GPU-Based Procedural Placement in Horizon Zero Dawn

​Jaap van Muijden describes the GPU based procedural placement system that dynamically creates the world of Horizon Zero Dawn around the player.

[Liqu1d]

This seems to work pretty well, I wonder if more games will use this technique.

[Timesplitter14]

Unity mentioned in its GDC presentation that they are making a system where neural network AIs will procedurally assist level artists in creating terrain, forests, etc.... so I'm guessing it'll become a common practice in the near future.

One thing I'm worried about, though, is that it'll start becoming very noticeable when something was procedural and when something was hand-crafted, once this feature becomes widely used. It's a very 'quantity-over-quality' ; kind of approach, which I'm not a huge fan of

[Eonjay]

I think you are describing something different. What you are describing is procedural creation.... like instead of having a human artist, you have a computer artist. Neither of these methods are the same as procedural generation you know of from a game like No Man's Sky. Horizon and the Unity methods are both definite level structures. where as one is just generated based on some algorithm. At least, this is the way I understand it.

[Timesplitter14]

All of those things are different flavors of procedural generation. NMS is almost fully procedurally generated, but HZD and Unity's tools use procedural generation to complement the level artists' work (instead of replacing it completely)

[Wallstreet37]

This has so worked well for them. I love Horizons open world and how dense it is with enemies all around compared to other rpgs games where your running for miles to fight the same, few enemy characters. Horizons open world is IMO the best open world I've played.

[phoenixwing]

I agree on that front. I run into creatures and robots all the time. They're not respawning annoyingly as the same sets of creatures yet they create a sense of a dense world. I think guerrilla games has provided somewhat of a mini breakthrough for the open world genre with this type of rendering.

[mogwaii]

The same enemies respawn in the same spots all the time!

[Pintheshadows]

They don't actually Mogwaii. Usually what happens is you'll go to a shellwalker site, and they'll be flanked by Watchers. Then, if you go back again, they'll be flanked by Longlegs. And if you go back again it may be Sawtooths and Longlegs. Or, on one occasion, a ravager, 3 shellwalkers, 2 longlegs, and some watchers. All at the same site.

It is pretty cool. The weather disguising loading areas is excellent as well. Very smart.

[WickedLester]

I love the world. I just wish I could interact with it more. The Witcher 3 spoiled me in this regard. You can go into virtually every building in Witcher 3. You can submerge and explore under water. You can interact with more random objects too. Horizon is way more restrictive in this regard.

[Wallstreet37]

That is definitely one of its few down falls. That and the water animations and lack of physics.

[nowitzki2004]

They are both really special games. I like Witcher 3 a bit more. The variety in the world, characters, enemies, quests, etc. was really amazing in Witcher 3.

[goathouse774]

This is a lot of technobabble to me -- what's the takeaway? How is this different than what other developers do?

[zivtheawesome]

the tech is that while other developers are putting all the objects in to the game directly, GG with the help of specified algorithms and parameters calculate the location of objects, which free's up a lot of power to use.

[goathouse774]

Thanks for the comment. I guess I already sort of got that part of it -- more just wondering how using math to decide where a tree (or series of trees) goes, is any more efficient than an artist dictating that beforehand.

[Pandamobile]

It doesn't really free up power on the console, it frees up manpower during development. None of this is really happening at run-time. It's part of Guerrilla's terrain decoration pipeline when authoring the game, they input some hand painted maps that define which areas should have biome characteristics. And because the placement of the world geometry (plants, trees, rocks, etc) is applied to the world based on some defined parameters, a few artists can create huge areas of the world.

Most studios that do open world games have something like this already for adding density to the world, the key difference here is that Guerrilla opted to use GPU resources to speed up some of the processing at author-time.

[goathouse774]

@Pandamobile Thanks for the explanation!

[zivtheawesome]

@Pandamobile
i am pretty sure it does free up some power actually. also makes the size of the game much smaller.

[Timesplitter14]

It doesn't "free up power"; it saves time.

Instead of having level artists place everything in the game manually, a script places them procedurally. But in the end it requires the same amount of resources when the game is running. This is a step that is made before they actually build the game for release

The "GPU" aspect of it means that instead of making a level-generation script that is run on a CPU (like they normally are), the script is run on the GPU, which is much faster at executing simple-but-massively-parallel tasks

[gbsrnctaln]

Why call Van Muijden a Jap? Seems awfully racist.

[xHeavYx]

Jaap?

[mogwaii]

Would calling an american a yank be racist?
Would calling an australian an aussie be racist?

[G20WLY]

No, and I'm totally with you on this, but the media would never dream of calling a man from Pakistan and Paki, because that IS deemed racist. I've never been able to work it out either. Turkish turks, Swedish Swedes, British Bits, yet abbreviation certain nationalities is 'racist', smdh.

I guess this guy is pointing out you should either do it for all or do it for none. This is why racism is a pain in the arse - people get carried away with it and start hunting for something to be offended by.

Btw, can I call you 'mog' for short? ;^P

[PolishWingedHussar]

Seriously impressed by the procedural generation in HZD. Occasionally I'll encounter a floating Watcher, but otherwise, everything run so smoothly without extensive loading screens. Guerilla really created a living, breathing world with HZD.

[jaseo]

This might explain why my PS4 PRO's fans go on high if I leave it on the MAP for more than a few seconds.

[Pandamobile]

It does not.

[Grilla]

Mine does, if I look at the overworld map, the fan goes into overdrive. Some ppl on reddit have speculated that the framerate is uncapped with the map open. Hope they patch it, I'm scared to look at the map for more then 10 sec cuz it starts getting soo loud.

[Tussin187]

Yeah that happens mime as well. When I look at the map, the fan gets loud but oddly I can't hear it when I'm playing. Strange. Oh well, I'm not on the map that much anyway. This game is amazing btw and I can't stop playing or thinking about it.

[ChronoJoe]

Pretty amazing what they achieved.

[mogwaii]

While i do quite like this game i have run into some graphical glitches and extremely poor texture work admittedly they were near the outter edge of the map but it still stuck out and broke immersion.
Also The enemies respawning in exact same spots all the time and the fact that the day night cycle is extremely quick all tend to pull me out of the experience at times.

[Pintheshadows]

'the day night cycle is extremely quick'

Funny, I found it to be the complete opposite. Different strokes I suppose.

I have also encountered 0 graphical glitches in 40 hours. In fact I have only seen two glitches during my time with it.

[mogwaii]

You can literally watch the moon do its arch and the shadows crawl up a wall and the enemies always respawn into the same areas taking the same paths,
as for a glitch in my first play through in the early part of the game as i came out of the ruins the moon would fast forward as i walked towards it and rewind as i went away from it. so no different strokes for different folks.