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More Randomness, More Replayability For Games?
Thanks to GamerDad for its 'Long Shot' editorial discussing whether randomly generated gameplay and maps make for more interesting videogames. The author argues: "As time has advanced and games have become less like the arcade games of old, plotting and story have removed the randomness from many of our games... That's to say nothing of the gameworlds themselves... The places you'll visit are always going to be the same with each play through." However, he points out: "Ensemble Studios has done an absolutely superb job of making online play in Age of Mythology exciting through the use of random maps. These maps are generated using excellent seed criteria that give the player the feeling of playing a pre-designed map but with completely unique designs every time", concluding: "I'd like to see the same kind of thing applied to first person action and more."
This is about as close as I've gotten to what many old arcade games did as a matter of course, drop players into a world and let them fend for themselves in a situation with pre-determined rules but random everything else.
;-). Endless crazy fun
I personally prefer the paranoia solution. You aren't allowed to know the rules
ah, mod points
Randomness would be good, and one genre that would really benefit, would be the First Person Shooter/Sneakers.
I'm in the middle of playing through the Rainbow Six 3 campaign mode, and what I've been dealing with is the same thing that I have seen on every other FPS:
I walk into a new room, and start getting shot at. Instead of running out, I continue to move forward to draw fire from as many enemies as I can. Yes I die, but now I know where everyone is.
Reload my last save, and this time I enter the room knowing where everyone is. I 'sneak' in, kill them, and move on.
I would say that this is 'smart gameplay'. It works, but it is also 'cheating'.
But that is the only way to do it, when they hide the enemies behind boxes, tables, etc, and they are set to ambush you as you walk by.
While I do LIKE this type of gameplay (problem solving really) it would be nice to have some randomness built in, to keep me honest.
No reason to lie.
If anyone wants to check out a great example of randomness, I highly recommend F-Zero X on the N64. The X Cup (which needs to be unlocked) generates random tracks providing a whole new experience every time you play. There are the occasional tracks with tight corners and no walls where everyone just flies of the edge and dies, but I see it all as part of the fun.
It was made by french Ubisoft developers under the Red Storm label.
The original games, Rainbow Six and Rainbow Six: Rogue Spear had a good deal of randomness. Contacts would move in patrol paths, starting at different positions each time you played, sometimes not appearing in the paths at all. Enemy positions on the pre-mission map were almost always approximate, you never knew if a terrorist would actually be at the indicated location. Each mission was satisfyingly unpredictable (to a reasonable degree), each time you played them.
The first two games required skill and adaptability, whereas R6 3 was reduced to a sort-of Counter-Strike "plus" to cash in on more casual gamers who weren't looking for the counter-terrorism simulation that characterized the originals. Very sad to see one of the most unique games butchered by attempts at garnering mass appeal.
I don't think that it follows that more randomness means more replayability. It can just highlight the meaninglessness of playing games. Ikaruga is almost totally deterministic with just a few enemies that swap around to keep you paying attention. The whole game is about 25 minutes from start to finish, yet the serious players have spent hundreds of hours on the game. That is some serious replayability, and it gains it through being not random.
Then again, on the other side, there's stuff like Diablo, Phantasy Star Online or Minesweeper where the random spin is pretty much the saviour of the game.
Another issue with random whatever (evel, monster placement, etc...) generation is that, most of the time, it sucks. No care or human ingenuity is used. For example, F-Zero X's random track generator creates tracks that aren't half as good as the 24 built in ones. All the randomly generated Doom level I've played from various programs can't even compare to maps which are made by anyone who knows roughly what they are doing. Again there are counter examples, like the levels in Worms which were randomly generated.
I think it all boils down with how the game needs the player to deal with possibilities. If there's something which needs to be unknown, or some unknown factor, what better way to set it up than have it picked out randomly?
I'm only trying to point out that it's a double edged sword, as the article seemed very pro-random. The dungeons in Daggerfall were just completely uninteresting, yet the author suggests this is down to a poor random generation algorithm? I don't think so, the dungeons were generally well constructed from a technical point of view. They were boring because it is just boring to wander randomly around a dungeon full of random, meaningless corridors and templated rooms, looking for a random item placed randomly somewhere in the dungeon, so you can get the item back to the random villager who gave you the random quest to do this. It just sort of hits home that maybe you're really wasting your time?
Trust me, I'm a doctor.
I don't think random level generation is needed. Just look at how popular multiplayer is - those people are playing on the same levels over and over again. It's the unexpected that keeps bringing them back. With human opponents, you never know when or where you're going to run into somebody, OR what they're going to do. You must constantly use your head to do well.
Random enemy placement (especially right behind the player :) ) may extend the life of a game by a bit. Also, it might be helpful to give more variety to the tactics that enemies use. Thus, the players won't know for sure that "okay, that brown guy is going to run at me for 3 seconds and then break left, so it's safe for me to take careful aim now."
All you really need is a little bit of a surprise here and there to keep the adrenaline flowing...
Worked for Rogue/NetHack/Moria/Angband/ToME for years
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
Anyway, I agree with one of the other posters: purely random levels just make the game meaningless. It is the same with soaps on TV (which I consider to be randomly generated for the purpose of this argument): I'd rather see a good, one-off story, then see the same elements repeated in different combinations again and again and again.
Randomness is great for games like FPSs, RTSs, and other games where things can soon get repetetive. That being said, I think if a whole bunch of games start coming out with "Random" modes, it will be the plot and story that suffer. For example, I can reply Final Fantasy 7 without getting tired of it. The story is so engaging that it gets me every time. For games like racing, though, where there isn't anything in the way of plot, randomness is an excellent feature. I think both avenues need to be explored.
Covert Action should be a case study of why random can be fun. Every mission, heck every BUILDING is completely random-generated, and it's a blast.
In Nippon Ichi's tactical RPG Disgaea, there's an item world; you "enter" an item and do battle on randomly generated maps. For every 10 levels you beat the item becomes stronger. It adds a lot of replay vale to the game and certain stages (Cave of Trials) require you level up your weapon.
Sometimes you do get a doofy level where you can't beat all the enemies or the exit panel is right next to the base panel (you can exit in one move), but overall it's always give you some way to get out of the level (defeating all the enemies or the exit panel).
Its really one of the big elements that make the game last as long as it does (80+ hours - I'm at 70 something and nowhere near unlocking all the stuff).
"There is no time, sir, at which ties do not matter," Jeeves, (Jeeves and the Impending Doom)
I don't think you can apply total randomness to FPS games, because level design is pretty difficult to do well. I guess with some effort, you could at least make some variation. I remember being impressed the first time I went back through some empty rooms in Dark Forces, and new stormtroopers showed up! Ah, memories.
All I want is X:Com. It had random encounters and map generation. It didn't even need a thick slowly progressing plot. You made it yourself, "Hey remember the time they invaded the base and we got them with the last gernade". The randomness was what made you play for hours. Even though the maps where layed out in tiles it still kept the creepiness because the aliens were always in different spots. Just rebuild X:Com using Front Mission 4 style giant robots (but a better customize interface) and some online play for good measure, then we'll have some fun. Oh, if you can't get X:Com to run on your computer try finding the port for the Playstation
Oh man! I've already got a lot of games that I'd like to play through once that I don't have time for. If they start making games more replayable then I'd never get anything done! :)
Considering how much idle time my job involves, having this has provided me with more than ample entertainment and sanity saving for it's price.
Having random maps certainly helped add another dimension to SimCity 2000.
The Xbox version of "Toejam and Earl" boasted completely randomly generated worlds. According to my friends that have played it, though, the levels aren't really all that different from the ones that were generated the time before. Heck, I've even heard someone say that the random levels took away variety from the game.
On the other hand, we can't have random levels that don't work. Putting a snowy mountain in the middle of a rainforest just won't work, and it's not fair to have random levels that are impossibly difficult (as mentioned in another post, F-Zero X has generated race tracks with incredibly sharp turns and no walls).
Still, randomness is appealing. I love puzzle games like Tetris, mainly because the experience is different every time. The basics are the same, but the actual challenge is never the same.
It's been said, but this would be great for some genres. There are too many shooters and strategy games for the PC. Find a way to develop random maps that are logical, challenging but not overwhelming, and fun and you've got a goldmine on your hands.
As far as I can tell, finding a good randomization system is the biggest hurdle. If we clear that, then we've just found a way to put level designers out of business. :)
Goo goo g'joob.
Randomly generated content is only as good as the generator. Some games spend lots of time making sure that the code that spits out random stuff is decent and the random content is good. Others just spit out completely random crap and it usually suffers for it.
So everytime someone says it either works or doesnt work in Game X, it always boils down to the quality of the random generator.
Idealy games should incorporate random elements within a compelling plot and good level design. In a FPS this might mean having a dozen different arrangemts of bad guy placement within a level. That combined with good AI, reacting to the player, would create game play that seemed to always be different but would still seem non random. This could even be taken a step farther by having predefined level styles which could be built and populated randomly (like a random style map in a RTS game). If done well enough this might be able to create playable (and enjoyable) multiplayer levels. Still, one of the most important elements of a good game is the plot. Game developers should not abandon good plots in favor of randomness hoping to make the game more replayable. What they need to do to really make game replayable is to add seemingly random elements within an excellent plot.
It randomises the levels and enemies... just need to patch your game (that you own): Dahrk Hax
I'm sure there may have been some predecessors, but SoF2 was one of the first mainstream FPS games to include random map generation right out of the box for both SP and MP. Now granted, these maps are heightmap generated terrain maps with random buildings scattered about, but they are still surprisingly fun. The other cool thing is that each map is generated off of a seed, so if you find a cool random map that works well you can note the seed and then utilize that exact same map in the future. Of course, you can also just have the game generate a completely different map each time as well.
There are even some servers such as Hexapalooza Jumbo CTF that run all random maps all the time. CTF being one of the most enjoyable game types to play on these random maps, it works very well. There are some downsides to the setup, primarily because the maps can get a little repetitive after a while, but it still is a good example of how random map generation can be integrated into a game style for which random map generation rarely works.
But I have to mention Raven Software's attempt at random generated first person shooter maps in SoF2 : While very far from perfect, and limited to outdoor maps : it is a very good, and inovative thing they did (which got very unrecognised, imho).
SOF2 = Soldier of Fortune 2 (for those who don't see this in the storm of abbreviations nowadays ;) )
Sadly, many of the sequels dropped the random maps, and were lousy. They just never seemed to figure out the correlation.
Phantasy Star Online's maps may seem random at first. Truth is: they are exactelly the same locations, with only three or four variations of gates and enemy placement for each level.
Circumcision is child abuse.
It's very hard to incorporate a story into a randomly generated world. Some games are built on story, such as most of the FFs. Others - FFCC, for instance - aren't, and wouldn't suffer much, if at all, from randomisation, but many people like games to have a good story, and would be alienated if all games were made wholly random.
So you'd need a generator that can handle certain conditions. For instance, a typical Zelda game, if it were to have randomised dungeons, would need to have the dungeon item, map, compass, boss key and boss room. You'd need to be able to get the item without items you don't yet have, but with the item you obtained last dungeon. The boss key would be inaccessible without the dungeon item. No room would be wholly inaccesible or pointless. There should be a shortcut to the boss from the dungeon entrance. A certain number of heart pieces or suchlike would be in the dungeon. The difficulty should remain basically the same.
There's another problem: memory. You can't randomly generate a dungeon every time you enter, it would break the continuity. So you'd need to store the dungeon on the memory card, and depending on the complexity that could be big.
And of course, don't randomise everything. Keep the world map the same and only randomise dungeons. Dungeons are the challenge, and should remain challenging every time. The world map is there simply to give you access to the dungeons.
That works for RPGs/Action-Adventures. FPS's would be a whole different matter. When do you randomise, and what? You could randomise the whole game when it starts and keep it like that all the way through, or every time you start a level make it different. You could keep the map the same and just change the location/quantity/quality of boxes, powerups and/or enemies. Which would be better depends on what makes the game fun. Metroid Prime, for instance, would really suffer if the world was different every time you starrted a new game, because the world is the game. Changing which enemies you fight each time you enter a room, however, would (IMO) make it more fun - to a certain extent. Obviously no war wasps in the Phendrana Drifts or anything along those lines. Jedi Outcast, on the other hand, is made what is is by your Jedi Powers and lightsaber duels, and randomising each level wouldn't be too bad.
I implemented a random terrain generator and a random house generator (3D), and made it a MOG. Plus some other sweet stuff like a cool AI system and lots of wild speculation. ;)
http://www.hut.fi/~vhelin/dippa.ps
(This could be related to Wolfram's lambda parameter in cellular automata research as well: a game that 'hovers on the edge of chaos' would seem to be more interesting than either one totally deterministic or totally random.)
Of course, it goes without saying that this sort of analog parameter would have to be designed into the game from the beginning. Obviously, it's just easier to declare a certain sub-set of the game objects to be 0 (totally random) and another sub-set to be 1 (fixed). That's precisely why randomness in games *isn't* that interesting: too much all or nothing.
DNA is a Turing machine. You, however, being dynamic and emergent, are not.
I loved F-Zero X's X Cup! I only wish there was the option to save those tracks when the random numbers stumble upon a design that's extra-good.
;^) Here's hoping some such craziness dons on the developers in time for TimeSplitters 3!
In Japan, if you didn't mind plunking down some cash on the ill-fated 64DD, you could get an F-Zero expansion disk that included a track editor. I still wish that had been released here in some way; I was disappointed that F-Zero GX had no such extra. Editors are another good way to boost replay value. Random maps have the advantage of surprising the player, but in TimeSplitters 2 for example, I can create my own deathmatch or capture the flag... er, bag... maps to swap or play with my buddies. Since I suck at the single-player game and can't unlock all the built-in maps, that's a pretty attractive feature. Now, if there was some ingenious algorighm for generating a random deathmatch map, that would be the best of both worlds! No more accusations from my buddies that I know where the armor is.
A few of the posts have pointed out that randomization doesn't work so well with certain genres or within certain game frameworks. Some games, after all, are built completely around the idea that it is the level design itself that provides the challenge.
But many old games had total randomization and did it well. I think a great example would be the Intellivision game Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. The entire world was totally randomized - right down to where the mountains were and where the rivers flowed.
I think a good strategy would be to add a randomization feature to most games. For example, how about after you beat a level in an FPS game, a "random" option is unlocked? Then next time you play, you can click this option to randomize item locations and enemy locations. And to level the playfield in a multiplayer match, perhaps play in a completely randomly generated arena?
Randomization works with any game, but some people will not enjoy it as much as others. So designers should consider ways to incorporate different levels of randomization. Another FPS example - a user who only wants little randomization could choose to randomize which objects are at which locations, but not change those locations. So let's say this means there is always an item located at the top of the stairs, you just don't know what it will be until you get there. Now with total randomization of item locations, you don't know if there will be on object waiting at the top of the stairs. Hell, to make it truly total randomization, the item could in fact be floating in the air 15 feet above the staircase - or even embedded inside the staircase. This is a little TOO random for me, but it certainly does enhance the challenge. Randomizing the locations of enemies and certain obstacle (such as drone guns) can be done in much the same way - you know there is an enemy in the next room, but which enemy? Or for that matter, how many?
It is fairly obvious how FPS and strategy titles can benefit from randomization. But how about other genres? How about replaying an RPG in which all the characters have been randomly regenerated? Or the world map has been scrambled, so you no longer know where anything is? (Much like the first time you played!) If the game experience is rigidly bolted to a series of pre-rendered cut-scenes, then you're kinda stuck here. But if not, then you have room to twist things up a bit.
Must... think up... something... clever!