Procedural Generation. Is it overhyped?

[gazzareth]

Wondering what the performance overhead is for creating everything via PG and at what level you stop. Do you use premade building for cities or just generate everything, same for plant life etc.....

No Man's Sky claims everything is going to be PG, but not seen that much content from them to be able to judge yet.

G

 

[Maxeren]

Wondering what the performance overhead is for creating everything via PG and at what level you stop. Do you use premade building for cities or just generate everything, same for plant life etc.....

No Man's Sky claims everything is going to be PG, but not seen that much content from them to be able to judge yet.

G

Things are only generated when you see them, so PG can deliver rather good performance...

ED is using the approach that artists create templates for things (planet, stars, etc.) and then from that everything gets procedurally generated.

 

[technome]

Wondering what the performance overhead is for creating everything via PG and at what level you stop. Do you use premade building for cities or just generate everything, same for plant life etc.....

*snip*

The overhead involved in procedural generation is not just low. It's orders of magnitude more efficient than the scripted alternative, especially when it's done right. That's why it formed the backbone of the original Elite and if any company knows how to do procedural generation right, then it's Frontier.

 

[Mephane]

The overhead involved in procedural generation is not just low. It's orders of magnitude more efficient than the scripted alternative, especially when it's done right. That's why it formed the backbone of the original Elite and if any company knows how to do procedural generation right, then it's Frontier.

Just to give you an idea of how efficient PG can be, have a look at the galaxy map in ED. Zoom out, move the reticule to the center of the galaxy, and zoom in. Keep zooming in. Most of the stars you see are generated procedurally, on the fly, while you are zooming in.

 

[gazzareth]

The overhead involved in procedural generation is not just low. It's orders of magnitude more efficient than the scripted alternative, especially when it's done right. That's why it formed the backbone of the original Elite and if any company knows how to do procedural generation right, then it's Frontier.

I was under the impression that it formed the backbone of the original game because there was not enough memory to do otherwise. That said, the same would be true in this game as well, especially when PL becomes a reality..

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[Mephane]

I was under the impression that it formed the backbone of the original game because there was not enough memory to do otherwise. That said, the same would be true in this game as well, especially when PL becomes a reality..

G

Memory limitations already apply to the galaxy map.

400 billion stars.

Let's assume that a single star plus all its data, description etc. would take a single kilobyte of memory.

That is 400 billion kilobytes = 372 TB.

Edit: I really hope this forum is still around in 50 years when people will have a good laugh at how everyone was still concerned about terabytes back in the 2010s.

 

[SuperG]

A star has a 3D position and speed vector.
Double or float 6 times 4 or 8 bytes

Stars have non to few hundered planets.

Young stars have a lot of them.

But do games need that much.
No. Its a option to go for.

Is PG hyped. This tread is proof of that.

PG is solution that fits specific problems well or is the only solution that makes some specific type of features feasable.
If PG is the mother of all solutions it would be used masivly in the game industry.

Ask this : Why is ED not pure PG?

 

[Siggi]

It's interesting how art follows reality, given some theories that consciousness creates material reality on the fly (quantum mechanics shizzle).

If I visit a planet in a galaxy far far away and land on it (thus procedurally creating it) will it remain in my game's memory indefinitely? Or at least until I've visited so many others the first will be expunged from my hard-drive to make room for the new?

 

[razgon]

Wondering what the performance overhead is for creating everything via PG and at what level you stop. Do you use premade building for cities or just generate everything, same for plant life etc.....

No Man's Sky claims everything is going to be PG, but not seen that much content from them to be able to judge yet.

G

Sadly, No Man's Sky had some serious setbacks due to floods a while back. I really hope they recover, since we can use all the space games we can get.

 

[Bains]

Is procedural generation over hyped?

No. Quite the reverse. I think its generally dismissed. People think it means everything will look the same, featureless except for a bunch of craters that all look the same. Good for scale, but bland. This is why games like Star Citizen have gone with handcrafted for their universe in spite of all the severe limitations this labor-intensive approach imposes on the size of the universe, and the old fashioned way planetary environments are handled, i.e cut scene leading to one or two handcrafted locations.

I think its only now that people are waking up to its potential for making rich living breathing worlds. For me it was only after I saw the video for No Mans Sky that I realised what was possible. I think it surprised a lot of people, not just gamers but also people in the industry. I'm hoping the ED team go way beyond that project.

 

[Zak Gordon]

Is procedural generation over hyped?

No. Quite the reverse. I think its generally dismissed.

Very much this. And it is often thought of as a 'new' buzz word, used in indie games a lot (so that = bad graphics etc).

It's been around for a long time, the original Elite (1984) a case in point.

Daggerfall has been one of my longtime gaming passions, in part due to the vast world to explore (if pretty cookie-cutter), but my first experience of the power of procedural generation was in games like Elite and Rescue of Fractulas. And it is simply a method to create a larger game space than by just using all hand made assets.

More info here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Procedural_generation

What it is not is just a current trendy word used to cover up that a game will have bad graphics. It's been around for a long time, it has the potential to make huge game worlds that are fun to explore and discover. And in the specific case of ED (and previous Elites) it has the ability to allow such a huge galaxy for us to play in.

 

[SuperG]

PCG is overrated.
Its very old. As with everything it has its uses. So it wil be used. A good example is the middleware speedtree. In that case it has lot of value. Outside the space genre i. That way lot of games uses PCG.

But it is more in line with needs.

PCG is very good voor huge numbers but wit diversity.

Some things are not diverse enough.

In that case instancing is superieur to PCG
Your using 18 weapons in a game wel no urgent need for PCG

The fact is ED isn't pure.

As universe a galacy where space faring is common and might be for several centuries the amount of space craft differentation would be in the 100000 or more.

Why are spacecraft not pcg?

To me this would be a higher priority then scale.

 

[Severian]

As universe a galacy where space faring is common and might be for several centuries the amount of space craft differentation would be in the 100000 or more.

Why are spacecraft not pcg?

To me this would be a higher priority then scale.

Just like cars are so common now, and you can walk out your door and never ever see the same model twice! Oh, wait a moment...economies of scale, mass production, modular design, I forgot, sorry

 

[Togg]

the last coding I did was back when DACCL was a prominent language.. that being said.. DB has been doing PG since... well since the 1980's.. I trust him and his crew .. they are the professionals.....

 

[SuperG]

Just like cars are so common now, and you can walk out your door and never ever see the same model twice! Oh, wait a moment...economies of scale, mass production, modular design, I forgot, sorry

Car is great example but better, ships
The smaller, the mass produced they are, but still many types.
The bigger the more uniek they are.

That so urging for a PCG. But rarely done.

Because gamers demand good locking spacecraft. But then conflict with reality as not working vessel.
But I go for practical i stead slick design. Take spacecraft as they are.

Also it could be possible to build your own ships partly with PCG

Also there are different level of PCG

Runtime generated using seed.
Pregenerated and tested
Generate the base and arteam finished it.
User content generation depending on custom ruleset.

Personaly I would go for PCG myself.
No need to team up with artist and related
the much more efforess quantity.

It has it uses. But if you have the budged to get very talented artist designing handmade game content that has it value to. Often quantity isnot a isue.

So it depends.