29 December 2015 - 11:01 AM, said:

Procedurally Generated maps CAN work depending on which game.

All the previous games I know and played, no. Didnt work. Star Trek Online used this for exploration, and its just dumb.

Elite Dangerous apparently uses it too. Result? nothing but the same crap except that the planet has a different color and the sky looks different.

Space games you dont want to have crap like this, you want to explore real stuff that the devs / artists actually put effort into.

I can see it work in a game like MWO though. In fact im surprised this game doesnt already have something like it.

Really?



ggclose™ try again please.

Rhaythe, on 29 December 2015 - 08:54 AM, said:

And as I said months ago, games have to be designed with procedural generation from the beginning, as Elite was. Shoving it into an existing title is expensive, time consuming, expensive, buggy, and above all... expensive.

I absolutely love the idea, Blastman, but harping about it and pointing to other games that do it - especially non-competitive games like Elite - won't bring it to MWO.

PS: The competitive component of Elite, CQC, uses non-procedural maps.

I guess you never play Elite in Open mode. It is VERY competitive. I have over 500 hours in Open. How many hours do you have?

I think they can bring it to MWO if they wanted to. Object oriented programming when done properly allows modularity and the maps are simply something that are plugged in when it comes game time.

Edited by Mister Blastman, 29 December 2015 - 02:16 PM.

[DAYLEET]

All PGI needs to do is put randomly created map in their own queue. The people who want maps to be an elaborated/mirored parking lot would rage so hard we might feel it through our monitors.

Edited by DAYLEET, 29 December 2015 - 03:49 PM.

[Navid A1]

I think, one other thing to note is that procedural generation can only look good when it is generating terrain. You can not expect it to generate cities, bases and other man-made systematic structures.

[DAYLEET]

Navid A1, on 29 December 2015 - 02:58 PM, said:

I think, one other thing to note is that procedural generation can only look good when it is generating terrain. You can not expect it to generate cities, bases and other man-made systematic structures.

I would think it easy to build with city blocks. You know like old sim city, designate a few square industrial and random industrial building appears. Just add commercial/residential/military to that mix.

If River City was to be randomly created each pass it would be more interesting for exemple.

Edited by DAYLEET, 29 December 2015 - 03:19 PM.

[pbiggz]

DAYLEET, on 29 December 2015 - 03:18 PM, said:

I would think it easy to build with city blocks. You know like old sim city, designate a few square industrial and random industrial building appears. Just add commercial/residential/military to that mix.

If River City was to be randomly created each pass it would be more interesting for exemple.

Thats pretty much exactly how you go about it. Reserve these grid spaces for city, load in a random set of blocks so the layout is different, generate the terrain around that.

Mister Blastman, on 29 December 2015 - 02:15 PM, said:

It absolutely is possible for a server based game. All that needs to be shared between the clients is the seed.



Really?



ggclose™ try again please.



I guess you never play Elite in Open mode. It is VERY competitive. I have over 500 hours in Open. How many hours do you have?

I think they can bring it to MWO if they wanted to. Object oriented programming when done properly allows modularity and the maps are simply something that are plugged in when it comes game time.

Yeah a good implementation of this stuff is practically limitless, but object oriented programming? Come on bro, everyone knows ECS is the way to go. (No seriously, modern game engines are all entity component systems).

[AztecD]

Have Static maps for the capital zones of a planet, but for the skirmishes and all other planetary battles, leave it random, it will force scouting, and discourage high alpha loadouts, since you would not know if the map was open or a close area

[Mechwarrior Buddah]

Mister Blastman, on 29 December 2015 - 02:15 PM, said:

I think they can bring it to MWO if they wanted to.

BETTER question:

With what youve seen of the ability of PGI and their programmers do you think THEY could?

[Navid A1]

Mechwarrior Buddah, on 29 December 2015 - 03:53 PM, said:

BETTER question:

With what youve seen of the ability of PGI and their programmers do you think THEY could?

That is the right question.

We should not be discussing procedural maps here...

the main point is: Can PGI do it?

nope!

[pbiggz]

Navid A1, on 29 December 2015 - 04:08 PM, said:

That is the right question.

We should not be discussing procedural maps here...

the main point is: Can PGI do it?

nope!

We should demand it none the less. If PGI can't do it now, they better show that they can improve until they can do this, or else someone will come along who can better serve the needs of this community and PGI will disappear. This is kinda how capitalism works.

[Mechwarrior Buddah]

pbiggz, on 29 December 2015 - 04:14 PM, said:

We should demand it none the less. If PGI can't do it now, they better show that they can improve until they can do this, or else someone will come along who can better serve the needs of this community and PGI will disappear. This is kinda how capitalism works.

no thats hoe cease and desist letters work lol

[Mister Blastman]

pbiggz, on 29 December 2015 - 03:31 PM, said:

Thats pretty much exactly how you go about it. Reserve these grid spaces for city, load in a random set of blocks so the layout is different, generate the terrain around that.



Yeah a good implementation of this stuff is practically limitless, but object oriented programming? Come on bro, everyone knows ECS is the way to go. (No seriously, modern game engines are all entity component systems).

I'll take your word for it on the programming thing. I quit coding over a decade ago and now I write science fiction books.

[Ted Wayz]

Like the idea and suggested it be used to generate worlds for CW. However once the planet is generated it is fixed. Procedural generated maps could be influenced by lore, but again once a planet is set it is set.

For CW I would like to see planet sieges be a tug of war take much longer, none of this flipping in one night. Imagine a tug of war using a variety of game modes including the ones we currently use for Pugs.

Generate a new map for every match, no. Pull some of the better ones from CW to be used in Pug? Sure.

[AEgg]

pbiggz, on 29 December 2015 - 03:31 PM, said:

-snip-

Yeah a good implementation of this stuff is practically limitless, but object oriented programming? Come on bro, everyone knows ECS is the way to go. (No seriously, modern game engines are all entity component systems).

ECS IS object oriented. Short version, it's another abstraction layer on top of an object oriented language. Those entities are all actually objects. You can't get away from object oriented programming while still writing with an object oriented language.

There are a few big problems with procedurally generated maps.

The first one that comes to mind is collision boxes. They have to be built and not be terrible. Just look at any MWO map, tourmaline in particular, and see how much of a problem this is for hand-crafted maps. Imagine ten times worse for procedurally generated ones. (And no, we can't use the actual terrian as a collision box, performance would be worse by a factor of ten or more). Most games that use procedural maps simply don't care about collision, since you're not generally super close to the ground. Being off by ten feet doesn't matter when you're 100 or 1000 feet up.

Balance has already been brought up. Performance is another definite concern, either the server does the heavy lifting of building out the map, and we have to send it to the clients, or the clients do, and load times are pretty terrible. I'm sure there are more problems, but those are just a few that come up without much time worrying about it.

It's an interesting idea, but practical implementation would be a colossal undertaking.

[Mystere]

Imperius, on 29 December 2015 - 11:59 AM, said:

But but muh e-sports... all these kids trying to balance war all the time in terms of being "fair" lol scubs

I guess this is the moment I can say my obligatory:

**** eSports!

Edited by Mystere, 29 December 2015 - 05:35 PM.

[Mycrus]

Op, good idea but flies in the face of the minimally viable ethos that they espouse...

[pbiggz]

Mechwarrior Buddah, on 29 December 2015 - 04:16 PM, said:

no thats hoe cease and desist letters work lol

If another company comes along and proves they can cater to the needs of this community better, whether its by offering a mechwarrior game after 2020, or a new IP altogether, PGI will go the way of the dinosaur, but if PGI can prove it is capable of broadening its skillset and delivering quality content much faster and in greater quantities than it does now, then it will continue to control this segment of the market. That's how this works.

[Rhaythe]

Mister Blastman, on 29 December 2015 - 02:15 PM, said:

I guess you never play Elite in Open mode. It is VERY competitive. I have over 500 hours in Open. How many hours do you have?

You're still picking and choosing arguments, so at this point - good luck, bud. I'd love to see it come to MWO, but you have more faith than I do.

[Mister Blastman]

Rhaythe, on 29 December 2015 - 05:48 PM, said:

You're still picking and choosing arguments, so at this point - good luck, bud. I'd love to see it come to MWO, but you have more faith than I do.

I don't really have much faith that they will. The one thing I understand, though, is if we don't speak up, it never will. If we do, there's always a chance, no matter how small it may be.

[Variant1]

OP i like your idea however there some points i have to disagree on. This feature would be very handy in creating worlds for clan wars since once the maps are generated all pgi has to do is tweak it a bit and test it, not to mention it would be much easier than having to work hours an hours for one versus the many the generator could make, one more thing is that it would make sense for clan wars since there are many planets/worlds. However for normal drops a fixed map would be preferable since it would not be expensive as a procedurally generated map would.