236 replies to this topic

[Haakon Magnusson]

Rhaythe, on 04 August 2015 - 11:32 AM, said:

• What ensures the dynamically generated map is fair and competitive?

While I would love random maps with their impossible entry routes and unfair terrain advantages, this point will propably be the end of them all... I can only image what kind of crap the invisible terrain throws my way

[Syrkres]

I think PGI's best direction to go would be partially-PGM.

This would solve several of the issues people have brought up.

easiest would be "modular" generated, maps.

For example, if the main goal of a map is close combat you can easily have a map of a city, but then randomly assign buildings in certain locations. This could easily give a map different feel, where sometimes a large building is blocking things an open park or lake allowing a nice field of fire. etc.
- park
- building (small, medium, large)
- lake

For an more outdoor setting, you could have things like hills, puts, rivers, rocks dropped in slots, which again can easily change a maps feel.

Take Alpine peaks, the large open slope running H8, H9. You could easily drop things in there (or nothing at all). A dropship crashed, an old city with different frozen buildings and such. a large ravin.


By making it modular, you can easily change up things and still have them mesh fairly well, then have it randomly select the elements at time of play.

[Mister Blastman]

Triskelion, on 07 August 2015 - 07:32 AM, said:

My sides.

Procedural generation is all well and good, but trying to force it into an environment that wants to be competitive on a team level is nonsense. Do you want to do spawn swapping EVERY match? Do you want to look over every map to make sure a weight class isn't getting a serious advantage? This is already a game where some mechs are naturally punished by map choice. We can't directly pick maps either - this gets worsened if maps are universally inconsistent and far less tested.

Not to mention, you're clearly spouting off on something that you have absolutely no knowledge of. What happens to the map costs for the current map set? Do those get written off? Do you think PGI makes enough money to even get to make that choice? I don't have a programming background, but reading through responses by actual programmers and my current, exceedingly basic knowledge of the downsides involved makes me think that this is pointless so long as players have inconsistent hardware, and PGI doesn't have more income.

Furthermore, if updates are per-patch, what are you solving? You're not learning new ways to play every match, you're just replacing your current knowledge of other maps with less time to practice new ones. This makes absolutely no sense in a competitive environment. I think you're confusing "Oh, this would be pretty and interesting" with "Oh, this could make this game more competitve". Pro FPS teams spend countless hours learning maps in and out. What are you actually solving by attempting to remove this facet of competitive play?

I can only assume this thread was a joke, I got a good laugh.

Who cares? I've been a long time comp player for decades with several titles/championships under my belt. I'm not anymore. Too damn busy with life. But as an ex-comp player, I can say with certainty that TRUE comp players like to challenge themselves in any way they can and procedural "blind" maps is an exceptional test of talent.

Comp players who are too shy to take on a "blind" map aren't comp players. They are scared babies who lack testicular fortitude.

The maps don't need to be reversed, each team plays each side--you take it for what it is and move on to the next. This is iron man style. Skill vs. skill and you take what you have.

I swear some of you folks have never gambled in life or are averse to it. I make my living off gambling professionally. The biggest rewards and life are only found through taking big risks--and you have to be willing to lose everything to get there.

Play the hand you are dealt with and if needed, fold, call or double down. If all else fails, hang in for the next hand. In the end, the skilled will prevail.

[Gattsus]

I think that xcom 2 has a good heuristic regarding procedure maps. The layout is fixed, with certain sockets and some constraints, what changes in every iteration is what goes into the sockets. This way, the general feel of the map is the same, what's different are the specifics of the map.

[Satan n stuff]

Johnny Z, on 06 August 2015 - 03:28 PM, said:

Seen the new River City map? Its awsome. Like I said before it may be among the best maps of any game out all things considered. If procedural maps could do that, then by all means bring it on. Procedural map gen cant even come close remotely to that. Not even close. I can asure anyone that map was hand done to the last millimeter. Literally.

It was probly limited in some ways by what they wanted to use for memory on it and thats about it.

They keep all this up they will be putting other games in the dark ages. Really. Except a very few.

Give me a couple of years, an [arbitrary big number] budget and an infinite supply of caffeine and I could build something like that, but that still wouldn't make it practical to implement in this game.

[Triskelion]

Mister Blastman, on 07 August 2015 - 07:54 AM, said:

Who cares? I've been a long time comp player for decades with several titles/championships under my belt. I'm not anymore. Too damn busy with life. But as an ex-comp player, I can say with certainty that TRUE comp players like to challenge themselves in any way they can and procedural "blind" maps is an exceptional test of talent.

Comp players who are too shy to take on a "blind" map aren't comp players. They are scared babies who lack testicular fortitude.

The maps don't need to be reversed, each team plays each side--you take it for what it is and move on to the next. This is iron man style. Skill vs. skill and you take what you have.

I swear some of you folks have never gambled in life or are averse to it. I make my living off gambling professionally. The biggest rewards and life are only found through taking big risks--and you have to be willing to lose everything to get there.

Play the hand you are dealt with and if needed, fold, call or double down. If all else fails, hang in for the next hand. In the end, the skilled will prevail.

Yeah, now I know you're trolling.

[Mister Blastman]

Triskelion, on 07 August 2015 - 09:30 AM, said:

Yeah, now I know you're trolling.

I'm not trolling. I'm absolutely serious.

[Raggedyman]

Mister Blastman, on 07 August 2015 - 06:31 AM, said:

PGI has said it takes 200k to make a single map. You hire a coder who's skilled in procedural stuff, stick him in an office by himself and that is his only job. A single coder costs way less than 200k. From a business perspective something like this makes sense.

If it were that cheap and easy to do then why would PGI not have hired this person, at the same price as one new map, to give them an infinite number of new maps.

The only options I can think of are:
1 - It's not that cheap and/or easy to do
2 - It is that cheap and/or easy to do, but the result isn't suited for MWO
3 - PGI have failed Business 101 to a higher level of failure than is possible to fail and still keep on MMO going for as long as MWO has

Now, I do get it. You really, really like the idea of full PGC. You also think that anyone who doesn't like it isn't a true MechWarrior / competitive online player / gambler / knower of software development. And I respect that, because I would love to see some PGC put into the game.

But so far you are basically calling for a complete rewrite of the game, the removal of more than 50% of the player base, and a massive investment into the kind of game engine that Blizzard and Valve haven't managed to crack yet.

I'm not saying that you are wrong, I'm just suggesting that you might want to invest in some expectation management.

Edited by Raggedyman, 07 August 2015 - 11:40 AM.

[Mister Blastman]

Well it looks like another three dimensional procedural game was just released. Supposedly the levels are procedurally generated and different every time.

I don't really know--I haven't played it, but it looked apropos given the topic here

http://store.steampo...com/app/376130/

[Rhaythe]

If you're looking for single-player procedurals, go check out:

• Tower of Guns
  
• Heavy Bullets
  
• Ziggaraut

Edited by Rhaythe, 13 August 2015 - 03:50 AM.

[Karamarka]

I just wish the maps were awesome like the ones in MW4 or something. Those were huge.

There was literally ZERO choke points. Everything in MWO is chokepoint this and poke that.

[Xetelian]

I'd be really happy if we had Procedural maps.

[Mister Blastman]

So when we left this thread several months ago there were a few folks saying that procedural maps were "too resource intensive" or would "have long load times" or "not be feasible for multiplayer," among other reasons...

So I thought about it. I then waited. See, at the time I made the thread, I was already playing a game online that was procedurally generated, but didn't say much about it. I needed them to release something else. Something more intimate. Well, it came out. Here's a short adventure. Enjoy.

Here I am on a planet. That's a big hill in the distance. It is over kilometer tall.



I earlier had driven on top of it. Sometimes I get carried away and use my jump jets while scooting along. Whoops, too high. Look, see my wheels!



Here's my spaceship. It weighs over 300 tonnes. It is big but not really. There are ships that are way bigger. But this is my ship. This is my fun. Let's get on board.



Yay. We took off. That hill sure looks a little smaller from up here...



At 17 kilometers above it...



How about higher? Did you know... my ship weighs more than three Dire Whales put together?



And higher. Or should I say farther now? Which way is up?



Oh my! That hill... it was on a planet! But look... you can still see it... way far down there in... A crater? We were in a crater? It looks so small up here.



That was a procedurally generated crater. On a procedurally generated planet. With a procedurally generated mountain. And anyone who visits there will see the same thing... every time. Here's another procedurally generated planet I visited. Look at the pretty rings.



I can visit those rings if I'd like. And all of this is inside a procedurally generated galaxy...



That was just a small piece of the galaxy. Every single dot is a starsystem that I can visit and inside it are worlds I can visit...



Wow! What a big galaxy! Billions and billions of stars and planets! I forgot the most important part... the players! They are everywhere!





So, what was all that about? Well, that is a game. It is called Elite: Dangerous. It is played online. In it you have a galaxy with billions of starsystems, in contstant motion rotating around the galactic core. Inside those systems are planets and moons. There are also starports. You can visit most of these places (atmospheric planets coming later this year). You can do lots of things. There are people, everywhere. Thousands upon thousands of people play and in every single instance there can be up to 32 players. An instance is many things--a starbase in a system, a asteroid ring in that system, a single battle instance... etc. The 32 players are dynamic and change depending on where you are in that system or galaxy. So there are literally thousands playing with you all the time. It is ALL procedurally generated. Realtime. On the fly. There aren't any loading screens. Everyone sees the same thing.

And it is fun.

By the way... the ships are fully customizable. I can change them all around, just like in MWO. It also has intricate damage modeling--shields, armor, hull, internals, subsystems. You can target things indivdually and each has its own health value--just like the HTAL in MWO (without the neat diagram). And each system produces different results. It also has power management (pretty complicated actually). And heat management. And tons of weapons! And different modes! And... PHYSICS MODELING! Did I forget to mention collision modeling? Yeah, oops, I did. It has that too. All this is being done... while procedurally generating everything.

So next time anyone here says, "Oh, procedural maps in a multiplayer environment are too complicated for MWO!" Just take a look at Elite. It is already doing it. And people are playing it every single night.

Edited by Mister Blastman, 29 December 2015 - 07:45 AM.

[Screech]

A new map every match? I would be happy with a new map every month.

Baby steps.

[kesmai]

*****NECROALARM*******
BEWARE ZOMBIETHREADS
ARM YOURSELF

Edited by kesmai, 29 December 2015 - 08:04 AM.

[Hotthedd]

Too complicated for MW:O? No.

Too complicated for PGI? Possibly.

Does it enhance the E-sport aspect of MW:O? No.

Can PGI make money off of it? Not the way they see it.

It would be so awesome just to do it for every planet in the MW:O universe, edited so that each planet conforms to the lore, and then place objectives on each planet. Heck, players could even research a planet before they accept a contract to attack/defend it.

...but getting the same few maps with built-in bottlenecks and stale strategies is fun too.

[Mechwarrior Buddah]

Rhaythe, on 04 August 2015 - 11:32 AM, said:

There are a few problems to procedural generation:

• Where is this map generated? If it's server-side, you have to download the map every playthrough.

thats a problem? Thats what happens every time I ever played any fps game multiplayer and fps games seem popular regardless

[zagibu]

Procedurally generated maps do have some downsides, but none of them are really relevant for MWO. They are suited very well for the type of gameplay we have.

And the technical feasibility has been proven times and again in countless other games. One of the first "big" shooters that implemented it well was Soldier of Fortune 2. You could play multiplayer CTF matches on a new map every match. The map generation didn't take long at all.

Mechwarrior Buddah, on 29 December 2015 - 08:09 AM, said:

thats a problem? Thats what happens every time I ever played any fps game multiplayer and fps games seem popular regardless

It doesn't have to be downloaded, you can simply synchronize a map seed and every client computer generates it locally.

[Mister Blastman]

Hotthedd, on 29 December 2015 - 08:08 AM, said:

Does it enhance the E-sport aspect of MW:O? No.

Can PGI make money off of it? Not the way they see it.

But it does enhance the e-sport aspect. Professional gamers have a few key attributes that helps them succeed... They have great reflexes, they have fantastic memory, they can think on their feet and they don't give up.

The traditional model of fixed maps tests reflexes, memory, thinking on feet (somewhat) and tenacity, but having procedurally generated maps will push them even further. No longer can they rely just on memory for the map... they must think on their feet, rely on memory based on what they've observed on past maps and make deductions on where to go...

And not only that... the memory must be re-made each and every map. Hardcore gamers will love this!

A new map for every single planet. And through seeds, each planet's map could be kept unique so it is the same every time, just procedurally generated on the fly.

However, each planet can have millions of locations! So you never know where the dropships will land!

The possibilities are endless. Why waste more time making maps when you can make an algorithm to make them for you?

[Navid A1]

I would LOVE to see procedural maps... it fits MWO and mechwarrior gameplay perfectly.

BUT...

I heavily doubt that PGI is the kind of dev material that can create such a thing...

So procedural maps are kind of a wet pipedream... that will NEVER gonna happen in a million years!