97 replies to this topic

[Aidan]

omegaclawe, on 03 November 2011 - 04:15 PM, said:

Er... Randomly generated cities are quite possible, too. Just a different algorithm. The idea would more or less to define your streets/alleyways/blocks, Then fill the blocks with buildings, parks, what have you.

Yea I hear you. It is so easy to write a few lines on a blog and make it sound simple. But when the "rubber meets the road" and actually creating it ... THAT is a different story.

[Souske Sagara]

A good prebuilt map offers little advantage to someone who has it memorized over someone who is going in the firssst time, especially if you still need your scouts to pick up enemy movements. I would imagine from the talk that its going to be a large series of prebuilt maps so those who like to memorize maps or wiki the grid will be hard pressed to come up with anything pre-battle. Or a basic design is built and random features are added, like when you would drop down citymap 2 and then take turns putting buildings on it.

[omegaclawe]

Aidan, on 03 November 2011 - 06:24 PM, said:

Yea I hear you. It is so easy to write a few lines on a blog and make it sound simple. But when the "rubber meets the road" and actually creating it ... THAT is a different story.

I'm pretty sure I could make one within a day's time if I wanted to*. I wouldn't even have to bother with Perlin noise, the hardest part of a more... rural style terrain generator.

That said, fine tuning it to be both balanced and interesting enough to be applicable, here, would be much harder, and would likely require such a large amount of tweaking and rewriting as to be more or less described as beyond my abilities. Doesn't mean someone at PGI isn't up to the task, though.

*Note: This would assume level terrain, and prefab buildings of defined size. Intersections would have to be at somewhat precise angles, but it would not require roads to be perpendicular, or straight the whole way through. Curves would take more time than suggested, and require some unique prefab resources, and would therefore not be included. Parks could be implemented by stealing other terrain generation algorithms.

[Grimjax]

I agree the random Map might not be an easy thing to program, the point is if it was done and done right it would quickly recoup the efforts involved.

Not knowing how the terrain is laid out would make gathering Intel even more important.

The other part is replayability.

Anyone that has been in the military, played strategy games, or even FPS games should be able to tell you that knowledge of the terrain you will be fighting in is a huge advantage. And anyone claiming that a well designed map would negate any advantage of already knowing the layout is full of poo.

[omegaclawe]

What a well designed map actually does is just make all avenues of assault more or less equally viable. That, and it will always, always, always look a lot nicer than a generated one, even with an amazing generation algorithm.

Well designed, static maps will be fine, because, while you'll know the landscape, so will your opponents, and they aught to be big and spread out enough to make intel gathering a must.

...this can be aided by not making the spawnpoints the same, each time.

Still, from a gameplay perspective, it wouldn't be nearly as interesting as a balanced algorithm, that, with a 32-bit seed, could provide 4,294,967,296 different maps. Even in a thousand matches a day, it'd take you more than 1000 years to play through all those.

Edit: After doing the math, it would actually take roughly 10 human lifetimes to get through all the maps if you went through one per second. This means that, even with a massive amount of people, it would be years and years before PGI ever ended up having the same map loaded on the server, in that case, from the generator.

Edited by omegaclawe, 04 November 2011 - 06:42 AM.

[Razor Kotovsky]

Aidan, on 03 November 2011 - 06:24 PM, said:

Yea I hear you. It is so easy to write a few lines on a blog and make it sound simple. But when the "rubber meets the road" and actually creating it ... THAT is a different story.

Uh, i am 100% positively sure that is easily implemented.

Prebuilt blocks bordered with some asphalt chained via the same asphalt, no?

[Grimjax]

omegaclawe, on 04 November 2011 - 06:13 AM, said:

Still, from a gameplay perspective, it wouldn't be nearly as interesting as a balanced algorithm, that, with a 32-bit seed, could provide 4,294,967,296 different maps. Even in a thousand matches a day, it'd take you more than 1000 years to play through all those.

I'm not ignoring the rest of your quote, I just want to re-emphasize what the potential could be for a good random map generator. I get the feeling that most would appreciate this but, just feel that it can't be done. The trick is, they are not going to even try, if you'll settle for less.

They're still going to create pre-generated maps. This would just allow more variety.

[infinite xaer0]

It's easier to control the the elements and aspects of a predetermined map to deliver a specific sort of gameplay experience, than with randomly generated maps, so I'd vote for the predetermined maps. Though, to spice things up, the devs could make maps with multiple objectives in them, but each round the set of objectives for each team changes, so players aren't always fighting over the same areas. Additionally, they could add some randomization to drop locations, though, only within a certain area.

[Aidan]

Razor Kotovsky, on 04 November 2011 - 06:17 AM, said:

Uh, i am 100% positively sure that is easily implemented.

Prebuilt blocks bordered with some asphalt chained via the same asphalt, no?

IMHO, PGI has no motivation to do this. If you as a player could rely on a pre-built algorithm to generate, practically speaking, an almost infinite number of maps, then why aren't the AAA game studios doing this for their loyal player base? Because pre-built custom maps are a source of DLC funding, ensure good quality control, and enhance good competitive game play and provide a continuous revenue stream for the the development studio and the publisher.

Companies such as UnREAL and Crytek may be interested in creating algorithms for map generation. This could be offered as an enhanced feature for the sale of their respective game engines. But I doubt the dev studio would want to devote time and resources to create these algorithms simply to satisfy a small portion of their player base who get easily bored.

If MechWarrior is not intellectually challenging enough for you, then try chess. There are many variations in chess.

Edited by Aidan, 04 November 2011 - 07:16 AM.

[Grimjax]

Aidan, on 04 November 2011 - 07:04 AM, said:

IMHO, PGI has no motivation to do this. If you as a player could rely on a pre-built algorithm to generate, practically speaking, an almost infinite number of maps, then why aren't the AAA game studios doing this for their loyal player base? Because pre-built custom maps are a source of DLC funding, ensure good quality control, and enhance good competitive game play and provide a continuous revenue stream for the the development studio and the publisher.

Companies such as UnREAL and Crytek may be interested in creating a algorithms for map generation. This could be offered as an enhanced feature for the sale of their respective game engines. But I doubt the dev studio would want to devote time and resources to create these algorithms simply to satisfy a small portion of their player base who get easily bored.

If MechWarrior is not intellectually challenging enough for you, then try chess. There are many variations in chess.

The reason AAA gaming companies are not investing time into a random map generator is because you have not given them an incentive to try. If you don't ask for a feature or keep saying it's to complicated, what reason should they try. You've already given them the excuse to not try it.
... and by the way you just used the best example of a game where every concievable action has already been plotted, chess. There is no randomness involved except the player's lack of skill.

[Razor Kotovsky]

Where's the dislike button here? Because that's the single worst post i've ever read.

The only game existing that can benefit from generated maps i can think of is the World of muthafuken Tanks. Their problem is the ****** engine they don't even know how to modify. Instead they keep piling new maps (and tanks) that everyone learns in a matter of days and reduces them to a set of known covers.
For generated maps to work the game should use instanced battles, and this works perfectly for mechwarrior as there are thousands of planets and you only get to see the surface in battle after the drop.

"AAA game studios" don't do those kind of games. This is why you haven't seen this.

Edited by Razor Kotovsky, 04 November 2011 - 07:22 AM.

[Aidan]

Grimjax, on 04 November 2011 - 07:16 AM, said:

The reason AAA gaming companies are not investing time into a random map generator is because you have not given them an incentive to try. If you don't ask for a feature or keep saying it's to complicated, what reason should they try. You've already given them the excuse to not try it.
... and by the way you just used the best example of a game where every concievable action has already been plotted, chess. There is no randomness involved except the player's lack of skill.

Don't get me wrong, there is great entertainment value in not knowing what is "around the bend" or "over the next hill". But as long as the pre-built map is not as flat as the kitchen table, there should be many bends and corners to peer around. Whether or not your opponent is there around that bend or over that hill, only you will know. The mystery is the magic.

[Kaori]

I am all for random maps as long as the temperate is known. I wouldn't want to setup with all high heat weapons and end up in a desert.

[Grimjax]

Aidan,you just settled again. Why not push the envelope? The more variables involved will add more to the mystery.

Edited by Grimjax, 04 November 2011 - 07:51 AM.

[Razor Kotovsky]

Kaori, on 04 November 2011 - 07:45 AM, said:

I am all for random maps as long as the temperate is known. I wouldn't want to setup with all high heat weapons and end up in a desert.

You always know what type of planet you land on, expected longitude/latitude (with orbital imagery) and the time of day.

P.S.: laserboats = terrible.

It would actually be absolutely awesome to choose in what type of available terrain you want to establish a foothold (if there will be an option for invading and taking the planet) and then having this "cached" for the duration of existence of said operative base.

*** ****, why do i let my hopes get to the levels of my fantasy?

Edited by Razor Kotovsky, 04 November 2011 - 07:59 AM.

[AlanEsh]

The Tortoise, on 01 November 2011 - 02:14 PM, said:

Has anyone ever played World of Tanks?
I'm hoping the maps will be similar but bigger.

So you voted for "static maps with obvious lanes of advance and lots of places to get stuck"...

I'd like to see static maps for campaigns ... i mean if you are fighting over a spaceport, why would that map randomize next time it was attacked?
For meeting engagements and deathmatch, give me randomly generated maps.

[Razor Kotovsky]

Angelicon, on 04 November 2011 - 08:05 AM, said:

So you voted for "static maps with obvious lanes of advance and lots of places to get stuck"...

I'd like to see static maps for campaigns ... i mean if you are fighting over a spaceport, why would that map randomize next time it was attacked?
For meeting engagements and deathmatch, give me randomly generated maps.

Well, generated once, it's easily cached.
As i said there are thousands of planets and that means at least hundreds of big enough to be landmarks spaceports.

Because, well, regular maps are generated (by dwarves in your pc) too!

[omegaclawe]

Grimjax, on 04 November 2011 - 07:16 AM, said:

... and by the way you just used the best example of a game where every concievable action has already been plotted, chess. There is no randomness involved except the player's lack of skill.

Er... no. It has not. Checkers has. Chess has something like 2^128-1 possible games or something like that. We don't have enough hard drives on earth to store all the information required for that.

It is, however, a -solvable- game, which means, had we enough processing power and storage space, we could, in fact, find the best possible move in all situations.

[Razor Kotovsky]

Diablo called, it frowns upon your shenanigans.

Like pretty much everything else, maps consist of lesser objects.
Every time you fire up BF3 thousands of them get loaded up and ready to put on pretty textures if the need be. They are always there, waiting...

Biggest problem with generating is eliminating possible bugs due to wrong surface linking, object overlapping and the rest.
Intermediate solution is to sew together prebuilt blocks with leveled borders which works perfectly for urban enviroment.

Can't say that enough times.

Edited by Razor Kotovsky, 04 November 2011 - 10:13 AM.

[Grimjax]

omegaclawe each chess piece has a finite set of moves that can be accomplished at any one time from any one position. So yes there are variations on how a game will be ran. I said the moves, not the games have been plotted. And it is solvable, that is what computers are doing now with chess, which was the whole point I was making.