Bay 12 Games Forum
Other Projects => Other Games => Topic started by: hawkeye_de on December 26, 2010, 03:46:10 am
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Hi,
apart form roguelikes/minecraft: Are there any other good games out there, which use procedural content generation be it dynamic campaigns / role playing games and other stuff?
Thx.
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DF.
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All of the big budget games that I know of that have procedural shenanigans are pretty shit, Spore for example.
Of course there's RTS games that have generated maps but that's probably not what you're looking for.
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Doesn't torchlight have randomly generated adventures? I've not played it yet but i'm planning on doing so today since I now own it.
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It's difficult to answer the OP when he says "roguelikes". I would say Diablo, but a lot of people say that's a Roguelike. It's hard because part of the definition of a Roguelike is procedural generation (as far as I know ... ).
But if we leave out ASCII games.
I'd say Diablo, a procedural randomized hack-n-slash. #1 has its charm but it desperately needs a run button. For that reason alone I would suggest Diablo 2. But #2 adds enough cool stuff that it's worth playing. If you plan on playing both, definitely play 1 first, otherwise you may never get through it for frustration at the slow pace.
Spelunky is a procedural randomized platformer, sort of an Indiana Jones game. It's also free. You will probably die several times in a row, often, so just sit back and try to learn something from each death. Even if that something is "I should maybe slow down a little" or "I got a bit cocky that time". It's fun.
I've heard that Noctis is a fun single-player space exploration sim. The content is procedural, but not random. That is, if you visit a given star and explore the first planet, another offline player will see the same things if he also explores that planet. The software is around 1mb, but the galaxy you can explore has about 78 billion stars. I think that's pretty outstanding, but I haven't played it yet.
Dark Cloud and DC2 are for PS2 I think. They're third-person RPGs with invention/crafting/townbuilding. Pretty fun.
There was an old old game (you will need DOSBOX) called Dungeon Hack that was sort of like Eye of the Beholder but procedurally and randomly generated the dungeon. You get one character instead of 4 plus 2 NPCs.
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Daggerfall has awesome generated dungeons. They are not really procedurally generated, they are in fact built up out of "blocks", but they are one of the most (if not the most) awesome dungeons I've ever seen. They are huge, complex, consist of dangerous monsters, labyrinths and traps. I definitely suggest to try it.
Another great game is Space Rangers/Space Rangers II. They have pretty much everything generated randomly (starting from the galaxy map, trading goods' placement, quest distribution and enemy positions and ending with randomly generated other "heroes"). This game is great because it is totally influenced by random events and actions by the player. You can actually just sit back and look at the systems being captured/recaptured and heroes being killed/new heroes being enlisted. It's not recommended on the high difficulty though (the only way I play; in the beginning you feel like a rat in a cage surrounded by cats and it's Fun). Also the fact that you are not a "chosen one" but one of many (which usually fare better than you for a long part of the game) is cool too.
There's that roguelike zombie game called Rogue Survivor, you ought to try that. It's turn-based but it has a lot of features for a roguelike, so I suggest to play it even if the initial question was about non-roguelikes.
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I can vouch for Rogue Survivor. I love it.
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And I can vouch for Spelunky, too bad the PC won't be getting an improved/paid version...
Just don't be like me and think you can talk to the shopkeeper or something, you WILL whip him and he WILL pull out a shotgun.
EDIT: And be frikking careful throwing things around too! Jesus buying things is difficult!
You know, I don't know why I decided to say anything before playing for at least an hour. You WILL die the first time every single thing happens, but the good news is you will probably have a good laugh the first time you say, throw an arrow at a wall and kill yourself when it flies back and stabs you, and there are a million things like that which WILL happen.
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Daggerfall has awesome generated dungeons. They are not really procedurally generated, they are in fact built up out of "blocks", but they are one of the most (if not the most) awesome dungeons I've ever seen. They are huge, complex, consist of dangerous monsters, labyrinths and traps. I definitely suggest to try it.
There's that roguelike zombie game called Rogue Survivor, you ought to try that. It's turn-based but it has a lot of features for a roguelike, so I suggest to play it even if the initial question was about non-roguelikes.
Yes, Rogue Survivor seems to be cool^^and I try out Daggerfall!
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Transcendence (http://www.neurohack.com/transcendence/) has a fair share of procedural/random generation too, and despite it has a few rogue elements, in fact the gameplay is much more similar to the real time Escape Velocity or NAEV.
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Daggerfalls freeware right? I think Bethsada released it a long time ago... Or whoever made it.
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Sid Meiyer's earlier games (Covert Action and Sword of the Samurai) did some limited random generation for the building interiors, I think.
The first two X-Coms generated their tactical combat areas using pre-set pieces (entire buildings, ufos, etc.).
Mount & Blade sometimes generated its battlefields, other times it used some pre-set battlefield (for sieges, for example).
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Eufloria uses procedural generation for a great deal of it's content.
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Daggerfalls freeware right? I think Bethsada released it a long time ago... Or whoever made it.
Yes.
http://bethblog.com/index.php/2009/07/09/daggerfall-now-available-for-free/
They took down the bethesda download page though, so you have to scout various sites which offer freeware/abandonware games for download.
P.S. With proper amount of patches, configuration and DOSBOX tweaking it's quite playable even on windows 7 (and you can play it like a WASD shooter; back then when I had it on my old PC I thought you have to click to move :))).
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Daggerfall in its time was amazing, i remember when i bought it after reading so many enthousiastic articles on some PC magazines, i bought it nearly on its release.
My PC was not good enough, so i had to play with a very low view distance.
With time and upgrades i could enjoy each time the game even more.
And i was really thankfull to the DOSBox folks that coded this marvelous application that allowed me to continue to launch that amazing game from time to time .
Those random dungeons could have sure used more preset pieces, as after a while you recognized a bit too much those pieces in the random dungeons.
The non-random dungeons had sometime amazing architectures, i remember one of the last of them having some very weird giant objects that you used to reach various kind of portal floating.
The only parts i didn't liked of Daggerfall were the exterior that were very blend.
Arena, the previous game in the serie (released for free before Daggerfall some years ago) by example had better rendition of those random exteriors.
I wish all the plans (http://www.svatopluk.com/daggerfall/museum/) would have made it into the final version of Daggerfall, there was a lot of interesting concepts and ideas that would have enhanced it even more than it already was at retail.
But i guess time and money were running short in the end and pushed the release, explaining too why it was more than plagued with bugs in its unpatched release state.
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There's a version with all of the patches and several restoration mods packaged together. It also comes with an autoexecuting dosbox, meaning you just run the exe without having to fiddle with mounting. I think there's a link at the bottom of the wikipedia article, one of the external links.
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Have you tried minecraft?
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He did mention Minecraft in the OP.
What I don't see a lot of is a dynamic / procedural / random adventure. That is, not just the dungeon is constructed randomly, but the characters and plot too.
Imagine random generation of a dungeon. Why couldn't you randomly generate a character in the same way? Define his basic personality attributes at the start, decide what his job is based on where he is and those attributes and who else is around. When you ask him questions, probably by asking keywords, the game decides based on the random seed and his Gossip, Ancient History, etc. knowldge-type stats, and where he is (a lone farmer knows less about current events than a bartender in a big city), to determine if he knows various types of info. For example, you could have info on the King of Examplia. Types of info would be Basic (he's the king, dontcha know, there are two princes), Specific (this is the politics of the king, this is what he looks like), Secret (rumor has it the king has an aluminum chamber-pot studded with yellow diamonds), Dangerous (there's a band of rebels trying to sieze the throne). Each info type will have a True, False, and Vague variant. Based on how much the person likes you, and his Gregariousness, and how much you bribe him, he might give you different information that he knows. Dangerous info would be very difficult to get. And it's not a matter of just bribing him over and over like Morrowind. He needs to like you, trust you, AND maybe need a bribe.
And the NPC should ask you questions. If you choose to answer truthfully, he gains that info. If you answer vaguely, he gains that info. Same with lies. If you haven't come across the truth yet, you can't know the truth, same with vague info. But if you have Truth you can answer truth of vague. You can always answer with a lie but based on your lying skill the NPC might think it's a lie or the truth. Lying to people makes them like you less. Lying to children, if they don't catch you, entertains them and makes them like you more (fairy tales, etc). Sometimes the NPC may think you're lying when you're telling the truth, and respond appropriately. Any info you give adds to what the NPC knows.
(This is sort of like the Daggerfall keyword conversations, except that you store a couple bytes per item instead of one on-off bit per item or however they programmed it. It's possible they just had several dozen "Conversation types" and some of those were for specific NPCS and some for every random person).
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I just picked up something that might fit the bill in the steam sales: Flotilla.
http://store.steampowered.com/app/55000/
It plays like a turn based homeworld with tron inspired graphics, where (apparently - I haven't played further than one planet. I was attacked by penguin bandits...) the universe is generated procedurally. Or randomly. I'll give a bit more information when I've played it a bit - I'm on my work laptop atm so it's not the best gaming experience.
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I add two tactical games: They are either free or there is at least a free version available:
- http://www.armoredbrigade.com/ (http://www.armoredbrigade.com/) (Tactical Cold War Sim, RealTime)
- http://www.shrapnelgames.com/Camo_Workshop/MBT/MBT_page.html (http://www.shrapnelgames.com/Camo_Workshop/MBT/MBT_page.html) (Tactical Post-WWII game, turnbased)
Both games are pretty deep&complex and have a dynamic AI.
Maps/Involved Units/Scenarios can be generated.
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There are a fair chunk of games that use procedural generation to some extent. How much does it need to be done to be considered?
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There are a fair chunk of games that use procedural generation to some extent. How much does it need to be done to be considered?
I would say that the game creates every time new scenarios / alters stuff, so that every time you create a new game you have new challenges..so for example for me the approach in LCS is sufficient, although it does not really create new locations etc but randomizes just the available stuff like characters and so on.
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GearHead and GearHead 2 might be up your alley content-wise, the main questline (Among other things) is procedurally generated, it's also a good proof that procedural generation isn't for everything, especially character names (Seriously, it's like the programme picks five-eight letters at random from the alphabet, which leads to some incredible pronunciations). About the only thing that stays constant is the amount of equipment and skills you pick from.
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Heh. If you want bad character names, Try Elona.
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Heh. If you want bad character names, Try Elona.
Hehe, yeah. Elona once gave me "Ageing homo" as a nickname. I shit you not.
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Armored Brigade looks pretty cool, trying it now.
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I would have suggested .kkrieger (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.kkrieger), but the url seems to be down.
The game is a fairly short FPS with basically everything procedurally generated - textures, weapons, possibly music and levels. It's only 97kb.
Found a link! (http://downloads.guru3d.com/.kkrieger,-a-3D-game-in-96k!-download-793.html) Meh, it doesn't work on my laptop. It worked on my old rig, however.
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Heh. If you want bad character names, Try Elona.
Hehe, yeah. Elona once gave me "Ageing homo" as a nickname. I shit you not.
One better, Musty Pussy, again, shitting you not.
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Is not finished, but I have high hopes for this one:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kuifhuJI4T0
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The excellent open source project Pioneer (http://pioneerspacesim.net/node) that is very reminding of Elite Frontier Elite 2 and Frontier : First Encounter in its gameplay, has a lot of procedural generation for the planets.