MW Waldorf Statler, on 28 November 2020 - 03:28 AM, said:
Without handcrafted Biome Modules thats looking fast veryGeneric and bad,and brings Problems ,and the Engine can not logic Place Bridges or Streets and Problems like Dropzones in impassable Terrain(above a High Mountain) with the MWO Climb system.
It is very rare, but nevertheless in No Man's Sky, for example, buildings are often half in the ground or hovering above the ground, or objectives are inaccessible under the terrain grid
Alreech, on 28 November 2020 - 05:13 AM, said:
Random map generation is great for exploration games like Elite Dangerous & No Mans Sky.
It's terribel for a multiplayer shooter, especially if the teams are made up every match new with some random players that don't communicate or coordinate well.
The middle ground would be more map variations:
Daytime / Night / Dusk
Winter / Spring / Summer / Fall
Different sky boxes for the same map
Special Building on the same map: depending on the defender the map could have a faction typical building in the middel.
I did not say Random Map Generation would be easy. Finding the Holy Grail is not easy. However, Random Maps solves a few problems.
- No advantage over new players. Everyone is seeing it for the first time, more or less.
- NASCAR is problematic when you don't really know what is around that corner. If you add in random spawn locations, say the corners of a square map, you won't know where the enemy is every match. Could be to your Right, Left, or Straight. When and where the teams happen to meet may eliminate the possibility of the swirl.
- No map fatigue. With permutations of terrain type, terrain elevation, vegetation, water, structures, & etc. over a medium size map is almost unlimited. You might not see a similar combination pop up in a week, let alone a day.
- Gives Light 'Mechs their job back. Want to know what's over that hill or around that corner? Send a Light. Don't even know where the Enemy is? Send a Light.
- Could give Faction Warfare a shot in the arm. Imagine that the generator takes a seed based on the planet name. You could have each planet look different. Sky color, vegetation type and color, architecture styles and colors. It would give the illusion that you WERE fighting on a different planet that before. Possible incentive to buy other cammo colors?
And it would only be Psudo Random. There would be algorithms for terrain generation that would make it look natural. Think Minecraft and the Biomes, except things are not blocky and low res. Only have to add a path check to make sure that there is a viable path (no cliffs or pits) between the spawn locations. In fact, you could randomize the path first and then generate the terrain afterwords.
And you can still have pre-generated areas like Bases, Towns, Airfields, Power Plants, etc. Just drop them in and blend the landscape around them.
Maps could even be randomly generated and tested on the Test Server and if it was a good one, the seed is copied into the live server and put into the rotation. Seeds are sent to the clients that tell it how to create the map and then load it into the client with instructions on where they are spawning. Imagine several new maps each month, if not dozens?
But, the 1# problem with all of this is: You cannot do it with the current game. You have to make MWO2 to do it. Best PGI could do now is to make the map generator but have it export it into the current map editing software they have so they can tweak it and save it as a normal map. Then throw it on to the Test Server and get feedback.
PS: I still feel PGI's highest priority should be taking their MW5 game engine and porting that to replace the old one from MWO. 7 year old game needs a graphics, performance, & feature enhancement first. Then we can talk about doing all this fancy extra stuff.
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