No Man’s Sky Is A Huge Procedurally Generated Sci-Fi Exploration Sim(indiestatik.com)
indiestatik.com
No Man’s Sky Is A Huge Procedurally Generated Sci-Fi Exploration Sim
http://indiestatik.com/2013/12/07/mans-sky/
118 comments
Check out "Elite: Dangerous" it has a scientifically accurate 1:1 scale, fully Seamless Milky Way galaxy using a mix of procedural generation with artist direction
http://elite-dangerous.wikia.com/wiki/Elite:_Dangerous_FAQ
http://elite-dangerous.wikia.com/wiki/Procedural_Generation
http://elite-dangerous.wikia.com/wiki/Elite:_Dangerous_FAQ
http://elite-dangerous.wikia.com/wiki/Procedural_Generation
yeah, but lets be honest... that's never going to get finished. its not like they've already had 10-15 years of working on it and millions of pounds of investment that have already been wasted... long before the recent kickstart.
There are plenty of finished space-exploration games with very similar scope.
The Frontier series, for instance, featured a life-scale galaxy with seamless planet landing, each one entirely unique. It was released in 1993, and we're much better at making games like these now.
Here are some other games that will "never be finished":
- StarBound - http://playstarbound.com
- Rodina - http://elliptic-games.com/
- Elite: Dangerous - http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1461411552/elite-dangero...
- Drifter - http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/celsiusgs/drifter-a-spac...
- Star Citizen - http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/cig/star-citizen
- Limit Theory - http://ltheory.com/
And there are still many more.
The Frontier series, for instance, featured a life-scale galaxy with seamless planet landing, each one entirely unique. It was released in 1993, and we're much better at making games like these now.
Here are some other games that will "never be finished":
- StarBound - http://playstarbound.com
- Rodina - http://elliptic-games.com/
- Elite: Dangerous - http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1461411552/elite-dangero...
- Drifter - http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/celsiusgs/drifter-a-spac...
- Star Citizen - http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/cig/star-citizen
- Limit Theory - http://ltheory.com/
And there are still many more.
£2,140,164 raised.
The money raised from fans is only a fraction of their total budget.
http://www.directorstalk.com/video-edison-executive-intervie...
http://frontier.co.uk/investor_relations
http://www.directorstalk.com/video-edison-executive-intervie...
http://frontier.co.uk/investor_relations
That is nowhere near enough. The best case scenario is a static world with simplified stelar objects. So far the only released game that got even close to realistic distances was I-War 2:Edge of Chaos( awesome game btw ) which was static.
Frontier: Elite 2 from 1993 and Frontier: First Encounters (Elite 3) from 1995 did it way before I-War was even a thing, complete with full freeform seamless landing on planets with real celestial mechanics.
http://frontier.co.uk/games/older/frontier_elite_ii
http://frontier.co.uk/games/older/frontier_first_encounters
http://frontier.co.uk/games/older/frontier_elite_ii
http://frontier.co.uk/games/older/frontier_first_encounters
I took a look at some game play videos and I'm positively surprised. I seems today's developers mostly just don't care or don't have the required knowledge.
Also considering the lack of exposure and the amount of flack Elite: Dangerous is getting compared to the other space games it's also the gamers who sadly don't care.
Btw here is an interesting interview with David Braben somewhat before the time of Frontier: Elite 2's release.
http://amr.abime.net/review_38271
http://amr.abime.net/review_38231
http://amr.abime.net/review_15452
Here is a reddit AMA from a year ago.
http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/15od2s/i_am_david_brab...
There is also an impressive universe simulator called Space Engine and they are planning on adding gameplay to it, but it will probably take a long time before it's ready.
http://en.spaceengine.org
There is also Pioneer Space Sim that started as a Frontier: Elite 2 remake, which is also still WIP.
http://pioneerspacesim.net
Also be sure to check out the Elite: Dangerous FAQ
http://elite-dangerous.wikia.com/wiki/Elite:_Dangerous_FAQ#W...
Btw here is an interesting interview with David Braben somewhat before the time of Frontier: Elite 2's release.
http://amr.abime.net/review_38271
http://amr.abime.net/review_38231
http://amr.abime.net/review_15452
Here is a reddit AMA from a year ago.
http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/15od2s/i_am_david_brab...
There is also an impressive universe simulator called Space Engine and they are planning on adding gameplay to it, but it will probably take a long time before it's ready.
http://en.spaceengine.org
There is also Pioneer Space Sim that started as a Frontier: Elite 2 remake, which is also still WIP.
http://pioneerspacesim.net
Also be sure to check out the Elite: Dangerous FAQ
http://elite-dangerous.wikia.com/wiki/Elite:_Dangerous_FAQ#W...
its in no way impossible - they just failed to deliver for long enough already imo - i have zero faith in the team delivering it.
i dont think its impossible or that they don't have enough money - just that they will fail to deliver based on their having been plenty of time and money for Elite 4 already... it already puts duke nukem forever to shame imo.
i would like to see it, but i don't think its realistic (i don't believe its technically impossible - especially with that kind of resource, i just have little faith in the people involved by this point - which is a shame)
i would like to see it, but i don't think its realistic (i don't believe its technically impossible - especially with that kind of resource, i just have little faith in the people involved by this point - which is a shame)
I saw the 1984, 1991, 1995 games on youtube and I am blown away how ahead of the pack it was. Pushing the envelope of hardware in those times and the amount of gameplay depth seems absolutely incredible.
I have my reservations about the new game however because if anything, there's plenty of space shooters out there. No Man's Sky is appealing because of the procedural nature, but the new gameplay videos looked quite good.
I'd want a game to feel like it's new everytime I play it online. I hate seeing the same corridor or encountering same situations. I agree that gameplay here will be the final gamebreaker for me.
I don't buy that procedural = sandbox effect = bored in 10 minutes. If anything I could never play GTA series entirely, I'd get distracted, pick up hookers, shoot a rival gang member in a drive by shooting, and commit suicide by jumping off the building while firing RPG launchers. This also tends to get old.
I have my reservations about the new game however because if anything, there's plenty of space shooters out there. No Man's Sky is appealing because of the procedural nature, but the new gameplay videos looked quite good.
I'd want a game to feel like it's new everytime I play it online. I hate seeing the same corridor or encountering same situations. I agree that gameplay here will be the final gamebreaker for me.
I don't buy that procedural = sandbox effect = bored in 10 minutes. If anything I could never play GTA series entirely, I'd get distracted, pick up hookers, shoot a rival gang member in a drive by shooting, and commit suicide by jumping off the building while firing RPG launchers. This also tends to get old.
The other day, my younger brother and I spent 6 hours BASE jumping off various things in GTA 5. I'm terrible at games with too much freedom, and I get bored with that pretty rapidly :(
I've been a fan of David Braben's since playing Elite and Virus as a kid. I'd never seen him speak and The Procedural Generation video gave me a whole new appreciation of his intellect. I hope he gets a knighthood for his work on Raspberry-Pi. Much greatness in him and I wonder what he would have achieved if he had started off in California rather than Essex and Cambridge.
> Much greatness in him and I wonder what he would have achieved if he had started off in California rather than Essex and Cambridge.
Wow, that's more than a little bit self-important / arrogant. You do realize that Cambridge is home to several huge tech innovators, right (ARM?) And that the UK produces more than its fair share of huge video games (GTA?).
Applying your logic, who knows what that Tim Berners-Lee guy might have achieved if he'd started off in the valley rather than CERN...
Wow, that's more than a little bit self-important / arrogant. You do realize that Cambridge is home to several huge tech innovators, right (ARM?) And that the UK produces more than its fair share of huge video games (GTA?).
Applying your logic, who knows what that Tim Berners-Lee guy might have achieved if he'd started off in the valley rather than CERN...
"Much greatness in him and I wonder what he would have achieved if he had started off in California rather than Essex and Cambridge."
Maybe nothing great? Consider if Linus didn't have Finnish winters?
Maybe nothing great? Consider if Linus didn't have Finnish winters?
Probably not so much. He'd probably have been hired by Atari and making a ton of cash, followed by disappearing into obscurity.
I so much like the positive response of Kris Piotrowski of Capy Gmaes (SUPERBROTHERS: SWORD & SWORCERY EP)
kris piotrowski:
No Man's Sky is the video game everyone on Earth wanted to make ever since they first hear the word "video game".
Downside: No Man's Sky just made every game maker feel inadequate and suicidal. Upside: We don't have to try to make No Man's Sky anymore.
The question "Will I ever get to make my Exploration Sim/Space Battle Magnum Opus?" can now be replaced with "When can I play No Man's Sky?"
One important takeaway from No Man's Sky: If you have a dream video game you want to make, you should probably go try to actually make it.
#Below is one of my dream video games.
https://twitter.com/krispiotrowski
kris piotrowski:
No Man's Sky is the video game everyone on Earth wanted to make ever since they first hear the word "video game".
Downside: No Man's Sky just made every game maker feel inadequate and suicidal. Upside: We don't have to try to make No Man's Sky anymore.
The question "Will I ever get to make my Exploration Sim/Space Battle Magnum Opus?" can now be replaced with "When can I play No Man's Sky?"
One important takeaway from No Man's Sky: If you have a dream video game you want to make, you should probably go try to actually make it.
#Below is one of my dream video games.
https://twitter.com/krispiotrowski
The indie game dev community is incredibly hard to break into (you basically have to work on your game eating ramen for 18 months, and even then you're not sure you'll even succeed), but it's one of the industries with the most pleasant people I've ever met.
I'm not an indie dev, but a few friends from college are, and I get to meet a few of those guys here and there at GDC etc.- they're just delightful. Nerdy friendly guys who are incredibly smart, hard working, with an incredibly diverse set of talents (the skills needed to make a game are immense- programming, visual arts, music composing, game design, marketing- and a lot of those guys do all of it by themselves or with just 1 or 2 other people) and know to have fun.
Paradoxically, the gaming community is one of the most negative one ever (hordes of disappointed gamers will flood your blog and insult your whole family if you don't give them exactly what they want). That contrast is super weird.
Names you should check out if you're interested in knowing more: Kris Piotrowski, Derek Yu, Andy Hull, Phil Fish, Jon Blow, Richard Flannigan, Matthew Davis, Alec Holowka.
I'm not an indie dev, but a few friends from college are, and I get to meet a few of those guys here and there at GDC etc.- they're just delightful. Nerdy friendly guys who are incredibly smart, hard working, with an incredibly diverse set of talents (the skills needed to make a game are immense- programming, visual arts, music composing, game design, marketing- and a lot of those guys do all of it by themselves or with just 1 or 2 other people) and know to have fun.
Paradoxically, the gaming community is one of the most negative one ever (hordes of disappointed gamers will flood your blog and insult your whole family if you don't give them exactly what they want). That contrast is super weird.
Names you should check out if you're interested in knowing more: Kris Piotrowski, Derek Yu, Andy Hull, Phil Fish, Jon Blow, Richard Flannigan, Matthew Davis, Alec Holowka.
Producers vs. consumers. I think this segregation exists everywhere. As you described, it is so accentuated in the context of indie game scene, it's absurd. But it's not a specific situation to this scene.
I have programmer friends who don't ever use a computer outside of work, who haven't learned a new language (outside of work) in the last 10 years for instance. Learning new languages is not necessarily a creative endeavor. But what happens then is cargo culting and bike shedding much like the way gamers get so demanding about something they don't know how to make.
I have programmer friends who don't ever use a computer outside of work, who haven't learned a new language (outside of work) in the last 10 years for instance. Learning new languages is not necessarily a creative endeavor. But what happens then is cargo culting and bike shedding much like the way gamers get so demanding about something they don't know how to make.
Maybe the answer is that only people who are already wealthy can become indie game devs? That would explain why they all seem nice (it's much easier to act that way when you're financially secure) and why the community around them hates them.
Nah. Some of them get comfortable financially after they ship their game, but almost none of them were wealthy while making the game. It's common for devs to live in their parent's basement during that time, or off of money that they saved in jobs for the years or decades prior.
I had a LOT of fun with a game with procedurally generated settings:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starflight
"The group designed what they called a "fractal generator", which took six man-years to develop and allowed them to increase the number of planets in the game from 50 to 800"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starflight
"The group designed what they called a "fractal generator", which took six man-years to develop and allowed them to increase the number of planets in the game from 50 to 800"
Edit: I agree this thread contains a lot of negativity and I agree it's too early to make any calls on this particular game, which does look fantastic.
Since so little can be said of this game the discussion is more "why have so many tried to do this, and failed"?
So I'll try:
Why is "procedural" used as a sales pitch? The only thing cool about procedural is that you can make something extremely vast. But then "vast" should be the sales pitch!
I'd much rather buy a game that promised "ten thousand planets carefully modeled by artists", than a game that contains millions of random ones. I fact, I'd probably prefer a sim with a designed world much smaller than that.
The thing with procedural environments is that they leave everything to game mechanics. A well designed world can support a basic or boring mechanic (such as a linear shooter). Procedural worlds need a game mechanic so deep and brilliant that only very few games have managed it (minecraft and a few of its inspirations, for example).
There isn't much that can be said about mechanics from the trailer, so we'll see.
I think (sadly) it will be the prettiest in a long line of "let's make an elite style universe sim where the game mechanic will probably/hopefully emerge from the sheer awesomeness that is an enormous space sim".
Since so little can be said of this game the discussion is more "why have so many tried to do this, and failed"?
So I'll try:
Why is "procedural" used as a sales pitch? The only thing cool about procedural is that you can make something extremely vast. But then "vast" should be the sales pitch!
I'd much rather buy a game that promised "ten thousand planets carefully modeled by artists", than a game that contains millions of random ones. I fact, I'd probably prefer a sim with a designed world much smaller than that.
The thing with procedural environments is that they leave everything to game mechanics. A well designed world can support a basic or boring mechanic (such as a linear shooter). Procedural worlds need a game mechanic so deep and brilliant that only very few games have managed it (minecraft and a few of its inspirations, for example).
There isn't much that can be said about mechanics from the trailer, so we'll see.
I think (sadly) it will be the prettiest in a long line of "let's make an elite style universe sim where the game mechanic will probably/hopefully emerge from the sheer awesomeness that is an enormous space sim".
“If you see the stars, those are real stars. They have their own planets around them, and you can go there”
There goes my dream.
There goes my dream.
The music
artist : 65 days of static
album : we were exploding anyway
song : debutante
artist : 65 days of static
album : we were exploding anyway
song : debutante
Hopefully this game will be good. I've been looking for a decent spacey game like Freelancer, but so far nothing seems remotely close to it. The Discovery mod in particular added a dimension that most modern games lack.
I don't get why there's so many negative comments here.
This game looks absolutely amazing.
If anything, efforts where previous attempts have been unsuccessful, should be lauded, and there's a lot of academic talk for a 2 minute video.
Let's wait and see but I have a good feeling about this one.
This game looks absolutely amazing.
If anything, efforts where previous attempts have been unsuccessful, should be lauded, and there's a lot of academic talk for a 2 minute video.
Let's wait and see but I have a good feeling about this one.
The embedded gameplay clip has been removed from YouTube so here's an alternative post: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y2FXIf9N-yA
The above video has also been removed.
Use this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNVgVl6v6YU
Use this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNVgVl6v6YU
This looks awesome - Minecraft meets Dune meets Homeland?
Gametrailers original:
http://www.gametrailers.com/videos/3hpqoi/no-man-s-sky-vgx-2...
http://www.gametrailers.com/videos/3hpqoi/no-man-s-sky-vgx-2...
This game came out of nowhere, the VGX show was basically being hyped of AAA titles, but no one was expecting an indie title to get as much hype as it's getting right now. I think the next gen consoles are making it much easier for devs to develop on, though frustratingly its still far more difficult to publish on console then mobile, mainly because you need to first be approved into the developer program before they even consider letting you publish games. Regardless, it seems to be moving in the right direction, although somewhat slow.
Ouch.. that "it has to be funny" stylized graphics everywhere..
I thought the aesthetic was actually kinda neat!
You know in the angry birds era (and generally in mobile games era where all games need to look appealing to everyone, even the most casual gamer ever) a lot of indie devs started to think they had to create cute appealing girlie-awe-insipiring stylized graphics even when that would not be the best fit for a given game genre and would completely compromise player immersion.
Another reason for this is that this kind of asset is way easier to implement than full blow realistic 3D models and environment.
In the end it's all about that, sacrifying game immersion so to be appealing for casual gamers who are not interested in game immersion and could even be put off by that because it contributes to let them think game is harder to play because it's not 'just a game'.
Another reason for this is that this kind of asset is way easier to implement than full blow realistic 3D models and environment.
In the end it's all about that, sacrifying game immersion so to be appealing for casual gamers who are not interested in game immersion and could even be put off by that because it contributes to let them think game is harder to play because it's not 'just a game'.
But not all games ask for "full blow realistic 3D models and environments". You have plenty of indie titles (Stealth Bastard, Super Meat Boy, Hotline Miami) for which "stylized graphics" in 2D are essential. Another example is Apotheon [1]: even if I'm not that fond of the gameplay, I wouldn't trade their stunning 2D graphics for any kind of 3D.
1: http://www.apotheongame.com/
1: http://www.apotheongame.com/
Where exactly did I say all games need full blown 3D graphics?
I am just saying that for this kind of games, where the hype/fun/immersion is all about how much fine-grained procedurally generated spatial/life details you can get, to make it all look cartonish style it's a bit simplistic and not up to the capability/deepness/complexity of the ecosystem engine they are proud to market.
To me it's just a bit of riding the trend because indie devs know very well that nowadays cute looking cartoonish indie games are well praised and boosted by mobile app stores whose ratings are driven by casual gamers looking before everything else for cute bleeps and rainbowish color splashes!
Anyway this is just my little opinion and I am sure it is incomplete and does not encompass all the aspects there are to it. Just see it as a starter for a more in-depth conversation, if you wish.
Provided you will take a 360 degrees approach to it :)
I am just saying that for this kind of games, where the hype/fun/immersion is all about how much fine-grained procedurally generated spatial/life details you can get, to make it all look cartonish style it's a bit simplistic and not up to the capability/deepness/complexity of the ecosystem engine they are proud to market.
To me it's just a bit of riding the trend because indie devs know very well that nowadays cute looking cartoonish indie games are well praised and boosted by mobile app stores whose ratings are driven by casual gamers looking before everything else for cute bleeps and rainbowish color splashes!
Anyway this is just my little opinion and I am sure it is incomplete and does not encompass all the aspects there are to it. Just see it as a starter for a more in-depth conversation, if you wish.
Provided you will take a 360 degrees approach to it :)
I think it's important to distinguish between "crappy graphics" and "stylized graphics". You can get away with a lot as long as you have great art direction. And this won't sacrifice immersion. On the other hand, you can make terrible-looking games with the best engines.
The space scenes look a lot like Homeworld.
Procedural generation is a widely used term in the production of media; it refers to content generated algorithmically rather than manually. Often, this means creating content on the fly rather than prior to distribution. This is often related to computer graphics applications and video game level design.
You might as well post a link to the Wikipedia article [1], when you copy its blurb.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Procedural_generation
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Procedural_generation
We've heard this same claim so many times before. Procedurally generating each atom? Come on, this is just a marketing gimmick. These never turn out to be decent games, usually it's just running around a world with randomly appearing enemies who all act the same and you're bored within 10 minutes. I'd be more optimistic if this exact thing hadn't been claimed before every year for the last 20 with no results.
First, I want to say how amazingly cool I think "No Man's Sky" looks -- as an enjoyer of scifi content and indie games, I will certainly be among the first in line to buy/play it when it comes out.
That said, I agree with this criticism of "procedural content" completely. A while ago I created a little toy WebGL tech demo featuring "a vast virtual 3D universe containing billions of unique stars and planets" (it's open-source on github if anyone's interested) -- so I encountered this issue first-hand (and saw it come up many times elsewhere in the past, of course).
IMO, the fundamental problem lies in a subtle distinction between "infinite variation" vs. "infinite novelty". Most procedural generation amounts to not much more than random noise passed through a variety of hand-tuned filters and/or custom code. In most cases it's how you tune that filtering and custom logic that leads to any amount of interesting results, not the underlying random noise generator (from which the too-good-to-be-true claim of "infinite variety" is derived).
I don't think it's completely impossible to derive interesting variation from a combination of mathematics and randomness, but I think the degree to which we find something interesting or "novel" is at least somewhat related to the amount of computational complexity put into its derivation (at least, that's my intuition on the matter).
That said, I agree with this criticism of "procedural content" completely. A while ago I created a little toy WebGL tech demo featuring "a vast virtual 3D universe containing billions of unique stars and planets" (it's open-source on github if anyone's interested) -- so I encountered this issue first-hand (and saw it come up many times elsewhere in the past, of course).
IMO, the fundamental problem lies in a subtle distinction between "infinite variation" vs. "infinite novelty". Most procedural generation amounts to not much more than random noise passed through a variety of hand-tuned filters and/or custom code. In most cases it's how you tune that filtering and custom logic that leads to any amount of interesting results, not the underlying random noise generator (from which the too-good-to-be-true claim of "infinite variety" is derived).
I don't think it's completely impossible to derive interesting variation from a combination of mathematics and randomness, but I think the degree to which we find something interesting or "novel" is at least somewhat related to the amount of computational complexity put into its derivation (at least, that's my intuition on the matter).
I've encountered the problem as well (2d side scrolling game with procedurally generated infinite universe, enemies, etc). It was boring.
I think theproblem is with Kolmogorov complexity. No matter how much variation there's in your game if the algorithm to create it is simple people will quickly develop intuition about what to expect, and get bored.
The only game that I've seen doing procedural generation right is Dwarf Fortress, because it's too complex to model it in your brain as you play.
I think theproblem is with Kolmogorov complexity. No matter how much variation there's in your game if the algorithm to create it is simple people will quickly develop intuition about what to expect, and get bored.
The only game that I've seen doing procedural generation right is Dwarf Fortress, because it's too complex to model it in your brain as you play.
I'd argue that Minecraft has it down pretty well too. You get an intuition about what to expect, but then there's always that little thing here or there that keeps it interesting.
I think grammars are a way to formalize this intuition of novelty (NB: grammars can be use to generate as well as to parse). Noise is like a stream of random symbols from an alphabet - anything is possible; most all of it boring. A grammar carves out a subset of the possible streams, only those with certain relationships between the symbols.
Regular expressions are a simple kind of grammar (aka "Regular Grammars") - you can see generation as choices made for explicit choice operators ("|"), and choices of whether to loop ("∗") or continue. Although limited, they can be surprisingly expressive. Context Free Grammars allow you to generate things that have the basic structure of xml, json and source code. And you can have Turing Equivalent grammars that, in describing a subset, can compute anything.
Of course, grammars aren't restricted to the Chomsky Hierarchy, but can include any way of describing the subset of streams (or generating an instance of them) - for example, the recent HN travesty/markov generators.
You can search for the right grammar (machine learning), by taking a corpus of instances of what you want to generate, and test out your grammar, by seeing how well it compresses them. This shows whether it is capturing regularities within them and between them - the rules or laws that are the essence of a grammar. In doing this, you should also take into account the size of the grammar itself: consider the extremes of one grammar that factors out deep regularities; versus one that is simply a choice between each instance, verbatim (this compresses real well: it just needs to encode which instance. i.e. log2(1/N) bits, e.g. 8 bits to encode which of 256 different instances, assuming uniform probability). Accounting for the complexity of the grammar avoids this.
This comes down to the length of the description of the instances + the length of the description of the grammar.
( "Model" is probably a better term than "grammar", since it doesn't imply a sequence. )
Re: your last point, there's no theoretical reason that an extremely accurate model must be computationally expensive to execute (e.g. flocking behaviour was simpler than expected; and Occam's Razor gives us hope) - but it might well be computationally expensive to discover in the first place. e.g. require many great leaps of intuition by humans. (Even if it's obvious in hindsight.)
The trailer looks a little repetitive to me - esp the yellow underwater plants; and the trees seem to be random blocks of foliage - like minecraft trees or github icons, just rendered nicer. I don't want to criticize, as they probably have some cool innovations hidden away in there.
What I'd like is gameplay-significant procedural generation. e.g. trees you can climb, so their shape affects where you can reach and how. Terrain - mountains, streams - naturally has this effect. Then, developers have to make it work right! So far, only the minecraft/dwarf fortress genres do this. Because generation is fundamental to their concept, their gameplay, and why people like the games, I suspect that that genre is where we'll eventually get the hi-res breakthroughs - whereas for every other genre, including "No Man's Sky", if their gameplay isn't 100% dependent on generation, whenever there's a conflict between the two, generation will lose (crunch time! what must be finished to ship?). Servant of two masters etc.
FWIW I still think FarCry2 (not 3) creates the most immersive world so far. Hopefully something even better will be done for nextgen consoles/PCs, as opposed to just higher resolution and higher gamification.
Regular expressions are a simple kind of grammar (aka "Regular Grammars") - you can see generation as choices made for explicit choice operators ("|"), and choices of whether to loop ("∗") or continue. Although limited, they can be surprisingly expressive. Context Free Grammars allow you to generate things that have the basic structure of xml, json and source code. And you can have Turing Equivalent grammars that, in describing a subset, can compute anything.
Of course, grammars aren't restricted to the Chomsky Hierarchy, but can include any way of describing the subset of streams (or generating an instance of them) - for example, the recent HN travesty/markov generators.
You can search for the right grammar (machine learning), by taking a corpus of instances of what you want to generate, and test out your grammar, by seeing how well it compresses them. This shows whether it is capturing regularities within them and between them - the rules or laws that are the essence of a grammar. In doing this, you should also take into account the size of the grammar itself: consider the extremes of one grammar that factors out deep regularities; versus one that is simply a choice between each instance, verbatim (this compresses real well: it just needs to encode which instance. i.e. log2(1/N) bits, e.g. 8 bits to encode which of 256 different instances, assuming uniform probability). Accounting for the complexity of the grammar avoids this.
This comes down to the length of the description of the instances + the length of the description of the grammar.
( "Model" is probably a better term than "grammar", since it doesn't imply a sequence. )
Re: your last point, there's no theoretical reason that an extremely accurate model must be computationally expensive to execute (e.g. flocking behaviour was simpler than expected; and Occam's Razor gives us hope) - but it might well be computationally expensive to discover in the first place. e.g. require many great leaps of intuition by humans. (Even if it's obvious in hindsight.)
The trailer looks a little repetitive to me - esp the yellow underwater plants; and the trees seem to be random blocks of foliage - like minecraft trees or github icons, just rendered nicer. I don't want to criticize, as they probably have some cool innovations hidden away in there.
What I'd like is gameplay-significant procedural generation. e.g. trees you can climb, so their shape affects where you can reach and how. Terrain - mountains, streams - naturally has this effect. Then, developers have to make it work right! So far, only the minecraft/dwarf fortress genres do this. Because generation is fundamental to their concept, their gameplay, and why people like the games, I suspect that that genre is where we'll eventually get the hi-res breakthroughs - whereas for every other genre, including "No Man's Sky", if their gameplay isn't 100% dependent on generation, whenever there's a conflict between the two, generation will lose (crunch time! what must be finished to ship?). Servant of two masters etc.
FWIW I still think FarCry2 (not 3) creates the most immersive world so far. Hopefully something even better will be done for nextgen consoles/PCs, as opposed to just higher resolution and higher gamification.
One of the difficulties in creating novelty is in creating the "relationships between symbols" as you say.
Take a sword in an RPG for example. It can be a weapon, it can be sold, it can be used as a crutch for a wounded person. It can be used to signal to others by reflecting the sunlight off it. Each of these aspects add new systems of gameplay.
but these additional relationships don't seem like things you can predict without presupposing the existence of the whole sentient world. And we've said nothing about where the sword came from in the first place!
I agree with you on gameplay-significant procedural generation. After playing and loving Noctis and Frontier: Elite II, I wanted to create an arty space exploration game where you took control of a mysterious alien being who roamed the universe in search of "knowledge". You'd do this by exploring and scanning features of the universe with different tools that took skill to use.
For example, to scan a mountain range, you'd have to land several probes around it, maybe in difficult conditions. "Knowledge" would be things like "tallest mountain range","largest ocean","oxygen atmosphere","binary system with habitable planets". I thought this was a good way of having distinct goals, but remaining open ended and unpredictable. "biggest","tallest" etc being things which are easy to specify but could be anywhere in the universe.
I thought you could fly a "living ship" a bit like Moia in Farscape. This ship would develop according to how much knowledge you accumulated, along with resources you extract from the universe.
My goal was to make the procedural world itself as something of concern for the player, to encourage the player to actually get out there into the depths. Maybe I'll start on it someday, I don't know. Everyone seems to be making space games at the moment!
Take a sword in an RPG for example. It can be a weapon, it can be sold, it can be used as a crutch for a wounded person. It can be used to signal to others by reflecting the sunlight off it. Each of these aspects add new systems of gameplay.
but these additional relationships don't seem like things you can predict without presupposing the existence of the whole sentient world. And we've said nothing about where the sword came from in the first place!
I agree with you on gameplay-significant procedural generation. After playing and loving Noctis and Frontier: Elite II, I wanted to create an arty space exploration game where you took control of a mysterious alien being who roamed the universe in search of "knowledge". You'd do this by exploring and scanning features of the universe with different tools that took skill to use.
For example, to scan a mountain range, you'd have to land several probes around it, maybe in difficult conditions. "Knowledge" would be things like "tallest mountain range","largest ocean","oxygen atmosphere","binary system with habitable planets". I thought this was a good way of having distinct goals, but remaining open ended and unpredictable. "biggest","tallest" etc being things which are easy to specify but could be anywhere in the universe.
I thought you could fly a "living ship" a bit like Moia in Farscape. This ship would develop according to how much knowledge you accumulated, along with resources you extract from the universe.
My goal was to make the procedural world itself as something of concern for the player, to encourage the player to actually get out there into the depths. Maybe I'll start on it someday, I don't know. Everyone seems to be making space games at the moment!
That doesn't really explain why some models are interesting and some aren't. Novelty is more than just an arbitrary pattern. Randomly generating models wouldn't really be interesting PG, at least I don't think.
It's true. Speaking as a gamedev, more people should really study how Notch was able to make procedural gen so interesting to look at. It's rather involved, and took a lot of testing to get right. And even that starts to get boring after awhile.
Every environment you see in this video will probably look roughly the same: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNVgVl6v6YU
The reason is because most programmers simply do 'procedural' gen like "if desert, then X. If temperate, than Y. If..."
But you can achieve much more interesting results by using weighting instead of special casing.
Every environment you see in this video will probably look roughly the same: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNVgVl6v6YU
The reason is because most programmers simply do 'procedural' gen like "if desert, then X. If temperate, than Y. If..."
But you can achieve much more interesting results by using weighting instead of special casing.
Procedural generation along similar lines has been used successfully for most of the vegetation in Pixar's "Brave", see http://www.cgw.com/Publications/CGW/2012/Volume-35-Issue-4-J... for some background.
> more people should really study how Notch was able to make procedural gen so interesting to look at.
Could you elaborate or link an article on this?
Could you elaborate or link an article on this?
Nonsense.
This lot being Brits of the right age it blatantly follows from the tradition of Elite and Exile, two old 8-bit titles where everything was procedurally generated in order to fit into the machines of the era.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elite_(video_game) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exile_(1988_video_game)
This lot being Brits of the right age it blatantly follows from the tradition of Elite and Exile, two old 8-bit titles where everything was procedurally generated in order to fit into the machines of the era.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elite_(video_game) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exile_(1988_video_game)
Everybody knows Elite, so I won't say much about that. But Exile really was a spectacular game for the time. Actually, I didn't realise it was procedurally generated - which probably explains why I spent many hours as a teen trying to work out how on earth they made it all fit in ~20k of RAM.
Super impressive disassembly of Exile from the wikipedia page:
http://www.level7.org.uk/miscellany/exile-disassembly.txt
http://www.level7.org.uk/miscellany/exile-disassembly.txt
Ever played rogue, nethack or dwarf fortress?
I don't think that the word atom here refer to the usual physical object (which shouldn't be called that way btw), but rather to indivisible objects (ie. the original meaning of atom) in the game data model, iow every actors (passive or active).
Yeah I think it has potential but the abuse of the term procedural for blatant marketing purposes is a bit overboard. Procedural down to the "atom" yet when you watch the trailer, you see the same old trees, rocks, 2-jet engine spaceships and an extremely Earth-like world..
The only thing that looked procedural are the seemingly random colors. Everything else looks like they modeled a bunch of 3D assets.
Maybe they're procedurally generating the terrain like Minecraft but they're definitely building the world from pre-modeled assets.
The only thing that looked procedural are the seemingly random colors. Everything else looks like they modeled a bunch of 3D assets.
Maybe they're procedurally generating the terrain like Minecraft but they're definitely building the world from pre-modeled assets.
Actual trees are generated procedurally via their cells, and they look like the same old trees. That's how trees work.
And your point is? Are you suggesting that they're 'growing' a tree procedurally from the cellular level?
No, my point is that your complaint above doesn't make sense.
Trees are trees: if anything, the fact that you've correctly identified 'the same old trees' shows that the designer has done a good job in this respect.
Trees are trees: if anything, the fact that you've correctly identified 'the same old trees' shows that the designer has done a good job in this respect.
> We've heard this same claim so many times before.
Could you please list some examples?
Could you please list some examples?
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Minecraft, terraria, and starbound seem to contradict your point.
Never turn out to be decent games? Some of the most beloved and respected games in history (e.g. Elite) are done this way.
Looks quite cool and such. But what do you actually do in this game? I mean, in what ways do you interact with your environment?
Today we are still writing code like 20 years ago and one could think there has been little evolution regarding that. But this imo shows where the evolution has gone. Today a team of 4 is able to build a procedurally generated game of high visual quality with a gigantic scope like that because our tools, libraries, techniques and also hardware have evolved to a point where this is possible. I think thats pretty amazing!
Revolution vs Evolution. People want to think that progress comes from a handful of revolutions that change the world. It's a lot more exciting than what we actually have: evolutions, over long periods of time.
Except that actual biological evolution works via punctuated equilibrium, so it is possible to be living in interesting times.
Neat tech, but the problem with procedurally generated games with large worlds is that the core game mechanics are often bland or shallow, and the content can come across as very samey.
How can you even begin to judge the gameplay from the teaser video?
You cant. But, the poster didn't do that at all, didn't even mention the video. The post is short, so its not hard to see that.
My skeptical question would be: how can you set a mission in a genuinely dynamically generated world? For example, you might not even know that a bit of land will exist where you want the mission to begin. But, maybe I'm missing something obvious.
My skeptical question would be: how can you set a mission in a genuinely dynamically generated world? For example, you might not even know that a bit of land will exist where you want the mission to begin. But, maybe I'm missing something obvious.
Procedurally generated just means you can create lots of variety; not that you can't generate ahead of time, save it to disk, and even put potentially useful features in the database and then just pick from those when putting together a mission.
It was a teaser, but it was reasonably long and a lot of gameplay was shown.
1) http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/joshparnell/limit-theory... (pledged $187,865 of $50,000 goal)
2) https://www.inovaestudios.com/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6a69dMLb_k (has been in development for years, about to start a campaign on kickstarter)
3) http://pioneerspacesim.net/ (free, open source, alreaady playable, alpha stage and actively developed)
2) https://www.inovaestudios.com/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6a69dMLb_k (has been in development for years, about to start a campaign on kickstarter)
3) http://pioneerspacesim.net/ (free, open source, alreaady playable, alpha stage and actively developed)
I like the list. I'm thinking/hoping that sandbox games with generated content will becomes a larger part of the core game market.
Mostly, we see success in the indie 2D world:
Don't starve - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MsWm_gWyk4s
Binding of Isaac - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c5PLC6nmOO4
Terraria - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHPX0kR9h7I
And just released Starbound - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZvrmB4tw33Q
Certainly 3D games are quite exciting in this space, too, but the 2D games seem to have a lot more traction with the big exception of minecraft.
I suspect it's simply easier to make an engaging sandbox when you don't have to worry about complexities in art assets that a 3D game requires.
Mostly, we see success in the indie 2D world:
Don't starve - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MsWm_gWyk4s
Binding of Isaac - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c5PLC6nmOO4
Terraria - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHPX0kR9h7I
And just released Starbound - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZvrmB4tw33Q
Certainly 3D games are quite exciting in this space, too, but the 2D games seem to have a lot more traction with the big exception of minecraft.
I suspect it's simply easier to make an engaging sandbox when you don't have to worry about complexities in art assets that a 3D game requires.
I clicked on the Starbound link and hours of my life vanished. What a beautiful game.
Uh, Don't Starve isn't generated. The world is fixed.
Pro-tip: You need rocks, and you need them fast. Get all you can in the south, and then move northeast for the large rock pile. From there, you need to figure out how to survive the stronger enemies.
Pro-tip: You need rocks, and you need them fast. Get all you can in the south, and then move northeast for the large rock pile. From there, you need to figure out how to survive the stronger enemies.
I'm a fan of Space Engine, one of the few space simulators I've seen do procedural generation well. http://en.spaceengine.org/ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vj-VcZY_nwE
The videos are incredible. Unfortunately, no mac os version yet !! Damn...
Replying so I can come back to this later.. That looks ...incredible
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I'm always happy to see more space exploration sims.
I dislike this kind of news coverage very much. It is designed to tease rather than inform. Although, I have to admit I was intrigued less by the claim that the game procedurally generates every atom, and more by the question it begs of how you'd actually generate every atom.
Usually, of course, atoms don't matter. The ideal gas law, for example, is essentially a "rule of thumb" which gives you useful ways to predict the behavior of large ensembles of atoms; e.g. to average over the movements of statistically significant (avagadro's number or so) individual particles - indeed, one of the most amazing things in physics is the connection between Newtonian physics and thermodynamics via statistical mechanics.
In any event, my naive answer to the question of what should we simulate would be "don't simulate anything you don't have to" which means that unless you have scanning electron microscopes in the game you don't simulate atoms at all. You mostly use approximations. In games, collisions are important so surfaces (and their properties) tend to be important. And so those simple geometries defines the data structure you use to define the world. In essence mass is defined in a computer program to be a volume that behaves a certain way in the presence of acceleration. But there is no need to describe materials as a lattice of much smaller particles. It's almost never relevant to the simulation.
So, yeah, I don't think it's reasonable to expect a game to simulate a world such that ad hoc chemical reactions can take place, etc. But it's not unreasonable to expect in-game scanning electron microscopes to be able to realistically resolve the details of any material.
Usually, of course, atoms don't matter. The ideal gas law, for example, is essentially a "rule of thumb" which gives you useful ways to predict the behavior of large ensembles of atoms; e.g. to average over the movements of statistically significant (avagadro's number or so) individual particles - indeed, one of the most amazing things in physics is the connection between Newtonian physics and thermodynamics via statistical mechanics.
In any event, my naive answer to the question of what should we simulate would be "don't simulate anything you don't have to" which means that unless you have scanning electron microscopes in the game you don't simulate atoms at all. You mostly use approximations. In games, collisions are important so surfaces (and their properties) tend to be important. And so those simple geometries defines the data structure you use to define the world. In essence mass is defined in a computer program to be a volume that behaves a certain way in the presence of acceleration. But there is no need to describe materials as a lattice of much smaller particles. It's almost never relevant to the simulation.
So, yeah, I don't think it's reasonable to expect a game to simulate a world such that ad hoc chemical reactions can take place, etc. But it's not unreasonable to expect in-game scanning electron microscopes to be able to realistically resolve the details of any material.
I think they mean atom as in, the smallest unit that everything is built out of, not the scientific atom. I.e. not a single polygon is placed by a human artist and the sets aren't pre-designed with just some random variation.
But looking at the demo that doesn't seem to be true either.
But looking at the demo that doesn't seem to be true either.
Eh, I think the more charitable reading is they meant a physical atom, but in the sense "not a single atom has been designed by hand."
It's like if you made some algorithmic music and claimed every nanosecond was generated automatically, even though we tend to think in terms of notes that are orders of magnitude larger.
If they really expect anyone in the gaming community to believe they're rendering each blade of grass with a few Octillion points or polygons, they're absolutely insane.
It's like if you made some algorithmic music and claimed every nanosecond was generated automatically, even though we tend to think in terms of notes that are orders of magnitude larger.
If they really expect anyone in the gaming community to believe they're rendering each blade of grass with a few Octillion points or polygons, they're absolutely insane.
Anyone know what engine they are using? The visuals look excellent.
EDIT: Think I found it: http://www.crytek.com/cryengine
EDIT: Think I found it: http://www.crytek.com/cryengine
Where did you find that they were using CryEngine? It seems like a very poor fit for what they demonstrated.
Oh great, no OS X version then. :-/
In my experience if you have an Apple computer and you want to play demanding games it's better to have windows installed in a separate partition.
The performance difference for some cross platform games is huge (around 30 - 40% slower on OSX).
The performance difference for some cross platform games is huge (around 30 - 40% slower on OSX).
true, also i find the way mouse acceleration works in OSX quite annoying for games.
try this http://smoothmouse.com/
There's an video interview with one of the developers here:
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2013-12-08-hello-games-deb...
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2013-12-08-hello-games-deb...
Reminds me of an old "game" I used to play called Noctis: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noctis
Too bad Noctis programmer went through an hard time... Last time I checked his website he had blogged about some kind of depression that arised from always trying to be perfectionist. And you can see this if you consider he was about to write everything from scratch for his next version of noctis. He started coding something like a new assembler language (if I remember correclty) which would have later be used to code the game in.
Yeah I used to hang around the forums waiting for Noctis V.
He was developing it in Linoleum, which is his own portable assembly language that he wrote. It's still available and an interesting experiment.
He was developing it in Linoleum, which is his own portable assembly language that he wrote. It's still available and an interesting experiment.
I see landscapes, animals and ships, but no people.
Well, people do tend to ruin and scar everything. I'd leave people out completely. Play the game as an animal!!!
Have you seen Burgundy vineyards or Longsheng rice terraces? Would you say these are scars over the landscapes? In the old world at least, humans have created with their hands most of the countryside landscapes and it is not always ugly.
Reminds me of infinity (from https://inovaestudios.com/), which I've been watching for the past few years.
Cool Video! By the way, in the video, by "Hydrogen Dioxide", I am pretty sure they actually meant actually meant H2O - "Dihydrogen Monoxide" or simply "Water".
Reminds me a bit of Spore, but hopefully not so disappointing.
This game has an incredible potential for broken promises. I predict bad review scores, howls of request for refunds, and the lead developer putting out blogs in the vein of "sorry, we should do better. Expect free updates that will fix everything soon!"
This looks massively impressive. Wonder if they can deliver as much as the trailer promises?
This is the sort teaser which makes me want to try the game just because of the "subtle" Dune-reference. Is there an Arakis anywhere there for us to discover?
This is the sort teaser which makes me want to try the game just because of the "subtle" Dune-reference. Is there an Arakis anywhere there for us to discover?
I like the concept of a procedural space exploration game and No Man’s Sky looks like a promising entry in the genre. There has been a number of attempts so far that approached this concept from different angles (from using space as a setting for fast roguelike gameplay [1] to pure exploration [2]), many of them resulting in good games.
That said, if No Man’s Sky really is totally procedural I wonder how the developers will handle the overall structure of the game and avoid the "quicksand box" [3] trap. This is especially pertinent if the game doesn't feature a Minecraft-style combination of building and survival to make the players not mind the "quicksand".
I know the game in which I enjoyed exploring space the most is The Ur-Quan Masters (formerly known as "Star Control II") [4]. The star systems and planets there are not procedurally generated and I don't think randomizing them would make much of the difference for the reason I'll explain in a moment. My best guess as to why I liked UQM/SC2 so much beyond its audiovisual style is that a) it has no formal mission structure that limits the player's actions; and b) there's a lot you can do; but c) your exploration still ties into an engaging larger story, which and in turn contributes unique one-time encounters to the exploration. A consequence of c) is that mixing up the layout of the galaxies without changing the overall plot, which at its core is fairly linear and features a time limit (think the original Fallout), wouldn't really change what the game is like. My guess is that the company that figures out how to generate distinct game plots that provide c) along with a) and b) will take over the procedural games business, if not the game industry as a whole. The question is whether c) can be done well enough in some way that doesn't involve an artificial general intelligence or per-player MTurk writers.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strange_Adventures_in_Infinite...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noctis
[3] http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/QuicksandBox
[4] It's now FOSS and available from http://sc2.sourceforge.net/. Highly recommended if you have an interest in SF space games.
That said, if No Man’s Sky really is totally procedural I wonder how the developers will handle the overall structure of the game and avoid the "quicksand box" [3] trap. This is especially pertinent if the game doesn't feature a Minecraft-style combination of building and survival to make the players not mind the "quicksand".
I know the game in which I enjoyed exploring space the most is The Ur-Quan Masters (formerly known as "Star Control II") [4]. The star systems and planets there are not procedurally generated and I don't think randomizing them would make much of the difference for the reason I'll explain in a moment. My best guess as to why I liked UQM/SC2 so much beyond its audiovisual style is that a) it has no formal mission structure that limits the player's actions; and b) there's a lot you can do; but c) your exploration still ties into an engaging larger story, which and in turn contributes unique one-time encounters to the exploration. A consequence of c) is that mixing up the layout of the galaxies without changing the overall plot, which at its core is fairly linear and features a time limit (think the original Fallout), wouldn't really change what the game is like. My guess is that the company that figures out how to generate distinct game plots that provide c) along with a) and b) will take over the procedural games business, if not the game industry as a whole. The question is whether c) can be done well enough in some way that doesn't involve an artificial general intelligence or per-player MTurk writers.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strange_Adventures_in_Infinite...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noctis
[3] http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/QuicksandBox
[4] It's now FOSS and available from http://sc2.sourceforge.net/. Highly recommended if you have an interest in SF space games.
Does anybody know what platform this game will run on? Xbox One, PS4, Wii, PC, Mac, iOS, Android? None of the promos gave us a clue as far as I could tell.
It reminds me a lot of Starglider 2. That was a great game from the 80s, which let you fly between several different planets to complete a set of missions. The graphics and gameplay were pretty amazing at the time on the Atari ST and the Amiga. One minute you'd be navigating around a set of tunnels deep inside a planet, and the next you'd be chasing whales in the outer envelope of a gas giant. It was some stunning game design and coding. I've not seen anything quite like it since.
When I was a kid, my parents got me a couple sci-fi encyclopedias, which were big books of beautiful sci fi illustrations with some made-up history explaining each painting encyclopedia-style. I loved them. This video reminds me of those illustrations very much, which I mean to be high praise.
I just looked through my books and called my mom to see if she had them, but no dice. They were large hardcover books with a blue cover. Anyone else remember them? I'd love to track them down for my own kids.
I just looked through my books and called my mom to see if she had them, but no dice. They were large hardcover books with a blue cover. Anyone else remember them? I'd love to track them down for my own kids.
Oh man, you got me going on a mission to find a similar book, so I thought I'd drop the things I found back in here:
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expedition_(book)
- http://stuffwecollect.com/galactic-aliens-alan-daniels-origi... (This was for sure one of the ones I'd read)
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expedition_(book)
- http://stuffwecollect.com/galactic-aliens-alan-daniels-origi... (This was for sure one of the ones I'd read)
Maybe this one? I got it when I was a kid, and it's still right there on my shelf:
http://www.amazon.com/Spacecraft-2000-2100-A-D-Authority-Han...
http://www.amazon.com/Spacecraft-2000-2100-A-D-Authority-Han...
Thanks so much redler! That's totally it! I found a number of photos of the book on flickr (http://www.flickr.com/photos/erice/sets/72157625355578461/) and they really brought me back to my childhood. I had the first two as listed here: http://www.khantazi.org/Rec/TTABooks/TTABooks.html
I'll have to see if I can pick up the whole series. Thanks again!
I'll have to see if I can pick up the whole series. Thanks again!
Wow, that takes me back. I was at school with the kids of the guy who wrote that, his study was full of awesome designs and tons of similar stuff.
good stuff. i've been waiting for a small team to do something like this for a while... and have been planning something similar myself for when i can break free from the shackles of full-time work.
knowing some of these guys personally - i'm quite pleased its them who are doing it. :)
knowing some of these guys personally - i'm quite pleased its them who are doing it. :)
They said all the landscapes are procedurally generated. They did not say that there won't be any missions or tech trees or some other kind of hand-crafted progression system.
Many games like Minecraft or Terraria do very well with procedurally generated terrain and some kind of progression system.
I think that this might have huge potential. This could be an awesome game indeed, and so far I have not seen anything that hints to it being boring or repetitive--just unfinished.