Feedback on my Game Idea (randomly generated dungeon RPG)

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11 comments, last by Burrowing Owl 11 years, 5 months ago

In a broader sense, almost anything can have randomness programmed into it.

I would be more careful about using this term in context with procedural content generation. For sure, adding some "x*random()" in your code isn't the big deal, but generating random content, is often less random then you might think.

Take a look out of the window, either looking at a skyline or nature scene, in both cases you are not really looking at randomness. Even nature follows rules and these rules are extremely complex and have huge amount of parameters. The easy part is to make a parameter random, the incredible hard part is to delevop a system which generates something meaningful und useful out of these parameters.

I'm using procedural content generation in my game, but only a small part is really random. At least I've learned that random procedural content geneartion often produce ugly, unlogical, incomprehensible,boring, unbalanced, and eventually unplayable content. I've increased the scripted part of the content generation continuously in the last few years to beat useless content generation.

This depends heavily on the rule set in which content lives. I.e. a rogue-like game have not many or hard rules when it comes down to visual representation, therefore generating content which is visual representable in a rogue-like game is quite easy. When you consider the visual representation of an game like gears of war, PGC is no longer feasable (beyond maybe terrain generation).

The next generation of consoles and AAA titles will try to beat visual presention, physics and AI of the current gen, introducing more rules than any game in the last decade. The effect for PCG will be crushing.

Which modern game comes in mind when you think about PCG in game ? When you now think of minecraft, you just need to look at the level of abstraction and rule limitation to see what it needs to use PCG in games.
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I just would like to go on record as saying this is a good idea. biggrin.png

Also, I like the idea of having no check points in the game, but can understand the frustration one would have from playing 100 levels only to lose everything. There is a decent market for rogue-like games (examples:The Binding of Isaac, Dungeons of Dredmor, FTL, XCOM, Don't Starve) and I for one love playing games were your actions have game-ending consequences. Maybe for the market that enjoys the difficulty like this you could have a "hardcore" mode?

Oh, and another thought I had. What if instead of getting a pile of treasure from the end boss, you just have the gold you collect from playing? So it's like the stranger knew you would come for your mother, forcing you build up the wealth she had promised you. She filled her promise for huge stacks-o-cash by taking your mother.

Mind blown, huh?!


Yeah...



Anyway, where is that art you were talking about? I wanna see. biggrin.png

Check out my game blog - Dave's Game Blog

Sounds good, but make sure that each level introduces something new to it. This could be a new mechanic, enemy etc.

For example, my favorite random dungeon game is Final Fantasy Fables: Chocobo's Dungeon.
I love it because it brings many things to the table.
New themes, enemies, classes, abilities, power ups, and hazards as the dungeons progress.

So, if your mind is set on the 20 stages, they really have to be set apart from each other.

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