Exploring for profit vs. exploring for the experience

[Hellhawk666]

But I've only ever really heard him talking about planetary generation, but TBH, I'm not very interested in looking at planets from up in orbit. I'm sure they'll look beautiful and varied, but I still suspect after a few dozen, you'll feel a sense of "been there done it".

It's the asteroid with strange markings, or a tunnel going into it I want to find/visit. It's the star with its atmosphere being ripped away by its twin I want so find/visit. It's the moon with geysers shooting water vapour up into its atmosphere I want find/visit. It's the jovian giant with huge lightening storms I want to find/visit

I have great hopes for the potential of procedural generation in this game - David Braben and FD have been doing this sort of thing for a long time and they are certainly aware of the issues involved.

However I agree with your concerns. On the micro level it is simply beyond the capacity of current personal computers to render highly detailed and convincingly realistic terrain in real time, and that is without also considering the problem of AI injected "unique" features.

On the macro level it is simple reality that 99% of systems are going to look very similar, and after the 10th typical Type M system there is a chance that the experience will become rather dull. So what wins? Interesting gameplay by handcrafting features and injecting events or simulated "reality"?

Procedural generation can be used to achieve amazing results, but it's great strength is no so much the ability to create boundless semi-random worlds - it is the fact that they can be generated identically for every player as required. It's great weakness is that algorithms can sometimes actually produce repetition instead of variety (fractal geometry is after all a form of procedural generation).

I'm hoping for a great experience that will surprise me with its capture of reality plus interesting features and events, but I'm also prepared to face the fact that it just may not be possible to provide as rich an experience as I would like.

 

[Ushgarak]

Well, there's no real way to square this circle because long-term content is always repetitive. Combat is repetitive. Trading is repetitive. It doesn't matter how much cool stuff they put in- this is a game we are going to play for years and novelty is quickly exhausted.

The thing is, a lot of people don't mind repetition. People will fly the same trade routes dozens and hundreds of times. People will fight, basically, the same fight a hundred times over. And likewise for me, as a profit-seeking explorer, whilst it would be nice if I am always seeing new things. I don't mind reasonable repetition in exploration if I am still making money from it.

Is it different for you guys after the experience? Will you definitely get bored quickly? I'm interested to hear if there are people who don't mind that much. After all, people used to explore in Frontier and that offered no dedicated exploration content at all.

 

[NeilF]

Well, there's no real way to square this circle because long-term content is always repetitive. Combat is repetitive. Trading is repetitive. It doesn't matter how much cool stuff they put in- this is a game we are going to play for years and novelty is quickly exhausted.

The thing is, a lot of people don't mind repetition. People will fly the same trade routes dozens and hundreds of times. People will fight, basically, the same fight a hundred times over. And likewise for me, as a profit-seeking explorer, whilst it would be nice if I am always seeing new things. I don't mind reasonable repetition in exploration if I am still making money from it.

Is it different for you guys after the experience? Will you definitely get bored quickly? I'm interested to hear if there are people who don't mind that much. After all, people used to explore in Frontier and that offered no dedicated exploration content at all.

Fair comment, but this topic is about exploration, and the desire of some people to explore for exploration sake. Now in my opinion unless there is the chance of finding something interesting/unique every now and then, exploration will quickly become dull.

In the original Elite, in the manual there was talk of generation ships launched hundreds of year ago, which were still on the journeys. I always expected sometime, somewhere in the game to bump into one of these huge ships, but of course they didn't even exist

This is the kind of thing I would hope will exist in ED. Just so explorers, and anyone to some degree, will have the chance to see or bump into something special or unique.

ie: The 100th system you explore has a moon spewing water vapour into its orbit to produce a beautiful outcome. Or a huge asteroid which tunnels and craters that seem to have been made by someone/something - do you venture into it? Or a rare Jovian giant in one system with huge strange magnetic storms. etc etc...

We want someone so discover something in system XYZ, so lots of people are interested enough in traveling to see or try it person.

We want that risk of something out of the norm happening. Else surely exploration will grow dull very quickly - Because I can't believe procedural generation can produce this type of uniqueness; Only the backdrop on which hand crafted uniqueness can be added.

 

[exioce]

If you're in the woods, and there's 10,000 trees does the tenth one you pass still interest you?

When you get to one with a cave under it, that will probably interest you... When you get to one with some carvings on it, that will probably interest you... When you get to one with a rope leading up somewhere into its branches, that will probably interested you... But all the rest - which are all unique in their own right - probably won't.

I'm not trying to be glass half-empty here, just trying to make a point. That it doesn't matter if there's 1,000 or 1,000,000 systems to explorer. Unless there's interesting features in some of them, after you've seen the 10th variation on the same theme, the novelty will probably start wearing thin.

I'm sure the developers are more than aware of this, and I for one will be overjoyed when we see screen shots, or read information, showing they've taken action to address it.

You are of course right. I'm playing Rust right now, and while the world is large enough I don't really go exploring as I know all I'll see is tree, rock, grass, and wolf. The ED procedural generation system has to be creative enough to distribute little Easter eggs pretty much everywhere, in order to make every system worth visiting to some degree.

 

[Ixnatifual]

Here's a very interesting video describing how the game Fuel manages a seamless procedurally generated world of detailed 3d environment spanning 22 thousand square miles: http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HhyyUiYQolA

 

[NeilF]

Here's a very interesting video describing how the game Fuel manages a seamless procedurally generated world of detailed 3d environment spanning 22 thousand square miles: http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HhyyUiYQolA

Very interesting! And of course gives a measure of what ED might be able to do if/when their planetary landing DLC comes out.

Recently of course we've seen "No Man's Sky" too - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RRpDn5qPp3s

But - unless things have got far more clever than I can envisage - I still think procedural generation of systems in ED will need a lot of hand crafting to give unique and interesting views/items/locations for people to discover and merit visiting. And I don't mean every system, but I think there needs to be special "things" in some give people the feeling, the next system might just be something different to the last 50.

 

[Herik]

Well, there's no real way to square this circle because long-term content is always repetitive. Combat is repetitive. Trading is repetitive. It doesn't matter how much cool stuff they put in- this is a game we are going to play for years and novelty is quickly exhausted.

The thing is, a lot of people don't mind repetition. People will fly the same trade routes dozens and hundreds of times. People will fight, basically, the same fight a hundred times over. And likewise for me, as a profit-seeking explorer, whilst it would be nice if I am always seeing new things. I don't mind reasonable repetition in exploration if I am still making money from it.

Is it different for you guys after the experience? Will you definitely get bored quickly? I'm interested to hear if there are people who don't mind that much. After all, people used to explore in Frontier and that offered no dedicated exploration content at all.

Not a problem for me as long as there is an acceptable level (some) apparent feature variation in same type planets; as well as some variety in quests/contracts.

 

[Herik]

Well, there's no real way to square this circle because long-term content is always repetitive. Combat is repetitive. Trading is repetitive. It doesn't matter how much cool stuff they put in- this is a game we are going to play for years and novelty is quickly exhausted.

The thing is, a lot of people don't mind repetition. People will fly the same trade routes dozens and hundreds of times. People will fight, basically, the same fight a hundred times over. And likewise for me, as a profit-seeking explorer, whilst it would be nice if I am always seeing new things. I don't mind reasonable repetition in exploration if I am still making money from it.

Is it different for you guys after the experience? Will you definitely get bored quickly? I'm interested to hear if there are people who don't mind that much. After all, people used to explore in Frontier and that offered no dedicated exploration content at all.

Not a problem for me as long as there is an acceptable level (some) apparent feature variation in same type planets. Not every planet needs to generate quests/contracts; but some should. One out of three?

 

[Herik]

Well, there's no real way to square this circle because long-term content is always repetitive. Combat is repetitive. Trading is repetitive. It doesn't matter how much cool stuff they put in- this is a game we are going to play for years and novelty is quickly exhausted.

The thing is, a lot of people don't mind repetition. People will fly the same trade routes dozens and hundreds of times. People will fight, basically, the same fight a hundred times over. And likewise for me, as a profit-seeking explorer, whilst it would be nice if I am always seeing new things. I don't mind reasonable repetition in exploration if I am still making money from it.

Is it different for you guys after the experience? Will you definitely get bored quickly? I'm interested to hear if there are people who don't mind that much. After all, people used to explore in Frontier and that offered no dedicated exploration content at all.

Not a problem for me as long as there is an acceptable level (some) apparent feature variation in same type planets. Not every planet needs to have generated a quest/contracts; but some should. One out of ten?

 

[NeilF]

^^ Wow! Really wanted to get your point across there didn't you

 

[jedt]

Fair comment, but this topic is about exploration, and the desire of some people to explore for exploration sake. Now in my opinion unless there is the chance of finding something interesting/unique every now and then, exploration will quickly become dull.

.

fd have said there will be 'surprises' in store for explorers... good enough for me.

 

[Memnoch]

Tracing a signal and finding Voyager 2 trapped in a comet?

Just out of interest I visited this page for more information, and was interested to see that Voyager 1 is getting closer to us!

http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/where/

Note: It does explain this curiosity at the bottom of the page.

 

[NeilF]

fd have said there will be 'surprises' in store for explorers... good enough for me.

Big fingers crossed then

 

[jamieboo]

In a sense I think it's good that by the 10th 'unremarkable' planetary discovery things are perhaps becoming a tiny bit repetitive/dull.
Possibly a similar tiredness would creep in if even if every discovery was 'excitingly unique', but in that case you'd have nowhere to go on the 'excitement stimulation' curve.
The currency of the unique is obviously lessened by the frequency with which it's encountered.
So personally I'm not worried by the superficial repetition of the unremarkable, as it'll make even modest moments of surprise all the more exhilarating!

 

[Doctor_Demento]

Yes exploration for Fun and if i find something to make money, all the better.
Oh oh oh, and a dead space ship with wierd stuff living onboard. With a treasure of course!

 

[SAB380]

The game engine will need to be something pretty special to achieve this IMHO, and furthermore a lot of dedicated hand-crafted content will need to be generated too IMHO.

I know a lot of people see procedural generation as the answer to all these worries, but I see it as more difficult.

I want to be able to fly to new systems with the potential to see something new or beautiful. I do not count different coloured stars, or planets with variations of atmosphere in this department. While most systems will obviously differ only by things like this, there needs to be special and unique rare features. Some will of course be procedural, but many need to be down to hard crafted content/code.

Will you even be able to fly to the region around the crab nebula and not only view the nebula in all its beauty, and be able to see PSR B0531+21 (pulsar).

Will you be able to find an asteroid maybe with strange markings on it? Or a long tunnel leading to something odd/unique inside? etc?

Can't this be built into procedural generation ?

Can they not have lists or rare things that the game will only code into unexplored regoins, x% of time .... ?

Note: I don't claim to know much about procedural generation

 

[Obsidian Ant]

Can't this be built into procedural generation ?

Can they not have lists or rare things that the game will only code into unexplored regoins, x% of time .... ?

Note: I don't claim to know much about procedural generation

Yes, procedural generation can do things like this.