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[Retropunch]

Unfortunately, I think this might make the mistake of Procedural=Fun. While there's certainly a place for it, and I do LOVE procedural generation, I just can't see it extending above fetch quests.

I'm slightly hyped as he has made astounding progress, but I'd have been a lot happier if he'd said he'd be using funding to bring on other people. It's SUCH a huge undertaking, and I really can't imagine it'll get to the level of polish it requires with just one person.

I'd be happy to be proved wrong though

[miauw62]

It sounds too good to be true. So I'm avoiding it like the plague until Beta. reading some reviews post-release.

Updated quote for truth.

If there are reliable reviews in the Beta, those are fine for me too.

[Talvieno]

Unfortunately, I think this might make the mistake of Procedural=Fun. While there's certainly a place for it, and I do LOVE procedural generation, I just can't see it extending above fetch quests.

I'm... confused by this post, I'll admit. Dwarf Fortress does the same thing. Plenty of people attest to it being fun... myself included. If that's not your cup of tea, I understand, though.

It sounds too good to be true. So I'm avoiding it like the plague until Beta. reading some reviews post-release.

Updated quote for truth.

If there are reliable reviews in the Beta, those are fine for me too.

Scott Manley is apparently getting his hands on it for the beta, so we'll see how that goes.

[jocan2003]

Unfortunately, I think this might make the mistake of Procedural=Fun. While there's certainly a place for it, and I do LOVE procedural generation, I just can't see it extending above fetch quests.

I'm slightly hyped as he has made astounding progress, but I'd have been a lot happier if he'd said he'd be using funding to bring on other people. It's SUCH a huge undertaking, and I really can't imagine it'll get to the level of polish it requires with just one person.

I'd be happy to be proved wrong though

Im all up for procedural, also after seeing all he did adding more member into the team and seeing what he can do would only slow the devlopment down i believe at this point, this guy has a very specific mindset and vision of his project, kinda like Toady.

The rate he can spit out work and technical advancement in his game is just amazing, i mean check his latest devlog its not a game anymore, its a frigging compiler running script wich spit out the game, his coding tool is the game itself! Everyting is loaded on the fly!

Maybe i have been hiding in a cave without knowing it, but its the first game i saw using this kind of technic, most of the time its compiled, restart the game, wait for laoding time, setup testing parameters, test then go back change a few value and redo all that. Him? Fire up the game, change value, hit submit and bam its done tested.

With all the time he saves with his setup he is working like 4 man due to the optimisation of his work environment

[Parsely]

The OST in the Kickstarter video gives me chills.

I love this generation of gaming. There's so much stuff to play now, it seems like!

[Retropunch]

Unfortunately, I think this might make the mistake of Procedural=Fun. While there's certainly a place for it, and I do LOVE procedural generation, I just can't see it extending above fetch quests.

I'm... confused by this post, I'll admit. Dwarf Fortress does the same thing. Plenty of people attest to it being fun... myself included. If that's not your cup of tea, I understand, though.

I'm certainly not against procedural - I love it! It's just that for adventuring games (of the space type or otherwise), procedural generation can end up just being tedious, especially when the entire game is based around that as this seems to be. He's saying stuff like 'I don't need to build lots of ships, I can just generate 1000s of them!' and while that sounds good, I have a feeling it'll end up just being thousands of similar shaped rectangles with slightly different configurations.
 
Case in point is an the RPG Malevolence. While it sounds amazing that it's all procedurally generated and so on, in reality it means going round tons of slightly differently shaped dungeons and lots of fields with rocks/ruins in. Yeah, it's fun for a while, but after a certain point you just can't bring yourself to go through another area which is roughly all the same just with a few differently placed rocks or colours.

Again, it's not that I'm against it, I just fear it'll lack cohesion or be able to really feel like an adventure. I'd LOVE to be proved wrong though.

[Rex_Nex]

To be fair, lots of people find dwarf fortress' adventure mode (where procedural generation is most significant) boring. Probably lots more than find it fun. I have to go with Retro, here, in that I'm worried that this game will try use that as a crutch for an otherwise boring game. I've never seen procedural generation alone make a good game.

I need to see more of the actual gameplay in limit theory. For a game with an early 2015 possible release date being made by one guy, there's an awful lack of it.

[Sergarr]

The big thing about DF is that it has a lot of content to utilize in procedural generation, a lot of different methods of interaction between objects, and a lot of different properties of objects.

It also has evolving history, which is the reason why the succession games have even started.

[jocan2003]

Unfortunately, I think this might make the mistake of Procedural=Fun. While there's certainly a place for it, and I do LOVE procedural generation, I just can't see it extending above fetch quests.

I'm... confused by this post, I'll admit. Dwarf Fortress does the same thing. Plenty of people attest to it being fun... myself included. If that's not your cup of tea, I understand, though.

I'm certainly not against procedural - I love it! It's just that for adventuring games (of the space type or otherwise), procedural generation can end up just being tedious, especially when the entire game is based around that as this seems to be. He's saying stuff like 'I don't need to build lots of ships, I can just generate 1000s of them!' and while that sounds good, I have a feeling it'll end up just being thousands of similar shaped rectangles with slightly different configurations.

I think you havent seen all devlog because the ships looks nice and in one of them i was tweaking some value while in game and it was spitting out some very nice ship design by changing a few 1-2-3 here and there, sure you will not see eve-online quality ships but if you are not happy on how it looks you can change it yourself or *download* code snippet that will change the look and forms of ship, some big algorythmn could make very nice looking ship while some simpler one, more easy on the computer will be more basic, who knows. The thing is the engine is super flexible, dont want proc ship? find get a shipset hook it up in the engine and there you go! Instead of using proc ship you now have specific shipset. The whole engine or at least 80% of the engine is open to the player, or at least seem to be open right now. Latest devlog he was basicly working on the game while it was running.

He wasnt just working on some UI element and such, he basicly added new widget to some windows, change the appearance of a few thing, and then he went to modify AI and added more personality to a colony and hooked it, again, all while the game was running.

[Retropunch]

I think you havent seen all devlog because the ships looks nice and in one of them i was tweaking some value while in game and it was spitting out some very nice ship design by changing a few 1-2-3 here and there, sure you will not see eve-online quality ships but if you are not happy on how it looks you can change it yourself or *download* code snippet that will change the look and forms of ship, some big algorythmn could make very nice looking ship while some simpler one, more easy on the computer will be more basic, who knows. The thing is the engine is super flexible, dont want proc ship? find get a shipset hook it up in the engine and there you go! Instead of using proc ship you now have specific shipset. The whole engine or at least 80% of the engine is open to the player, or at least seem to be open right now. Latest devlog he was basicly working on the game while it was running.

Even if the ships are great and is capable of creating nice looking ship designs, the problem is that the whole focus of development is on making everything procedural, and as Rex_Nex says, I've never seen procedural generation make a good game by itself.

There's nothing about any sort of story/history/background, it's all 'procedural everything!'. This is again the problem that so far (for an 2015 release) we haven't really heard much about THE GAME, and rather just about the engine, and a good engine doesn't make a good game.

[Graknorke]

Looks pretty. Otherwise reserving judgement until I absorb more information about it.

[Talvieno]

The big thing about DF is that it has a lot of content to utilize in procedural generation, a lot of different methods of interaction between objects, and a lot of different properties of objects.

It also has evolving history, which is the reason why the succession games have even started.

LT already has procedural history generation. It's not on quite the same scale as DF, though.

About the ships: It's interesting, actually, that you should bring it up - today was in fact the exact day Josh posted a devlog about ships.
http://forums.ltheory.com/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=3717&p=69817#p69817

Since I haven't actually said much about the mysterious PlateMesh structure up until this point, I'll go ahead and elucidate it a bit now. In essence, it's a hierarchical box mesh. Don't fall asleep just yet -- it gets more interesting, I swear Every PlateMesh is a group of 'plates,' each of which comprises a center, scale, rotation, and bevel (yes, plates are just transformed, beveled boxes...but for some reason, I prefer to use the terminology 'plate' in my head). That alone can get you some interesting, boxy geometries. But it's not enough.

The part where it gets interesting is that every PlateMesh also has a group of mathematical transformations that act on the entire mesh structure to transform the geometry in some way. There are things like point repulsors and attractors, planes that produce exponential cusps and folds, etc etc. In theory, these transformations can be any mathematical transformation that takes one point in 3D space to another (i.e., modifies the position of a point in space). In practice, combining a small group of basic transforms gives enough flexibility to produce most of the interesting shapes that you would ever really want Finally, every PlateMesh has a group of sub-PlateMeshes (it's a recursive structure). The transformations of one PlateMesh act on all children (which gives a nice 'global' feeling to the geometric warps).

So ships and stations are actually built up recursively from pieces that are 'glued together' under various bits of math. The process continues for as many levels of hierarchy as you like, until you arrive at the final mesh. It's rather simple, yes, but I assert that it's an intuitive way to arrive at virtually any (artifical-looking) geometry you might want.

Edit: Ohhhh, and about the gameplay - he's shown plenty of gameplay in past videos, and all that still functions - mining, missions, dogfights, piracy, looting, jumping between systems, scanning, upgrading your ship, researching, etc. - but he doesn't show it all every video. He only really shows the new stuff.

[EpicOrange]

Anyone know how much this will be when it comes out?_{(yes, I am lazy)}

[Talvieno]

$20, if I remember right.

[Zanzetkuken The Great]

Posting to hope my computer can run the game.