Long ago I wanted to create a game like this. I was a big fan of Frontier: Elite 2 and I wanted a similar procedural open world with a fantasy theme.
My plan was to make a map editing tool where I would create a kind of outline of the physical and social/economic geography of the game world.
What I wanted to do was create a web of large scale structures describing the world that would feed into the more detailed procedural content generators that would make the "adventure environment" surrounding the player. The map editor would handle the macrocosm, while the procedural generators created the microcosm.
Stuff that was in the player's immediate locale would handled in detail while world events out of sight would be handled by cruder, large scale algorithms, like Telcontar suggests. These large scale algorithms would affect many related, unrelated and conflicting "surface level" systems, like tectonic plates moving beneath several countries.
I also wanted to be able to "drop in" to parts of the world in my editor and manually create stuff on top of the procedural content as well. A problem with procedural games is that they become predictable when you've seen everything the algorithm has to offer; Frontier was absolutely vast, but most of the star systems contained very little novelty. There wasn't much of a pay-off from exploring its further reaches. I hoped to remedy this by weaving hand-made content throughout the procedural world.
Of course, I never did anything with these ideas! I do think procedural content generation will become much more important in the near future, even in ordinary games.
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#1richardjdare
Posted 24 October 2012 - 11:47 AM
Long ago I wanted to create a game like this. I was a big fan of Frontier: Elite 2 and I wanted a similar procedural open world with a fantasy theme.
My plan was to make a map editing tool where I would create a kind of outline of the physical and social/economic geography of the game world.
What I wanted to do was create a web of large scale structures describing the world that would feed into the more detailed procedural content generators that would make the "adventure environment" surrounding the player. The map editor would give me the macrocosm, while the procedural generators created the microcosm.
Stuff that was in the player's immediate locale would handled in detail while world events out of sight would be handled by cruder, large scale algorithms, like Tecontar suggests. These large scale algorithms would affect many related, unrelated and conflicting "surface level" systems, like tectonic plates moving beneath several countries.
I also wanted to be able to "drop in" to parts of the world in my editor and manually create stuff on top of the procedural content as well. A problem with procedural games is that they become predictable when you've seen everything the algorithm has to offer; Frontier was absolutely vast, but most of the star systems contained very little novelty. There wasn't much of a pay-off from exploring its further reaches. I hoped to remedy this by weaving hand-made content throughout the procedural world.
Of course, I never did anything with these ideas! I do think procedural content generation will become much more important in the near future, even in ordinary games.
My plan was to make a map editing tool where I would create a kind of outline of the physical and social/economic geography of the game world.
What I wanted to do was create a web of large scale structures describing the world that would feed into the more detailed procedural content generators that would make the "adventure environment" surrounding the player. The map editor would give me the macrocosm, while the procedural generators created the microcosm.
Stuff that was in the player's immediate locale would handled in detail while world events out of sight would be handled by cruder, large scale algorithms, like Tecontar suggests. These large scale algorithms would affect many related, unrelated and conflicting "surface level" systems, like tectonic plates moving beneath several countries.
I also wanted to be able to "drop in" to parts of the world in my editor and manually create stuff on top of the procedural content as well. A problem with procedural games is that they become predictable when you've seen everything the algorithm has to offer; Frontier was absolutely vast, but most of the star systems contained very little novelty. There wasn't much of a pay-off from exploring its further reaches. I hoped to remedy this by weaving hand-made content throughout the procedural world.
Of course, I never did anything with these ideas! I do think procedural content generation will become much more important in the near future, even in ordinary games.