SegmentNext - With more and more games focusing on larger worlds and tons of locations to explore, the whole process of game development is starting to ask too much from the people making them. In conventional game making, the bigger a game is, the heavier it will weigh. This is where procedural generation comes in to save the day; but why is it not an integral part of almost every game already?
With Invictus Launch Week 2955 underway, Cloud Imperium Games has revealed and released a new ship for its space sim Star Citizen.
One of the most relevant premises of Star Citizen will become reality tomorrow with the release of its biggest capital ship yet.
Chris Roberts really hit the jackpot with this thing. That guy has been living the high life based on broken promises, feature creeps, what ifs, non existence deadlines, roadmaps to roadmaps to roadmaps, and, no real games. But instead, an eternal Early Access buffoonery shit show that I imagine will be dragged all the way to the finish line one way or another. But when will that finish line will be, or how will it look like, it's anyone's guess. Something tells me it'll be the stuff of legends for sure, and something that will feed YouTuber's families for years to come.
Eleven fucking years... wow...
Having no version 1 deadline is crazy. Why couldn't they just release a complete Game and then continue developing it? At least then they could break the stigma?
That's the $800 million dollar question, isn't it? While a normal dev would've just done that, while spending the next 11 years updating, expanding, and supporting the game, Chris Roberts saw the possibilities in doing the complete opposite, took his shot, and hit the Jackpot instead. Unbelievable that it actually worked.
I guess we'll see just how much longer they can keep up with the charade - eleven more years? - before it all comes crashing down in classic Roberts fashion.
This game will never reach the finish line.. it will eternally be in early access, we'll be on GTA 10 before this game reaches 1.0
Invictus Launch Week 2955 has kicked off in Star Citizen, meaning that the game is also free to play for a limited time.
This guy describes it like its some kind of magical invention that is capable of creating interesting worlds with fun mechanics for developers while they sit back and sip thee.
Want to know what No Mans Sky will be like? Go try Starbound or Terraria.
Kriesen, this is actually highly inaccurate. Starbound and Terraria are based around sprites that are created by the developers, not generated by a system, and then systematically arranged to create the creatures/trees/etc. Both starbound and terraria use a loose form of procedural generation with a strong emphasis on "loose". No Man's Sky has no preset polygons, it has some rules as for to create them, but that is it. You clearly have not seen their generators and how it makes creatures. It is a huge step above games such as Spore, Terraria, and Starbound. The reason the game has so much hype, is because it has so much more emphasis on procedural generation than any game before it.
not a huge fan of this for exploration type games, i don't mind it in dungeon crawlers like diablo or torchlight.
I dont think that procedural generation is the future in open world games. People are already complaining that these worlds are essentially large theme parks with significantly less tight level design and layouts than in other games.
With procedural generation, the amount of activity and purposeful events in the game would be very varying (which on the other hand would make the world feel more organic though) and level design and its quality would be out the window.
Enhancing them with procedural generation on the other hand could work out great. Limiting it to certain elements would give best of both worlds.