The Star Citizen Thread v5

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Tippis

Tippis
Zetta said:
Buying Adwords To Unlock The Gladius Through Referrals
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[noob] I don't know which party in that whole setup comes off as more desperate. Is “all of them” an option in such instances?

Cmdr Eagleboy said:
To use PG cleverly to create illusion of open world takes quite a skill and understanding of game's world itself. Game designers usually don't possess that kind of thinking, as they stick with tried formulas to get predictable emotions and reactions out of player.
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But that's not even the problem here. Rather, it's some assumption that PG can't create variety whereas designers can, when the truth of the matter is pretty much the exact opposite — in either direction. A PG can be set to be 100% repetitive on a level that would drive a designer mad — no-one wants to spend two months copy-pasting the same building block over and over again; an algorithm doesn't care. A PG can be set to produce complete random noise, which a designer is simply incapable of, not just because repetition will creep in but because they just don't have time.

Even if we dial it back some, a sufficiently loose PG can easily start cobbling together building blocks in ways a designer wouldn't think of, exactly because it isn't really thinking — it's just following the rules, and the rules just so happen to allow this sky bridge to be connected between this very strange-looking tower and that even stranger-looking free-floating blimp. Anyone who has played Minecraft will have come across these absolutely ridiculous mountains, abandoned mines, sky bridges, interconnected above-ground cave systems, and similar oddities that a designer wouldn't really think of exactly because of how ridiculous they are.

Instead, it's exactly what you suggest: designers can create predictable and emotional experiences, but that's something drastically different altogether, and the usefulness and effectiveness of those outside of a linear SP story is rather dubious.

There's also certain predefined bias towards PG as people start to see "things" as soon as they get to know it is done via PG.
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Bias is probably a good word for it, since it's not really grounded in reality or at best drawn from a very faulty sample. Then again, bias works both ways: since this is Copyright IGnorance incorporated we're talking about here, chances are that we'd start seeing “things” (as in, things not made by CIG) in their hand-crafted stuff too… :D
 
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Ian Skippy

Ian Skippy
Tippis said:
But that's not even the problem here. Rather, it's some assumption that PG can't create variety whereas designers can, when the truth of the matter is pretty much the exact opposite — in either direction. A PG can be set to be 100% repetitive on a level that would drive a designer mad — no-one wants to spend two months copy-pasting the same building block over and over again; an algorithm doesn't care. A PG can be set to produce complete random noise, which a designer is simply incapable of, not just because repetition will creep in but because they just don't have time.

Even if we dial it back some, a sufficiently loose PG can easily start cobbling together building blocks in ways a designer wouldn't think of, exactly because it isn't really thinking — it's just following the rules, and the rules just so happen to allow this sky bridge to be connected between this very strange-looking tower and that even stranger-looking free-floating blimp. Anyone who has played Minecraft will have come across these absolutely ridiculous mountains, abandoned mines, sky bridges, interconnected above-ground cave systems, and similar oddities that a designer wouldn't really think of exactly because of how ridiculous they are.

Instead, it's exactly what you suggest: designers can create predictable and emotional experiences, but that's something drastically different altogether, and the usefulness and effectiveness of those outside of a linear SP story is rather dubious.
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I dont agree. Lets place this in the context of Star Citizen: PG would be a great choice for creating the basic outlay of systems, and then the planets themselves. It could be used to create human settlements. You may use PG to create human ships. What doesnt work is have PG create Vanduul. To create something, a PG system needs to have many examples of that something, and the assets to play around with it. You then basically restrict its freedom to some extent. But how would that go with Vanduul? You'd first need to create many alien species with all its properties for a PG system to learn what 'alien' is, and come up with new alien types. You could handcraft 100 vanduul bases, feed that in a machine-learning prog and have it PG 1000 more, sure. But you first need to handcraft the base material for the system to work with. So if you apply PG to an element of SC we already know a fair amount about (stars, planets, cities, human technology) it should be fine. If you apply it to something we know nothing about (alien life) there is no direct PG route that creates different 'alien' lifeforms/architecture, but also does it in a way that makes sense.
 

Tippis

Tippis
sleutelbos said:
I dont agree. Lets place this in the context of Star Citizen: PG would be a great choice for creating the basic outlay of systems, and then the planets themselves. It could be used to create human settlements. You may use PG to create human ships. What doesnt work is have PG create Vanduul. To create something, a PG system needs to have many examples of that something, and the assets to play around with it. You then basically restrict its freedom to some extent. But how would that go with Vanduul? You'd first need to create many alien species with all its properties for a PG system to learn what 'alien' is, and come up with new alien types. You could handcraft 100 vanduul bases, feed that in a machine-learning prog and have it PG 1000 more, sure. But you first need to handcraft the base material for the system to work with
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The PG doesn't have to learn anything, nor does it need any examples — it's not an AI. It's an algorithm; it just need components and rules for putting those components together. If anything, Vanduul stuff would be easier than human stuff because you could end up with something truly alien, rather than something that a human designed. At most, whoever tweaks the rules might need some kind of target image for what “looks like species X” — e.g. jagged edges are good; maintain triangular symmetry; sweep forwards rather than backwards (and definitely no straight lines). Then let the algorithm go to town and see what comes out.

But that's rather besides the point anyway. Unless you're making a demonstrator like .kkrieger, you're not going to generate every last component. Those will be designed to have a look, and the PG is a matter of putting the components together. You can do this on a micro level — construct a building or even a ship out of blocks — or on a macro level — construct an entire cityscape out of prefab buildings, but in the end, it's just a matter of deciding where the design of building blocks ends and where the assembly algorithm begins.
 

Skizomeuh

Skizomeuh
Talking about algorithms and alien cityscapes... Check for Aurullia

aurullia-6-960.jpg


Generate unknown thing is less hard than human things as the more they aim for "fidelity", the more they'll ultimately suffer breaking of suspension of disbelief if something doesn't fit well, like the uncanny valley.
 
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BurnyBurns

BurnyBurns
Female pilot character with faced teased today by Frontier. How long is CIG talking about how busy they're about the female character again?
 

Dooguk

D
EightAces over at the SA forum teases us with this.....

Fellow commandos. Prepare yourselves for a hilarious announcement at the end of March /start of April. A Stimperial address is planned to explain where sq42 is , or indeed isnt. Its going to be even better than 'You've had it all along stop whining'

Edited out the swearing. :x
 

CmdrKull

C
Question: have you played Dwarf Fortress.
Answer:
Space Dandy said:
Didn't like it. Not really into those graphics either.
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:O How very dare you! What it may lack in fidelity, it more than makes up in the "You severed my sword arm so I'll just beat you to death with this severed arm lying here" dept. Starting a new fortress in a haunted biome is one of life's miserable little pleasures. Returning there after the first failure and fighting off the ghosts of the previous expedition is maybe second best after that.

So there's lots of discussion about PG, and while I'm a fan of Elite and indeed of PG in general it has a weakness that isn't being articulated very well: it's easy to create extremes using PG, and extremes look bad. Things that just look out of place and artificial, a plateau that's too tall or too round, a canyon that's too sheer. So, in order to avoid that, the algorithm is constrained. No plateaus taller than "this" high, no canyons deeper than "that", no greens greener than x, and no pinks pinker than y. Soon, it's all a bit same-y, and people get the impression that PG isn't capable of variety. In truth, it just needs a light touch on the parameters, and a close inspection of the extremes to see what needs smoothed out a little. Unfortunately for games like Elite, billions of planets don't make that close inspection process feasible We have to suffer through unrealistic extremes or too much sameness. Maybe 100 systems is the right number that can be proc genned and then inspected. That doesn't mean it's sufficient if your game includes exploration. I've landed on hundreds of airless moons in Elite. I've mapped out hundreds of systems in detail. I've passed through thousands. Easily thousands of systems. Size of the universe is the thing that disappoints me second most about a potential eventual SC game, right after that flight model.

NMS invented something for their PG that will get used in this industry a lot: the anomaly-seeking drone squad. I was never sure if someone meone still had to watch all of the drone recordings, or if there was a process that flagged extremes for later human attention.
 

thorn-

thorn-
CmdrKull said:
Maybe 100 systems is the right number that can be proc genned and then inspected. That doesn't mean it's sufficient if your game includes exploration. I've landed on hundreds of airless moons in Elite. I've mapped out hundreds of systems in detail. I've passed through thousands. Easily thousands of systems. Size of the universe is the thing that disappoints me second most about a potential eventual SC game, right after that flight model..
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If one's preferred gameplay is "exploring" 30,000 fairly identical airless beige planets - then SC is certainly not the game for them.
 

Dooguk

D
Had to post this from peter gabriel on SA in a discussion about exploration....

"Exploring in Star Citizen is one of my favourite things to do, between the jacket section in the shop to the landing pads of Port Press Screens and then back to the shop it's quite the expedition"

[haha]
 
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Zetta

Zetta
Team, everyone focus all your efforts on Star Marine!

Team, everyone focus all your efforts on Squadron 42! Drop that other poo poo!

Team, everyone get on 2.4!

I said, drop that other poo poo!

Team, everyone focus all your efforts on the planet-side demo!

Team, everyone get on 2.5! Team, everyone focus all your efforts on Squadron 42! Team, everyone focus all your efforts on the vertical slice demo! Team, everyone get on 2.6!

For the last time, drop that other poo poo! For the love of God, get on Squadron 42!

Team, WHY IS THIS GOING SO SLOWLY? PULL YOUR FINGERS OUT!
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Haha, you know it's true.
 

Ian Skippy

Ian Skippy
Tippis said:
But that's rather besides the point anyway. Unless you're making a demonstrator like .kkrieger, you're not going to generate every last component. Those will be designed to have a look, and the PG is a matter of putting the components together. You can do this on a micro level — construct a building or even a ship out of blocks — or on a macro level — construct an entire cityscape out of prefab buildings, but in the end, it's just a matter of deciding where the design of building blocks ends and where the assembly algorithm begins.
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Skizomeuh said:
Talking about algorithms and alien cityscapes... Check for Aurullia

http://cdn.sub.blue/images/gallery/aurullia/aurullia-6-960.jpg

Generate unknown thing is less hard than human things as the more they aim for "fidelity", the more they'll ultimately suffer breaking of suspension of disbelief if something doesn't fit well, like the uncanny valley.
Click to expand...

This is exactly my point. Once you've handcrafted the building blocks, PG can go nuts. For 'known' things you can PG to a very low level, because you already have a good idea as to what would definitely not make a good building block. With things like aliens and unknown secrets it becomes different: as the ratio of possible permutations and known limitations becomes more and more problematic, the PG has to set to tighter and tighter limits. The pic is a good example: to me it looks futuristic, not alien. Heck, the main centerpart wouldnt be a strange design for a modern sports arena, for example. Creating an alien lifeform is different, as there are indeed loads of possible really weird creatures yet there are also a large amount of different (and hard to capture in a simple ruleset) and interacting xenobiological reasons why most of the output would make no conceptual sense. So with for example the Vanduul you'll need to 'manually' consider how you want them to look and what kind of creatures (and as such gameplay) you want. At that point the Vanduul species is essentially handcrafted, with maybe PG thrown in for individual varietion, different clans etc.
 

Tippis

Tippis
sleutelbos said:
This is exactly my point. Once you've handcrafted the building blocks, PG can go nuts. For 'known' things you can PG to a very low level, because you already have a good idea as to what would definitely not make a good building block. With things like aliens and unknown secrets it becomes different: as the ratio of possible permutations and known limitations becomes more and more problematic, the PG has to set to tighter and tighter limits.
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Why would it be more problematic or require tighter limits? After all, if it's alien, there's more room for it to go nuts and still be alien. If anything, it's the known stuff that requires those limits, or they'll look… well… alien: because they go too far outside what we think of as “known” design.

The pic is a good example: to me it looks futuristic, not alien.
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Then it probably does its job — it's not meant to be alien. It just illustrates how you can create variety algorithmically, and in fact, since it's fractal-based, huge variety is not even part of intended end result — it just happens anyway.

Creating an alien lifeform is different, as there are indeed loads of possible really weird creatures yet there are also a large amount of different (and hard to capture in a simple ruleset) and interacting xenobiological reasons why most of the output would make no conceptual sense.
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I don't think anyone is really talking about creating lifeforms, but even if we did, there are already plenty of games that do just that and do it really well. Slap a simple decision bot onto a game like Spore or Impossible Creatures or, hell, just rip off NMS, and you're good to go. Sure, for your “hero races” (not in the sense of being heroic, but in the movie-making sense of being the ones that you really show off), you probably want to have a higher level of control — put them higher up in the component hierarchy, if you like — but that's no different than you'd want with the human characters. That's because you're trying to achieve a completely different goal: you're not trying to create variety and new strangeness to discover, but rather offering up a well-controlled other party to interact with, which obviously has other requirements to guide the design.
 

Yaffle

Volunteer Moderator
Yaffle
Dooguk said:
Mods a question.

Are we allowed to discuss other games, that SC may be better than in some way?
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Look at the top of the page:

- This thread is for the discussion of Star Citizen only.
- Any trolling, insulting, and/or badgering posts directed to fellow forum users will not be tolerated.
- Moderation will be dealt with by the Forum manager and volunteer moderators. There is no need to publically call for moderation. Simply report any posts for review by clicking the icon.
- Posting of offensive, degrading, or mocking images/media will not be tolerated.
- Excessive off-topic posts will be removed.
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