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Approaching Composition #10
Niels NTG Poldervaart, 2018
A procedurally generated tribute to the 1915 painting Compositie 10 in zwart wit (Composition 10 in black and white) by Dutch modern abstract artist Piet Mondriaan, one of the leading figures in De Stijl artistic movement.
Made in Java Processing. More info at: nielspoldervaart.nl/composition10
This question might make you angry, but I ask it anyway. Should the industry drop voice acting to use AI instead?
Your question doesn't make me angry. It just shows me that you don't really understand what it is we want when we hire voice actors.
We wouldn't use AI-generated audio, just like we wouldn't use AI-generated art. When we're trying to build something specific like a narrative, a character, a world, etc. we've got something in mind that we need to iterate on. We try to control just about every aspect of our creation - visually, thematically, contextually, narratively, in motion, in performance, in audio, and so on. That means that we're looking for a very specific kind of performance out of the voice actors we hire.
While AI might be able to create the kind of performance we want someday, AI is absolutely unable to meet those needs today. AI-generated stuff is interesting for sure, but in a novelty "that’s kinda cool for a prototype” way and not a “this is ready for prime time full production” way. There’s a tremendous gulf between a proof-of-concept idea, and something that’s usable for putting out the kind of work we need done for a full scale production. There are no plans to drop any of our sound designers, voice actors, sound engineers, concept artists, texture artists, or any other artists for AI.
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Generated Games for the Game Boy
One project that I've been working on lately is generating games for the Game Boy.
The generator builds games using GB Studio.
Why the Game Boy? There were a number of reasons, including it being a fixed target platform with a really good emulator ecosystem. Since this is part of a larger project to research new ways of building generators, it made sense to target a platform that didn't require a lot of scaffolding just to display something on screen. Plus, it lets us build games for genres that haven't had as much game generation attention. A generator targeting Pico8 or Bitsy might be similar, though the other advantage of GB Studio is that it has a lot of useful data structures already implemented (like scenes and triggers) and so we can concentrate on teaching the generator how to use them.
I'm not the only one working on the project, so I certainly can't take all of the credit. And it is definitely a work in progress - the next version of the generator is using a different approach that makes the process of building the generator much more flexible.
https://isaackarth.com/games/rom_gen_test_5/
learning about marching cubes
After playing Stardew Valley for a while, I've been inspired to start up again with some of my old procedurally generated content ideas, in particular the code I developed for making a tile-based 2.5D map via fractal terrain, water flow and erosion simulation. The ideal end goal would be a SDV-like game with a map that was different and unique in every play through, and if I feel really ambitious also having a cast of NPCs that is unique every time you play. Not sure how to do the latter part at all yet. Part of the reason I abandoned my previous attempts was because they were too slow. I'm programming everything in Python, which is runtime interpreted and not a fast language. Since then I've learned about the numpy and scipy libraries, which can do much of the heavy mathematical work for me. I already have code which can make a fractal map of 512x512 tiles in a few seconds, which would have taken over a minute with the older version. Still need to make fast erosion and river charting code, but there are some neat tricks for that too. It's unlikely that this will ever make it tot the point of being a released game, but it's fun to think about.
What do you think is best bang for your buck for dev time to player time (besides multiplayer)? Alternately, what's the worst (but still worth it)?
The more times and ways that players can play and replay the game, the more devtime-efficient they are. This means the most efficient situation is systemically supporting combinatoric results - subsequent player decisions apply multiplicatively, ultimately resulting in some A x B x C x D ... and so on possible results. This kind of system-based gameplay is the core of games like Minecraft and Breath of the Wild - these materials and items have properties that interact with each other in established ways, so you can end up with multiplicative results from the established inputs.
The ultimate result of this kind of system-driven combinatoric gameplay is generally in one of two core gameplay paradigms:
Procedural content generation, i.e. the game systems themselves create new content through a bunch of randomized decisions resulting in novel game content for each playthrough. Continued dev work would be spent on adding new options for the randomized content generator to create even more interesting possible combinatoric results.
Player-facing content creation tools (i.e. a "maker" game) alongside a curation system to allow players to create content for and distribute said content to other players. Continued dev work would be adding new assets and new tools for players to create new and interesting content from those tools, as well as better ways of curating and distributing popular user-submitted game content.
To answer your second question, the inverse of this - the least devtime-efficient content - is game content that is primarily single-use. This usually means content like cinematics, plotted narrative, voiced lines, action set pieces, puzzles, quick time events, scripted boss fights, that sort of thing. They're pretty fun the first time most players play them, but significantly less so by the fiftieth, and they're very expensive to turn into a procedural thing that can be handled systemically.
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Got a burning question you want answered?
Short questions: Ask a Game Dev on Twitter
Long questions: Ask a Game Dev on Tumblr
Frequent Questions: The FAQ
Questions to ask about your generator
I recently ran across this list of questions I came up with during my Roguelike Celebration talk a couple years ago, and I thought that it stands up pretty well on its own.
Individual: What effect does a single artifact have? What are the differences between artifacts? What makes this artifact stand out?
Gestalt: What is the overall impression of the generative space? What is the effect of the group of artifacts?
Repetition: What are the similarities between artifacts? What does the player learn about the generator from their commonalities?
Structure: What does this artifact tell us about the generative space? What processes can we discern? What can we predict about the next artifact we see?
Surface: What direct impact does this artifact have on our experience? What details do we pay attention to?
Multiplicity: How much variance can we perceive across the generative space?
Cohesion: Do the artifacts feel like they belong? Do they fit in with the other artifacts? Can we perceive them as part of a cohesive system?
Style: How well do the artifacts fit their context? Can the generator adjust to match the current needs?
Are there other questions that you ask about your generators?
One Page Dungeon generator
This one-page dungeon generator by Oleg Dolya (also known for the Medieval Fantasy City Generator) goes beyond the basic throw-rooms-together dungeon generator to have a focus on content. It includes descriptions and room prompts, often with implied connections between keys and locked doors.
There’s a number of ways to add more structure to content like this, including cyclic dungeon generation, but one of my favorites is a little similar to what appears to be going on here with the keys.
Without looking at the source code, the design pattern behind the keys appears to be: 1. have a locked door 2. place a key in a room that can be reached without crossing that locked door. Pretty simple, but creates interesting structures for the players to discover. This can be elaborated to include a chain of things that the player can encounter and piece together the entire story.
One place I’ve seen this used to great effect is Emily Short’s Annals of the Parrigues, with some of the footnotes: a series of footnotes is written in a way that describes an arc, and then the generator is allowed to include the next element from the arc when it feels like it.
If you wanted to make a dungeon generator like this, you could add pairs or triplets of elements to include. A simple one might be a monster, its lair, and it’s most recent victim. Because you are hand-writing these element groups, you can make sure there’s an implied story or relationship. If you’ve got enough of these, mixed in with the rest of the content, they will still feel interesting even if the player sees them a few times.
Another related form of content to include is a recurring motif. Right now the One Page Dungeon generator creates a lot of dying elves in corners and similar things, which a skilled Dungeon Master could spin into a story. But promoting too much mushroomy content can feel like the generator is making a mistake. Pushing the uniqueness of the elements makes it look deliberate.
One thing that King of Dragon Pass (and Six Ages) has taught me is to not be afraid of being specific! Finding the coral-encrusted Mirror of the Dark Wizard Archronalax and the coral-encrusted throne of the Dark Wizard Archronalax will make the players start to wonder where the coral-encrusted magic wand of the Dark Wizard Archronalax is. Having some hyper-specific elements that are spread out across many generated maps gives the generator character.
Think in terms of motifs, of aesthetic signals that can tie different parts of the generated level together, of ways to create emergent resonances between independently generated elements. Which brings me to my last point for now: the simplest way to have elements in your generator work with each other is to write them with a lot of suggestion and storyful-ness. One Page Dungeon is pretty good at this already: A reinforced coffin containing a blood-spattered spear and a cursed hammer? There’s clearly a story behind that!
While there are many existing dungeon generators, there’s plenty of room for new generators that have their own character and ways of telling stories.
There’s lots of space for more dungeon generators to explore!
https://watabou.itch.io/one-page-dungeon
