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Starsector 0.97a is out! (02/02/24); New blog post: Simulator Enhancements (03/13/24)

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Author Topic: Building Better Worlds  (Read 43516 times)

Alex

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Re: Building Better Worlds
« Reply #45 on: February 22, 2017, 10:24:58 AM »

Yeah, maybe. I mean, obviously you can archive everything per hand that procedural generation can, and more. And I have good memories of the worlds of Morrowind and some other games of the time (Gothic, Outcast). But those were experiences I had a long time ago, and I'm wary about depending on them - I was more impressionable and much less capable of "peeking behind the curtain" back then.
Recent experiences felt all comparatively dull and predictable (Witcher 3, Skyrim, Far Cry 3).

Yeah, fair enough. FWIW, I feel the same about Witcher/Skyrim/etc, and there are some clear differences in implementation that I think are responsible. The Witcher games in particular always feel like you're walking around on the set of a movie.

But, yeah, there's definitely some a lot of nostalgia involved especially regarding Morrowind, so...

With the exception of procedurally generated games (which means at least It's not just that I'm a grumpy old man now - it get's you thinking when seemingly everyone else loves those new titles).

I really need to check out Subnautica; of the ones you mentioned it's the only one that appeals.


Morowind was very interesting to explore, but the place didn't made much sense topography-wise.

(Just have to comment on this - I think the topography in Morrowind was amazingly effective in terms of making a smaller map feel so much bigger than it was.)

About Procgen: I think the mix of procgen and scripted sounds good - as long as the implementation is up to Alex's usual excellent standards (no pressure).

(Ha!)

I want procgen "story" to be reasonable: how did the stuff get there, if there is stuff? Can I headcanon an explanation, or does it make no sense? (An empty habitable world not too far from the core would be weird without some reason why its empty, for example.)

I want to interact with it: even in empty systems, I want there to be something for me to do there, like dodging solar flares/ hiding in corona shadows on the way to exploring a planet, or independent markets, or pirates, ruins etc. I know this isn't 'realistic', but --> game.

Yeah, pretty much same page here. But procgen being procgen, it's almost inevitable that sometimes something won't make sense.

I do want a good number of places to be empty, though. I think that's important feel-wise, to contrast with the systems that are full of stuff.

As you say, the devil is in the details.
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xenoargh

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Re: Building Better Worlds
« Reply #46 on: February 22, 2017, 10:29:44 AM »

I'd agree re: Morrowind's topography; I think Bethesda did a much better job with Fallout 3.

Agreed about having active elements that make the play interesting, in general.  

Personally, I'd like to see:

1.  Areas full of wreckage and hidden bases / encounters (not "hidden" like the "Pirate Base" from early versions, I mean real surprises).  Early gameplay should, imho, feature asteroid mining, among other things; this was tested out in Vacuum and emulated a little roughly in other mods, and it was fun, as a non-combat way to grind a little money.

2.  Areas where combat is totally prohibitive unless you're basically at end-game content (kind of like starting serious trouble in Earth System in EV...).

3.  Areas where the player can dynamically improve the conditions in a variety of ways, from taking Bounty missions to clean out the immediate area of Pirates and other scum, intervene to end wars / border disputes, fix up a System's economy / ecology through various tools (building Stations, delivering items that can contribute to a permanent fix to ecological crises, etc.).

4.  Areas where there's constant war between major Factions, putting the player in the crosshairs of opportunistic admirals looking for a bribe or booty on the side.

5.  I'd really like to see "unstable wormholes" be the excuse for why Pirates can miraculously enter / leave Systems so that there is a little more flavor to travel in / out that supports "why haven't we surrounded the Jump Points with guns" and honestly, I'd like to see Pirate stations, rather than being permanent objects in Systems, be more "pop-up" objects that dynamically appear, support Pirate activities, and usually get destroyed by the main Faction in the System.  That would add a huge dynamic feel to the game and players could help / hurt the Pirates by either destroying or helping to defend / found new Pirate stations.

But the long-term play is where it becomes more and more important to get a clear focus, and I'm happy to hear that Outposts / player-owned stations are looking like they'll become a real thing, finally.  This idea of having the player make a long-term commitment to areas, rather than simply be an opportunist making money / grinding levels as the sole goal is welcome indeed.

Beyond that... perhaps what players need is to eventually have a relationship with the Factions akin to what was done in Mount and Blade; the player can subvert / suborn Factions, simply treat them as trading partners, or ally with them to achieve goals.  

Perhaps each Faction needs to have an ending goal that players are instrumental to achieving, so there's something to do and real choices to be made.  I know that's out-of-scope for this update, which is pretty massive already but I'm trying to think ahead a bit here.

For example, Tri-Tachyon might want the player to collect archeo-tech so that it can create a new Gate Network and escape the Sector to play elsewhere.  The Dominion probably wants to repair the Gates and attempt to re-connect with the Domain and find out what happened.  The Luddites probably want Tri-Tachyon destroyed utterly and the Gates demolished, because they're inherently evil and they want to return to medieval economics as soon as nobody has working space warships armed with nukes (or maybe they're just a front for something really sinister, lol).  

The point I'm making here is that these goals can be done, from a programming standpoint, as pretty simplistic set-pieces (these don't need to be elaborate things, if the rest of the systems are already reasonably dynamic- for example, maybe the player declines the Tri-Tach quest because they're in a vice-grip war between the Dominion and the Luddites and the player doesn't want to get involved), but they'd add a lot to the fabric of end-game.  I know that a lot of the UI / toolset for building this sort of quest is already in place, so this might be the way to go.
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Gothars

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Re: Building Better Worlds
« Reply #47 on: February 22, 2017, 11:22:16 AM »

I really need to check out Subnautica; of the ones you mentioned it's the only one that appeals.

By all means, do. I tried it for the first time a few days ago and was instantly hooked. I would recommend to wait a few months though, for two reasons. 1) It is supposed to reach 1.0 in three months (I believe it when I see it), at which point the half finished (and so far worthwhile) story should be completed. 2) The current build has technical issues were the game gets slower als your savegame gets older. After about 15 hours my game is now unplayable.



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Talkie Toaster

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Re: Building Better Worlds
« Reply #48 on: February 22, 2017, 11:42:13 AM »

I really need to check out Subnautica; of the ones you mentioned it's the only one that appeals.

By all means, do. I tried it for the first time a few days ago and was instantly hooked. I would recommend to wait a few months though, for two reasons. 1) It is supposed to reach 1.0 in three months (I believe it when I see it), at which point the half finished (and so far worthwhile) story should be completed. 2) The current build has technical issues were the game gets slower als your savegame gets older. After about 15 hours my game is now unplayable.




It's good though it's not procedurally generated- each game is on the same map.
(Though some level of it was probably used when making/filling the map!)
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David

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Re: Building Better Worlds
« Reply #49 on: February 22, 2017, 11:45:50 AM »

On 'forgetting' - I think it depends on the timescales involved and how data is stored.

Can't comment on the rest of it, but onslaughts were a part of taskforce Pollux, who was in suspended animation for around 3000 years, iirc

The Domain is about 1000 years old (at least according to Ivaylo's lore).

There have indeed been reports made by a rogue conspiracy-theorist/historian by that name about some "secret history" of the Domain - and Hegemony. He was later revealed to be a Pirate by Hegemony Intelligence with irrefutable evidence procured by Hegemony Intelligence, so we shouldn't take him seriously -- it's clearly a piratical plot to undermine the faith of Upstanding Citizens in the righteous rule of Hegemony law.

Please re-acquaint yourself with the latest publication of The True History Of The Hegemony (available in a 3-volume set in the TriPad App Store) so as not to be misled by insane rantings of propagandists.

(My approach here re. all of the above is to consider only what is inside the latest game release as strict canon.)

Honestly, I don't think it's possible for me to choose. And I might even be a bit uncomfortable if I were to make a "Mary Sue" faction. Maybe it'd feel creatively compromised, or didactic, or something along those lines.
I take it that's at least partly why the League has the cast iron pan homeworld? As in, giving the "noble democratic" faction a comfy, pleasant terran homeworld to contrast with Chicomoztoc, Eochu Bres and Askonia would have been a bit too obviously heavy-handed, even (or especially) if it's supposed to be Space Athens.

Tartessus is a bit of an outlier in this regard though.

Who said anything about the League being noble and democratic? -- Ah, "Space Athens" I guess. I suppose that's "noble democratic" in the very literal sense of a democracy only for nobles ... so fair enough. Perhaps Kazeron is equally "democratic". But I'll defer here to whatever the in-game canon ends up being.


PS. Morrowind is the best game.
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Cycerin

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Re: Building Better Worlds
« Reply #50 on: February 22, 2017, 12:05:48 PM »

I can't remember if this has been asked before, but does the Persean League favor any kind of tech doctrine? Eg. more weight towards low, high or midtech? Would be cool with some more skins.
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David

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Re: Building Better Worlds
« Reply #51 on: February 22, 2017, 12:16:52 PM »

I can't remember if this has been asked before, but does the Persean League favor any kind of tech doctrine? Eg. more weight towards low, high or midtech? Would be cool with some more skins.

I'm interested in making the League more midtech cruiser/carrier and then push the Hegemony more into low/mid-tech capitals + other ships-of-the-line. Will see how it works out in practice!
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SafariJohn

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Re: Building Better Worlds
« Reply #52 on: February 22, 2017, 12:41:38 PM »

This fixes the lag in long-running Subnautica games: https://forums.unknownworlds.com/discussion/145963/temporary-fix-for-recent-crashes-build-40062#latest

It resets resources and terrain though, so that may bother you if you are playing survival.


I'm interested in making the League more midtech cruiser/carrier and then push the Hegemony more into low/mid-tech capitals + other ships-of-the-line. Will see how it works out in practice!

Clearly distinct faction fleets is a big plus in my book :)
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Gothars

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Re: Building Better Worlds
« Reply #53 on: February 22, 2017, 12:53:09 PM »

It's good though it's not procedurally generated- each game is on the same map.
(Though some level of it was probably used when making/filling the map!)

Oh! Then the starting point is chosen at random and the map is pretty big. Well, that just proofs the point that handcrafted stuff can definitely do what proc gen can, if its applied in the right way :)

@ SafariJohn: Thanks, I found that - won't bother with it, not if a proper fix is relatively close.
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Aeson

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Re: Building Better Worlds
« Reply #54 on: February 22, 2017, 07:42:23 PM »

On 'forgetting' - I think it depends on the timescales involved and how data is stored. Were Onslaughts first constructed a few thousand years earlier, or a few hundred? There is debate on whether electronic records are good or bad for data retention - at present they are very bad, as the rapid tech progress and formatting changes make actually reading data on a drive from just 30 years possible only by specialists. Then again, if technology "settled down" in the Domain, then perhaps they have been using the same data format for thousands of years and the only problem is the physical degradation of media.
Modern electronic storage media tends to have a life expectancy of around 20 years. There's some specialized stuff that at least theoretically has a much longer life expectancy and it's sometimes possible to retrieve data from a device which has failed, but 20 years is more or less the upper bound for what you should expect out of modern electronic data storage media.

Also, I'd regard it as likely that a lot of information was lost in the Collapse and in the chaos following it, especially if the Domain had some form of interplanetary/interstellar internet which allowed records to be accessed relatively easily even on planets or in systems which did not host an archive with copies of that information. Even if the Domain didn't have an interstellar internet, local archives, especially in regions which are just being set up, will likely only have information which is (expected to be) accessed relatively frequently, because that's cheaper and is probably adequate for the vast majority of local information requests.1 The problem with such a system, of course, is that it relies on the presence of a functional network. If the network breaks down, whether because the connections between nodes are broken or because one or more nodes become damaged, information can be lost, at least locally; the more severe the damage to the nodes and the more nodes which are damaged, the more likely it is for the information loss to be permanent and universal rather than temporary and local. Even if the information survives, it can still be lost if knowledge of the existence or location of the information is lost.

One last thing I'd add is that it's very possible for a technologically-advanced civilization to 'forget' something even if accurate records of the thing in question exist and are accessible by people within that civilization. Consider the internet - the more you know about a subject, the easier it is to look up information about that subject, but the converse - that the less you know about a subject, the harder it is to look up information about it - is also generally true, especially if there isn't much information on the subject available to the general public or if the information on the subject is largely in the form of obscure academic papers with opaque titles, and for many subjects there is also a lot of garbage floating around obscuring the accurate information. Also consider websites which have gone defunct, and consider whether or not it's easy to retrieve information from those websites.

1Before anyone brings up the internet as a counterpoint, be aware that this is how the internet works. Most data centers do not have copies of anything like "all" of the information available on the internet; instead, they have copies of the information which is, or "recently" was, most frequently accessed in the local region (note that, especially at larger data centers, the frequency with which the information needs to be accessed in order for the center to keep a local copy is not necessarily very high), and many of them also store a bit of information which is infrequently accessed anywhere in the world. While not all data is stored at all data centers, no information is unique to any one data center, at least in theory (theory and practice may not be in perfect agreement given the enormous volume of information on the internet, the rate at which new information is generated, the limits on what people will spend to back up data, and the limits on how much bandwidth is available). When you enter a query (be that a URL or a search term) in a web browser, your query is passed to the nearest data centers, which search their repositories for information pertaining to your query. If they do not find information pertaining to your query in their repositories, the query gets passed on to more distant data centers, which search their repositories, etc, etc, until the system finds what it thinks you're looking for or runs out of places to look.
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whatdoesthisbuttondo

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Re: Building Better Worlds
« Reply #55 on: February 23, 2017, 01:51:34 PM »

Also, I'd regard it as likely that a lot of information was lost in the Collapse and in the chaos following it, especially if the Domain had some form of interplanetary/interstellar internet which allowed records to be accessed relatively easily even on planets or in systems which did not host an archive with copies of that information.

Even if that information itself is still available, e.g. a blueprint for say a phase skimmer, that would still require all the information on machinery that is required to actually manufacture said device,
which adds up to a lot for very complex, advanced technology.

It would be more than likely that many devices that still exist in the sector could even be reverse-engineered, but the technology that is required to reproduce integral parts simply isn't available at all,
or only a very small number of the required machines is still in working order, kept under lock and key (and impossible to reproduce should it break down because see above).
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whatdoesthisbuttondo

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Re: Building Better Worlds
« Reply #56 on: February 23, 2017, 02:06:09 PM »

Yeah, pretty much same page here. But procgen being procgen, it's almost inevitable that sometimes something won't make sense.

I'd say it depends on what you actually allow to be generated, and a set of rules that is 'realistic'.

Inhabited systems are probably best hand-crafted to begin with, or derived from a few generic templates that
may be modified by a set of parameters, but procgen can still be used to do the legwork of making them unique
and interesting.

A template based system could be much better than pure procgen, even more so if you break it down further by
making partial templates, and then iterate over the base result multiple times by randomly alterating sub-systems
in a narrow instead of broad fashion.

E.g. something like this:

- create system, place sun
- place 1-4 sub-systems (a 'major' body, with 0-5 'minor' bodies orbiting it) <--- these are from templates

then

- modify sun, set size and type
- do a pass on all subsystems, set size, type and (if applicable) climate according to distance from sun
- same as above for minor bodies

You could even, once the generating is finished, just look for suitable bodies to place points of interest.
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Alex

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Re: Building Better Worlds
« Reply #57 on: February 23, 2017, 02:21:09 PM »

I think I wasn't exactly clear - my point is that if procgen produces a wide enough range of results to be interesting, it's a virtual certainty that some edge case somewhere won't make sense if it comes up. Naturally, I'm doing what I can to manage that, but just being realistic about the chances of it being "perfect". Especially given that there's a lot of subjectivity in evaluating whether a given result "makes sense".
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Deshara

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Re: Building Better Worlds
« Reply #58 on: February 23, 2017, 07:02:34 PM »

With the exception of procedurally generated games (which means at least It's not just that I'm a grumpy old man now - it get's you thinking when seemingly everyone else loves those new titles).

I really need to check out Subnautica; of the ones you mentioned it's the only one that appeals.



Subnautica isn't procgen btw.

Also blog post mentions Magec and missions. I just wanted to say, I LOVE Magec, it's my fave. I love the dead world situated between a faction I like to *** off and a faction I don't like to play ball with, it's a great playspace, it feels like something a whole game could be built around. Are we ever to expect to see in-campaign in-system missions? I want to get into hyjinks abusing the Great Accretion Disk in story missions on a low-level scale while I slowly build up on the decivilized world
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Embolism

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Re: Building Better Worlds
« Reply #59 on: February 23, 2017, 10:50:42 PM »

In-game story missions are something I'd absolutely love, but sadly don't see happening. You need quite a bit of variety and depth, otherwise it just doesn't work.
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