14 replies to this topic

[The Legend]

So I just came up with an idea for a game that is completely controlled by the computer. Based on the current knowledge of the player and some randomness, the computer will literally create a world and characters for the player to play through. The computer would use pre-created body parts or just single-colored pixels to create enemies and allies for the player to interact with, equipping them with random powers. The game would have an endless amount of story lines, enemies, and enviroments, meaning that you can never get bored of the same loop game play and can always look forward to a new adventure. I might make it so that you have control over what skills and attacks the player has and his/her appearance so that way it feels like you are a hero going through endless adventures instead of a completely separate game. Any suggestions?

Edited by The Legend, 06 March 2012 - 09:24 PM.

[Robert3DG+]

How will the game tie those elements together? Just dumping a bunch of random characters into a world isn't very interesting without a meaningful conflict.

[The Legend]

The program creates a conflict scenario for the player to complete which may or may not be tied to other characters or enviroments. Hard to describe ot any further but everything IS tied together though I understand how I could've mislead u

[ND4SPD]

Prodedurally generated content is what you're looking for, it seems.

Also, I'm very interested in seeing a procedurally generated RPG game. If you're interested, I'll type up the idea?

[Yal]

The program creates a conflict scenario for the player to complete which may or may not be tied to other characters or enviroments. Hard to describe ot any further but everything IS tied together though I understand how I could've mislead u

You should go to 300 Ideas and look up the algorithms on the Blind Mapmaker Project page. I think you could find some meaty ideas there (such as a method to create a "quest chain" where you gotta do A first to get the B item that you should give to C to be able to do D and so on until you kill the final boss)

[Larry145]

The computer would use pre-created body parts or just single-colored pixels to create enemies and allies for the player to interact with.....

Edited by Larry145, 07 March 2012 - 09:40 AM.

[The Legend]

I'll be sure to check those sites
Out but I'm not aiming for an RPG, aiming more for an RPG action adventure shooter mix.

[Yal]

You know, it's a lot harder to make a good randomly generated platformer world than a top-town one because you suddenly gotta take gravity into account. Spelunky (which is open source, check it out!) solved that by making the goal of each level to get from the top to the bottom (so even if you fall down into a pit you can't get up from, it's no problem because you never have to go upwards anyway).

For action adventure shooting, you could solve it by having say 10-20 different projectiles, each one can destroy blocks or open gates of a special kind, and then you just spread them out so that the player gotta find them in a specific order to explore the entire game world.

Check out 300's 4th idea for how to do this algorithmwise: http://www.squidi.ne.../entry.php?id=4

[The Legend]

I'll be sure to do that.

[lmbarns]

but I'm not aiming for an RPG, aiming more for an RPG action adventure shooter mix.

I'm working on the same thing and came to a few forks in the road as far as how to proceed.

For me I'm taking influence from the rogue-like genre, but only to an extent. Rogue-like's are turn based, but I'm doing action shooter rpg. Rogue-like's use completely procedurally generated maps, it's never the same layout twice. Rogue-likes usually have perma death, I may offer a mode for that but otherwise only take away inventory items on death. Rogue-like's are known for the gameplay, they have many options and elaborate gameplay for being text based.

The easiest way I found once you've loaded a map, was to create spawnpoints, which are randomly placed around the map, you can also define an area they should randomly spawn around to give you control of the orientation. You can then completely randomly spawn a monster at each spawn point, or give a range of monsters to randomly choose from, or set a constant spawn if you want the same monster to spawn each at certain spawn points.

The second part has to do with map generation. Easiest and most inefficient way is to load a single image and then spawn everything over it. A harder and more efficient way is to make a tile engine to generate the layout based off an array. You can pre-define rooms in small arrays and randomly put them together based on some rules, randomly generate the arrays completely, you could also split up your large image into chunks and only draw chunks being viewed.

If you watch a gameplay video of "dungeon of dredmore" it's inspired by rogue-like's and is similar to what I'm doing but I'm doing an open world with several dungeons, where it takes place entirely in a single dungeon.

@Yal thanks for that link, looks right up my alley.

[The Legend]

I'll take that all into account. But I really don't want a loop gameplay of any sort. The player must adapt to the enviroment and use what he is given. Whether it be a backpack, camo or a wise-cracking donkey named Phil.

[greep]

I'm actually doing this right now, and I'm going the full 9 yards with it. Maybe we should compare our games when I'm finished in about 18 months

[The Legend]

Sure! I'm working on multiple projects though so it might be longer

[greep]

I think the big challenge for this kind of game is going to be the randomized plotlines. This is not an easy task to make them interesting, as nearly every developer who attempts them ends up making rather stupid fetch quests or involve characters that nobody cares about. Somehow, you have to make the character care about the storyline, and also keep it varied enough that instead of having 10 quests that look like the same quest rehashed, you get 10 quests that look like 10 quests. I have my own idea on how to accomplish this, but I'm keeping them to myself, since I'd like my game to be unique when it comes out

Edited by greep, 10 March 2012 - 08:21 PM.

[The Legend]

Ya, Is one heck of a challenge. Which is why I want to complete my other project first, that way it'll actually get done : )