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On Randomly Generated Content In Games
Thanks to Skotos.net for their article discussing randomly-generated content in videogames, in which the author discusses pioneering games with random elements, suggesting: "One of the reasons [classic RPG] Rogue was so popular (and spawned so many children) is due to its generation of random content." But he goes on to point out: "Computers don't have the imagination to make good puzzles... asking a computer to create an interesting puzzle is very similar to asking it to tell a story, make up a joke, or create a riddle." The suggested answer is game elements "placed randomly within the [linear] structure", but with recent random level-generating games such as Toe Jam & Earl III striking out, how far should randomness be taken in games?
There's an old saying that goes, Art hung in restaurants is usually as bad as food served at museums.
Paraphrasing, asking a computer to do level design is as bad as asking a level designer to do math.
This is one of those features that the marketing department loves ("Infinite Gameplay!"), but in practice almost always sucks. It's the rare game (Populous?) where random numbers can deliver a enjoyable level.
What were you expecting?
Feh. Random monster spawns do not a random dungeon make. The geometry of the levels was always the same, just the spawns were (semi) random.
What were you expecting?
The games I have the most fun with are those with decent random content generators. Done right, they can really add to the replayability of a game. Port Royale has suitably 'open-ended' gameplay (within the confines of its environment) through random mission generation and all the fun of trading.
The thing that really gets me, though, are games that are billed as 'open-ended', infinitely replayably, etc, that are instead cripplingly linear. (Republic : The Revolution is a great example of this - a game *crying out* for decent random mission generators, but instead has a lockstep set of objectives that you have to complete to advance ).
Take Ancient Domains of Mystery - This is a roguelike game in every sense of the word, and the only maps that are static are the world map, towns, and a select few dungeon floors.
There is only one pure level-up dungeon, the rest all have limitations and hard-coded stuff - ie the first dungeon will always have 7 floors, and it's associated quest will climax at that point. The floor layouts are always random, and in a roguelike game (where death is permanent) not having the same floorplan all the time is a GREAT benefit - I doubt I'd have half as much fun with it after the first 5 times through the beginnings of the game.
Computers can't be creative, at least not in the way humans _can_ be. The randomness of the Rogue levels was rather successful in making the game continuously challenging, but at a rather superficial level.
Compare this with a table game with five players and a DM for an ongoing game of AD&D (or other, insert your fav here) and you'll notice a truly _huge_ difference. Between the DM and the responses/actions of the other players, you have six people tossing out so much randomness a good DM actually spends a fair amount of energy keeping the game focused.
Perhaps one way around this problem for developers of computer-assisted (or just computer games, whatever) is to build into the game resources which mimic the random creativity a DM would supply during a table-top game. One way might be to supply with the game a database of random elements which could "happen" during any particular part/level/area of a game. Have the game engine check for triggers (events/times/states) which would allows for possible "random" insertion events.
For such a method to be successful though, the database would have to be large enough to seem truly random to the player (say BIG as in many,many possible random events.)
The Baldur's Gate PC game did try something like this in that when moving from city to city you might often be waylaid by some nasties, but that was mostly an annoying failure because it didn't seem to be random at all, IMO.
Everything in the Universe sucks: It's the law!
I was thinking about this problem the other day, as it relates to open-source game development. One of the main problems with small-scale game development is the creation of content (it's a lot of effort), and algorithmic content would make it easier for a smaller-group of developers to build a good game.
But a problem with random content is that it can suck, like impossible nethack levels, etc., as the algorithms have no great sense of athstetics or any of the other abilities require to make 'good' levels. Designing algorithms to test for athstetics is also difficult, and probably only worth doing for a few cases.
The conclusing I came to was that algorithms could be used to pre-generate content (like maps, etc), in the sense of the "millions-of-monkeys" problem, except with a bit of focus. Algorithms would generate content (maps, shapes, etc.), and then the work would be filtered by the developers, and the good stuff made part of the game. The algorithms could also use some sort of learning to improve the generation process, similar to spam filtering - "this is spam" vs. "this is not spam" user-initiated filter improvement.
This sort of approach would really make small-shop game development easier, as would improving (and standardizing) content-production tools and processes.
mx
That game is way way way to expensive.
Lets sort this out and correct your statement that only monster spawns are random.
First Diablo 1, which had both single pand multi player. In single player, you save the game and with it the full dungeon at any time and can reload it as well. Of course you then get back the exact same dungeon (AND monsters) as when you saved. One can at any time start a NEW game with the saved character though. It will then have a completely new dungeon.
In Diablo 1 multiplayer, you can't save the game. The character is saved when you leave the game (and actually regulary when you play as well). When entering a new game, you will get a completely new dungeon as well.
So in Diablo 1, the full dungeon was actually randomized each time. Admitedly there exists bugs, or rather design flaws in the implementation and use of random numbers, but that does not change the fact that the dungeons are random, it only gives some interesting quirks and side effects.
Lets move to Diablo 2 which basically has 3 game types. Realm multi player, open multi player and single player. For all practical purposes, realm play and open play can be considered as identical.
First multi player. Again, you can't save the game but the character is automatically saved. Each time you enter a new game, it is randomly created and you have a new dungeon as well.
Single player is slightly different. You still can't save the game but the character is automatically saved. When you start a new game with your single player character (assuming it has not been used for an open multi player game) and it is still the same difficulty level, you will get the same dungeon. You can see it as a saved dungeon layout when you levae a game in single player. Part of the monster spawning will also be similar and in part identical. The reason for this is theat the saved character file will contain the initial seed used to create the last game. With it, most of the dungeon layout and part of monster spawns will be recreated identically. Some parts, of primarilly monster, and even more item spawning, will be randomized with the current time and hence will still differ.
One can see single player in Diablo 2 as open game that just don't allow others to join and that uses the same initial seed as the last game to create the dungeon (obviously to compensate some for not having a save game option). That is why single player characters can be used in open multi player.
If you are interested in more details about game and dungeon generation, especially in D1 but also D2, feel free to tell and I can inform you.