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sigh wishlisted.
god you people always recommend the best games
jokes aside i love the plugs i get here with games, i tell buddies about them and they’re like “where did u hear about this shit?” oh nowhere just a based communist website filled with cool as fuck trans and queer people
Drop a list of some of the games if you remember them off the top of your head if you don’t mind
lmao bless you since think i’m capable of that
edit: otr just look at any games linked in this comm, should set you right.
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I totally didn’t click that link expecting to find a post different from my own, nope…
Also, I swear I’m not trying to debatebro, but this question has been picking at my mind for a while: why is it considered acceptable to use procedurally generated content in level/map design (as many roguelikes do) but not in any other aspect of game development?
My first instinct is that it’s because everything can still be broken down into bespoke parts. You’re not hooking up to the Copyright Infringement Pipe as a substitute for making content, you just made a thing that rearranges the content you’ve made. People can feel when something had a human hand creating it, and that’s one of those intangible things you don’t notice until it’s gone.
I’ve seen procgen used for stuff like character icons, item/enemy behavior, and weirder shit like Dwarf Fortress’s engraving descriptions. Never seen any complaints about it being “wrong” to do that, just “it looks bad sometimes”
Copyright Infringement Pipe
imagine caring about copyright
I mean I don’t, but that’s basically the only thing these LLMs do and they can’t even do it right or fun
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Yeah, that makes sense.
Most procedurally generated height maps and textures are made via Perlin Noise and math equations. Procedurally generated dungeons are usually just a bunch of rules deciding where to place human designed rooms on a grid.
People have historically considered these types of things to be slop, yes, but its not the same thing as machine learning output, pink sludge machine or otherwise.
There’s also an efficiency factor. Procedurally generated maps worked fine on machines smaller than today’s high-end keyboard controllers. We’re not asking you to heat up the room and fire up extra coal plants for mediocre results.
It’s pretty much just because of two things: the AI community is >95% dipshit chuds and grifters who should be
and so taint generative AI in general by association, and that there’s been a huge corporate push to frame the problem as AI not properly licensing content from media and content hosting companies, in the guise of it “infringing” on artists wherever there hasn’t been a proper licensing agreement between the trainer and whatever corporation claims the rights to license that content for training.It’s basically the new Poser/Daz3d CGI slop in terms of being almost entirely awful garbage that talentless dipshits spam everywhere, and a game using it is more likely to be akin to a shitty VN with stock Poser asset renders than it is to use it effectively. If nothing else because the tech is still so fresh that the only things that have gone live with it are shitty cash grabs no different from asset flips, and any legitimate projects have yet to appear.
Poser
This brought back terrible memories of Deviantart circa 2003
I regret to inform you people are still using it with the same stock/free assets they were 20 years ago and literally none of them have learned how to use it well. It’s wild to just randomly come across a render with like the exact same shitty grass floor model that’s been around and been awful for literally 20+ years and it’s watermarked like 2023 or the like.
I think level generation has just had enough time to work out (most of) it’s kinks.
Also everyone was hyped about the nemesis system until it got patented.
I think it comes down to (perceived) quality of implementation and how long each tool has been used.
Procedural level generation has been implemented to good effect in many games going back decades to Diablo (II?). Most gamers acknowledge that it can be done well, so it’s easier to defend from criticism whenever some asset flip survival crafting game botches it.
AI art and voice work is a lot less proven. Most of the time they lead to measurable drops in quality when implemented. Look at the criticism around Stasis: Bone Totem for an example of how distracting AI art is in the context of an otherwise competent game.
There’s also the perception that procedural generation is a valid artistic choice whereas AI is a pure cost cutting exercise. There are games like Dwarf Fortress, No Man’s Sky, almost every rogue like, and so on where the procedural generation is one of the main draws. There are very few examples of AI art or voice acting that actually enhance a product. The only two I can think of are mods that can’t afford voice acting anyway (and people will cut slack for because they’re free fan projects) and vocaloid products like Hatsune Miku (though arguably they’re more tools than games).
I seriously doubt the average gamer has any real moral or ethical objections against AI. When AI voice work becomes indistinguishable from human VA, people will stop caring.
Ironically I do remember a fair bit of condemnation of proc gen in general about 15-20 years ago, when it started getting more mainstream attention instead of being just something inscrutable indie games with ASCII interfaces did. It wasn’t exactly new tech but people were starting to look at moving it into places that aren’t as well suited for it and that garnered a lot of discourse on whether it was a good idea that needed more work or a bad idea and a trap for devs who’d waste labor on a boondoggle.
Even now it’s more found a middle ground where it’s still often disliked and criticized (with some exceptions, like map layouts in ARPGs, roguelites in general, etc) as being vapid and boring compared to bespoke work, but it’s largely tolerated and no one’s particularly up in arms about it more than they are about roguelites or survival crafting games being oversaturated genres.
going back decades to Diablo (II?)
Much older than that; Diablo 1 was some cheap Christmas game released in 1996, the original rogue was released in 1980.
Iirc, as far back Mtw2 they swapped parts of models to create 'unique" soldiers in armies. Is that procedural generation?
Refused? They were forced by anyone? Is the use of IA voices the standard now that not using them is something special?
Yeah, this article is just marketing.
This looks cool!
It’s fun
:ok:
I’ve noticed that a lot of new smaller titles are rogue-likes/-lites. Why is that?
High return of playable content to Dev time
I also don’t think there’s any powers the dev can bestow that feel quite as exhilarating as going exponential in a rogue like. There’s also the chance for tension with a build that barely works that’s hard to do via dev time.
It’s to the point where even if you want replayability in an older title like Zelda: Ocarina of Time, you make it into a randomizer and randomize where you get items so sometimes you have to plan out and glitch around the game to obtain things.
Press A when I tell you to press A is going out of style. I think a lot of people really like to chart their own path through an obstacle and modern design gives devs the ability to make really sophisticated obstacles.
They’re more fun to make. Replaying the start of a roguelite a gazillion times is more pleasant than replaying the first level a gazillion times.
When you have a small dev team who also play tests, they’re easy to debug too because all the content can be reached within 30 minutes to an hour.
sometimes it’s like a game was just made for you
I bought this a WHILE ago, think when it was just like a 30 minute demo, and loved it. Intentionally waited on this to keep getting updated, will report back when I start it with thoughts.
OK, OK, OK, I was sold as fuck already…but then in the interview it’s described as FTL meets Starfox? Oh, just a really compatible mashup of two of my all time favorite games. This sounds like an absolute dream come true as long as the controls are good.
My first star fox game was star fox adventure and honestly I loved it as a kid. Don’t know why people shit on it. Also don’t understand why people like the regular games so much, it’s basically an on rail shooter.
