Procedural Generation - All Talk?

[Armour]

I realise the thread title is a bit inflammatory, but that seems to be how things are done on these forums lately, so if you can't beat them (or at least slap them about a bit).

Anyway...

I've seen a lot of talk about the wonders of procedural generation from David Braben. You probably have too - in dev diaries, in his TED talk, in other places stretching back 30 years.

What evidence of it we've seen so far in this game, however, seems somewhat limited, even compared to some stuff in the prequel titles.

I would personally like to see far more application of PG, to both game content and lore.

(I think the application of it to lore would be a massive boost to immersion, to reducing the "sameyness" of the various systems, and would make the galaxy feel like something that existed before Dec 16th 2014.)

Where's the procedural ship generation? 30 ship types is okay, but 30,000 would be better. They could be based upon some kind of style guides, the generation of each type of which could also be somewhat procedural.

What about procedurally-generated NPCs with distinct personalities and a backstory? What we have right now are some random recycled names cycling through a few stock phrases, crowing about your imminent defeat even as their hulls are carved up like turkeys at Christmas/Thanksgiving. There's a lot to come on this front, surely?

Where's the procedural generation of genealogy, history, culture, customs, taboos, architecture, languages...?

There are so many avenues to take this technology down that the possibilities are limitless. And that's without all the stuff you might expect to see and experience outside your ship (character generation, lifeform generation, etc).

I hate to bring up No Man's Sky in this post, as it seems a bit hypey to me. Hello Games appear to be going all-out with the use of PG, and have shown very ambitious-looking results thus far (even if in the form of preselected videos and/or closely supervised playthroughs). Meanwhile, a company owned by the guy who is lauded as some kind of godfather of all things procedural in gaming looks like it's been caught napping/resting on it's laurels.

I'm sure that's just a temporary circumstance, and that there's a lot of exciting stuff to be revealed.

Well, I hope that's the case, at least...

So far, I am happy with what has been put together. I do think there's a LOT more to be done with the procedural generation toolkit.

I'd really like to get some indication from the guys working on this game that the kind of stuff I mentioned is at least being considered - even if my suggestions are more "pipedream" than "pipeline"...

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Note: I am not asking for a timeline, a roadmap, definitive statements about each thing I listed. I am not saying the game is bad, it seems pretty good to me so far. I am not seeking a refund, looking to post a zero on Metacritic, or throwing a tantrum to get attention. I'm just curious, that's all.

 

[OxKing]

The Galaxy is proceduraly generated.
So are the Stars, Planets, Factions, and all kinds of Information about them like Atmosphere, Population etc.
Only this way it is possible to make a 400 Billion Star Systems Universe, with Asteroid Belts and such.

Thats just the tech behind it, driving the game.
But you ask for something different. You ask for randomness.
If you like to have 30000 different Ships, go for Limit Theory instead of Elite.

Even the Space Stations are somewhat random now. But limited to just a few mixed modules and lighting.
I'm sure we see more variety when it comes to planets to fly and land on.
And i can imagine even Outposts and Stations could be more modular in the future.

 

[crushdepth]

Basically, it's early days. This is the beginning. The game is quite limited in scope at the moment (mission system, urgh!), but if you look at the areas they have done a lot of work the level of detail is quite stunning. So, I'm optimistic that things will be fleshed out in time.

 

[Dogoncrook]

Basically, it's early days. This is the beginning. The game is quite limited in scope at the moment (mission system, urgh!), but if you look at the areas they have done a lot of work the level of detail is quite stunning. So, I'm optimistic that things will be fleshed out in time.

A bit cynical but if they update it it's going to be rather jarring. For that reason alone I doubt they will do it.

 

[Armour]

You ask for randomness.

Not at all. True randomness is the enemy the kind of PG I have been interested in for almost 25 years. I'm not unaware of how this stuff works.

If you like to have 30000 different Ships, go for Limit Theory instead of Elite./

Why? Surely a good idea is a good idea, no matter the source?
There are estimated to be about 100000 inhabited systems in the game. To think that the variety of ships galaxy-wide will be limited to 30 is totally unrealistic. Some of the ship models are also hundreds of years old in lore by the year 3300. It would be like seeing horse and cart traffic jams or Penny Farthing gridlock in the middle of a modern city. This isn't Elite: Amish! I doubt the ships will be limited to 100% hand built assets in future, personally - they are probably just getting all the models in that the old fogeys like me remember from the prequels first, and then we'll see an explosion of variety. That's my hope, anyway.

The TED talk given by Mr Braben indicated his ideas of PG, which involved borrowing a given artist's eye to produce endless content with shared qualities. That's exactly what I described with that whole "ship design style guide" thing.

Even the Space Stations are somewhat random now. But limited to just a few mixed modules and lighting.
I'm sure we see more variety when it comes to planets to fly and land on.
And i can imagine even Outposts and Stations could be more modular in the future.

I hope there will be more variety too. I think that there could be a lot more local flavour - local system-wide ads, local language on signs as well as the galactic one, perhaps even modules that are specific to a particular galactic region or even a system. It would all make each system a bit more unique, far beyond cold scientific data and a few names.

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A bit cynical but if they update it it's going to be rather jarring. For that reason alone I doubt they will do it.

A bit of "jarring" for a lot of new stuff? Sounds like a trade-off I'm willing to accept. What about you?

edit: Oh, and Kadeux? Nice of you to neg rep me without explanation. Not at all cowardly.