DIRT 4 PROCEDURAL GENERATION GENERATOR

when I think about my dream game, the first thing that comes to mind are images, images of places, places which would have to be built by hand. When all these things should be important to the dev.

Most of the time procedural generation of anything is used as an easy way out for the developer, to save them time and money on content creation. I don't bother with games using pocedural generation for anything anymore. A terrible theme park cRPG like Pillows of Etenity or NWN 2 OC is as shit as a terribly designed systemic rpg leaning on procedural content, the problem is that people tend to compare the best case scenarios of one with the worst case scenarios of the other and with the lazy, hackish way AAA developer tend to approach procedural content as justa cheaper way to make games, it is no wonder people arrived to this conclusion. In cases of cRPGs, it is a challenge because it isnt easy to simulate a good human designer with algorithms but maybe that wont be necessary as a systematic RPG would work on VERY different criteria from a theme park RPG and both have the potential of offering different experiences with different qualities and weaknesses. There is a great potential for procedural content as is it can take cRPGs from the scripted theme park approach most have to a simulationist approach. Many designers think procedural content is just shortcut for less work, it will always fail if took from that view, procedural content isnt an easy shortcut to less work but key for a different approach, a systemic/simulationist approach to game design that is barely explored on traditional old rogue likes and new indie rogue lights. Same for Daggerfall and its copy pasted dungeons.

DIRT 4 PROCEDURAL GENERATION GENERATOR

'I gonna generate an universe!' are you going to simulate on your generator all the complicated interactions that can happen on this universe? 'No, LOL, too much work, it was just a marketing point!', then the result is, you will have a massive scope with a very insuficient generator that cant keep with it. Problem for Daggerfal or Elite or other games notorious for their procedural generators is the over promising. Procedural generation is a powerful tool but it also needs another tool called brain, in theory, game designers should have a brain but, unfortunately that isnt always the case and procedural generation without a brain = homogeneous sludge of barely noticiable different content or 10000 tiny variations of the same thing, unfortunately, people blame the computer that is the 'procedural generator' without questioning the wisdom of those that designed it.Д®very generator has a scope, a game designed within the scope of a generator = good, a game designed with super ambitious design goals with an insuficient generator for the scope required = homogenous boring sludge for a content. Therefore I like classic handcrafted RPGs and classic roguelikes but when someone proposes a mix of both, typically procedural generation but no permadeath, I'm generally very skeptical, for the mentioned reasons, I'm very skeptical about procedural generation as a goal (in RPGs, I'm not talking about other genres here) and only see it as a necessary evil of certain kinds of games, which are not my very favourite and are not classic RPGs. Procedural generation does not mean you need procedurally created items for example, I generally prefer a good set of unique items which are randomly placed, and something similar can be said about opponents. Then if I'm going to restart 100 times from the start then procedural generation makes sense, I see it as a consequence of a design rather than a goal. This works better with forced ironman mode, and permadeath and ironman mode work better with a single character, if the character dies I should restart from the start, no troop replacement. What I like too, anyway, is skill checks, resource management, trap detection, item identification, permadeath. But I prefer the core of the game, all the layout and puzzles and most encounters, to be fixed. Occasional random events you must react to can make for some interesting resource management, typically you're going to use your ressource more aggressively in a hard encounter if you can't be sure to trigger again if you reload. This requires mostly handcrafted content (generic is different from unique), and a save system. What I like the most is spending 3 hours creating my big party, interesting dungeon layouts, puzzles, meaningful encounters, constantly new and unique.

Dirt 4 procedural generation