Discussion Primer: Imagination w/ Procedural Generation in Daggerfall, No Man's Sky, & Warframe
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 14 ก.ค. 2024
- I'd like to talk about more about procedural generation in later videos later regarding specific games, but I'd like to discus the broad, shallow strokes of Imagination here by doing a little set of mini-comparisons between Daggerfall, No Man's Sky, Starbound, and Warframe, with a little bit of Elder Scrolls 3 Morrowind to explain how Daggerfall just plain does things differently from later entries.
- เกม
![[TH] Esports World Cup : Point Rush Stage](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/eLU-jnYp3Zs/mqdefault.jpg)
We'll be talking about Procedural Generation more later in other videos, this video just contains a couple topics I wanted to discuss first. In addition I'd like to cover contemporary bias at some point.
Love these videos, keep up the good work haha
Great timing for this topic.
Also, loving the new hairstyle.
Whats your take on starfield?
@@KRG30001 zaric loves Bethesda games , he is going to try it out at least.
@@KRG30001 he said on Twitter that, at least as of the game play reveal a few months back, that he would maybe try it out but would probably wait for mods before really engaging with it at all. That said, who knows what happens when the game actually comes out.
A mix of procedural generation and handcrafted areas would be my ideal TES game.
I'd love to have a few detailed cities and questline dungeons in a large world created by algorithms. Procedural generation has come a long way. I'm sure that designers could find the right string of characters to make procedurally generated dungeons fun.
No, Miyazaki, I am not complimenting Bloodborne's chalice dungeons. No, Todd, I am not complimenting Skyrim's radiant quests.
Just remaster Daggerfall for PS4.
@@cwalser544 I don't think that remaster would sell enough to justify it. Most who've played Daggerfall, did so on PC. On top of that, it would be censored due to nudity (specifically because BGS dislikes nudity in TES). A remake might do well, but we know Bethesda isn't gonna.
Seems Starfield is aiming for that?
I thought of the same thing. I hope TES6 does have a handcrafted world designs where players could experience something in common like unique npcs, main cities related to important quests etc. On the other hand, the open world can be a mix of both where lesser villages and its misc quests are procedurally generated, and some landmarks/location areas are handcrafted for every players to feel they are playing the same game. This also opens the potential for a really big open world (maybe 4 times the scale of skyrim game map, just my opinion).
@@cwalser544 "for PS4" A) why THAT box over, you know, all the others and B) why that gen of that box?
No, I dont want you to actually answer KEK
This man is the unquestioned authority on all things Elder Scrolls
Its the suit
no he is not - but that has nothing to do with if he is nice to watch or whatever.
@@xBINARYGODx repent, infidel
BINARYGOD Bit shift out of here brah
wayward realms looks to be doing some really cool stuff with procedural generation.
Have they found some solid direction now ?
As someone said, a man can dream. i sincerely HOPE it will be more than good, hell , i'll settle whit "good"
@@SamahLama well theyve put out a preview vid of their procedural tech on their channel. Whether all they wish to implement makes it into game or not is yet to be seen.
Personally I doubt it will be that groundbreaking
It does not need to be. I like Skyrim but it has 500 citizens in the entire kingdom
In recent memory...Deep Rock Galactic has some pretty lovely procgen.
With modern hardware proc gen can be amazing.
Key word can
I remember playing Star Control 2 as a teenager, and seeing many more explorable star systems than you ever needed to, or even could, go to in a playthrough. They existed as options, and to make the sector feel more like a slice of the galaxy. The story points can guide you where the interesting stuff will be. But without those "unnecessary" spaces and systems, the world wouldn't feel the same. Remembering this has made me perplexed at some people griping about Starfield having too many promised planets. There may be things to be apprehensive about in a new BGS game, but at least to me, that's not one of them.
"They say every time someone mentions it someone re-installs it... is that true?"
"Yes my son, it is true. All of it."
I could listen to you talking about stuff i don't understand all day
Everytime you discuss or play daggerfall, makes me want to jump back into that world. These mods and unity have really been a game changer for it.
yes
If you go back I would advise to look at gog version. It comes ready for mods and has some of the more popular ones already in the files
I would also agree on using the GOG version of the game.
Please for the love of god do not use the GoG version.
@@mearl3977 no it has terrible dream mod adding Minecraft graphics just browse the Nexus for Azura's sake
Last time I played Daggerfall I used the new wilderness mods combined with the survival mod for eating, camping, and weather effects. I never used fast travel and it was one of the most epically immersive experiences I've ever had in a game.
I do hope one day that Unity Daggerfall gets a multilayer mod with servers where you could bump into other players in the vast open world.
With Wayward Realms coming, love the topic
Daggerfall Unity needs those voxel models the new Doom mod uses.
Caves of Qud does wilderness travel really well, I like that it alerts the player while they're traveling on the map if they find something of interest while also having clear locations that are always there.
Cliff Racers are FUN! 😊 World Building! 🌍 Continents! Races! Culture! Religion! Do-Dads! Cities! Towns! Hamlets! 🏠 Lore! History! Myths and Legends! 📚
I have suggested the modding of DFU to allow the insertion of all of Tamriel. I sat down and did the math. DFU would need to expand the addressable world space by 32x. This is not an exceedingly difficult technical acomplisment. However, Daggerfall has been rotated to accommodate the ease of addressing the worldspace of the Illiac Bay. In order to achieve pasting the existing content of Daggerfall into a fully relied worldspace one would need to translate the coordinates of a rotated Daggerfall onto non-rotated Tamriel. This, as you could imagine, could prove to be a challenge.
In any case, I would like to see a sort of what if scenario. What if Morrowind were an expansion of Daggerfall. So many things in Morrowind existed as a result of the framework Bethsoft was working in. Whole cities had to be moved and lore reworked to deal with the limitations of the framework. I would love to see a Morrowind as it might have been had Bethsoft still had Ted and Julian leading the development.
You could just have the entire world be rotated. lmao
@@kaitlynkitty1917 That of course would result in an even bigger world-space and a north that is not north
Always happy to see another upload from you!
Great to see you making videos again. I always get immersed in your topics
I feel like I got flashbanged @7:12.
Enjoying your daggerfall content. Never knew anything about daggerfall until about a week or two ago.
For me, Daggerfall is the definition of a million bowls of oatmeal problem. Infinite content to explore, but none of it is unique.
The way I view it is that the game is dnd based and is reliant on you using them as a canvas for your imagination, imaginig them as distinct places.
@johngreen9825 Counter point, I could just play d&d and actually have distinct places with unique plots and mechanics. Or a solo ttrpg if you can't/ don't want to find a group.
I really enjoy watching your videos. It is a great discussion on game design philosophy.
As a fan of Old School D&D (Moldvay BX) I find this information can sometimes be useful to consider outside of just video games. I have considered making procedural tiles for dungeons for example and this was some.good insight to consider.
I deeply enjoy daggerfall but I didn't know about these mods, I think I'll have to check them out. Thanks for bringing them to my attention.
You keep hammering home the bitter truths while so many commentators just gush aimlessly. You and PatricianTV are criminally underrated and just what 'the space' needs.
I'm just glad that not only do the tools now exist plus devs with the passion to put them to good use, as in the TES modding scene, but also that new players are still discovering DF/MW in their current mature state and loving them.
Genres and trends may come and go, but good design is forever, and that applies beyond video games as well.
Thank you Zaric 🙏🏻
Out of all the TES games.. with Daggerfall Unity, Daggerfall is my favorite too. Anyhow couldn't help but notice that larger inventory slots mod a couple of times. What is that mod's name?
Im glad bethesda might embrace procedural generation in starfield, I think procedurally generated landscape connecting handcrafted areas together is the way to go
*Game releases* copy/pasted dungeons on every planet.
I'm a huge fan of smaller, handcrafted worlds similar to Morrowind or Kenshi, I just don't think there's a substitute for thoughtful design across the board, and I think if you look at the best open worlds or areas, most people would agree. It's understandable though that the arms race of square footage in open world video games keeps them from doing this though, and I think a more natural approach is the correct answer. Most designers look at the game world as a map to be designed, but I don't know if any studios have procedurally generated a "natural" world, then built on top of that, the way civilization would naturally develop. I think in any creative field, constraints (an existing mountain or river in this context) bring out the best ideas in creators. Pulling ideas out of thin air is SO hard, but if you have an area that's randomly mountainous or aquatic, that serves as a sort of writing prompt for the things that populate it.
I think that's one of the main issues with Breath of The Wild, they spent so much time on the natural overworld that the shrines and towns became an afterthought. Breath of The Wild's wilderness is beautiful, but I don't think it's more beautiful than a really lucky generation in Minecraft. Those nooks and crannies are still there, and they might be in places that no one would ever think to place them.
Outer Wilds is a really good example of this concept. Your "overworld" is literally nothing, you fly around in a skybox until you run into something handcrafted, but no one would say flying around in outer space is boring, because the lack of designing silly little comet encounters or aliens to fight, you're constantly running into a landmass that was intentionally placed to break up the monotony.
Great video.
zaric did his hair for this video you know its gona be good
Hey Zaric. Do you have your old videos from Zhakaron Live? I loved going back from time to time to watch your Zelda NES play through and 8 hour drunk Tamriel Rebuilt play through/test lol. That was amazing. That channel had some awesome history. Anyway, keep rocking it dude. Cheers!
Damn,. I have so long since I last played Daggerfall Unity, so I was startled by your video. Camping, cooking and roads? Those are pretty sweet mods they added! Shame my mind is burned nowadays by getting into Dark Souls and trying silly randomizer mods :P
And yes you are right, I can very well get into the vastness even of the original Daggerfall, walking into the same repeating environment but feeling like it's a real world outside. I always loved procedural generation for that. But others can't, it's not their cup of cake.
Main problem with procgen worlds is how static they are. In Minecraft, for example, you can build all the golden penises you want, but the game will never acknowledge your hard work.
Hand crafted words are not immune to this of course, Skyrim dungeons often give off the same "proggen" feeling, even if they are not actually progcen.
are you a female? why do you need everything you do to be acknowledged. if you make a drawing do you need to show it to someone. couldn't you be content by yourself. anyways God watches all and he is pleased by your work, not the golden penises thought, that displeases him.
I believe procedural generation coupled with AI or rather machine learning should enable talented individuals, be it small teams or even single developers, to create incredible games in the not so distance future.
Late 2020s will be the beginning of that and it will be amazing.
It sucks that I can't seem to get past 2d models in a 3d space. Something about that always ruins my immersion completely.
There are mods to fix that by making trees, plants, placed objects, interiors of building and stuff all 3d it amazing especially the shops.
@@bnbnism Nice!
TLDR : Modding is pog.
I love Death Standing as a game and as a experience. Never once did I find it monotonous in the total 50 hours I played it.
Every Elder Scrolls I would come across such feelings, especially Arena.
I found it awful, repetitive, a narrative mess, and worst of all: boring. The overrated director is the main culprit, but I am under no illusion that the majority of players of his games will accept that as fact.
I'm not asking you to defend why you liked it, because I don't really care. I just wanted your comment to have a counterweight.
Just looked up ASCII. I had never heard this said aloud, so I thought you were talking about something else. I always read this acronym as ASC II, where II means 2. I literally searched "Asky art" because I didn't put the pronunciation and the actual acronym together.
I remember the first time I loaded up Daggerfall, I was like "THIS IS ULTIMA!" Great game.
Hey I'd like to know why ESO is an exception!
Beta actually means "feature complete".
Your facts about Alpha/Beta/RC/Full Release mean nothing compared to popular perception created by the long term and widespread misuse of terms by the games industry as a whole.
@@Zhakaron You're probably right, but I'm too old to stop fighting the good fight now.
I agree with you about Death Stranding. But to be fair, Hideo Kojima really wanted to make that game for a long time. For him, it wasn't a video game experience. It was a living experience. And an opportunity to make whatever he wanted. Kudos to him for being lucky enough to get that chance.
7:12 Yoooo 😱
Lucky star is his favorite anime 😍
I think the ideal way to use procedural generation is to create the "base" that can then be customized and "fixed" if something doesn't work out right. In other words, a starting point to create a large amount of content that can then be tweaked to make it feel "right" as needed. It would allow devs to create a huge world without requiring thousands of hours of work.
This video really made me want to get back into Daggerfall with some more mods. Do you have a video or anything where i can look at your modlist?
Things you think you know vs things you can prove matter, damn.
havent watched the whole video yet but i was wondering your thoughts on the wayward realms? im very skeptical but if they can pull off that ai dungeon master itll be very interesting
Saying that game developers just didn't intend for you to have fun sounds so pretentious and stretchy when we aren't talking about Pathologic
Yes, I agree. There was a large TH-camr who tried to say that about no man's sky, but we can clearly see from the developers fixing the game that the artistic feeling of isolation that he posed was the game's value, was not a value shared by the Developers. Nobody actually knows what's in the mind of the developers other than the developer, so the developer has to tell us.
Pathologic, if you continue through it far enough actually has a stage play where the developers take on the form of NPCs and you can talk to them. But outside of those moments, when discussing other games you really have to just listen to what the developers say in interviews, press releases, and social media.
Anything else is your subjective interpretation as a viewer of art instead of a creator of Art. While both are equally valid points of view, you can't speak for the artist.
@@Zhakaron the closest I've ever got to that feeling was experiencing Warframe as an uncanny killing machine of unclear origin, left to follow an antiquated code of honor against the last deranged remains of humanity in cold uncaring space, then coming back to find pet breeding, fishing, tribal communities, super special kid pilots and comic relief characters
Daggerfall is a very wide shallow mud puddle. In essence, for players lots of room to play in and have fun! For modders? Oooh hoooh hoooh, so much space to dig deeper and deeper.
I often see expressions like "a mile wide but an inch deep" thrown around regarding Daggerfall. But looking at later installments in the series I am honestly having a hard time seeing the depth added at the cost of width. Skyrim might be a foot wide and a foot deep if I am feel charitable.
For me, Daggerfall is the definition of quantity having a quality of its own.
Right, replacing Morrowind's Wiki dialogue with amateur hour written voiced dialogue with uncanny valley animations in Oblivion and Skyrim didn't actually add any depth. Don't get me wrong, I love all of the 3 games I just mentioned, but that's like the people who think original trilogy Star Wars is high art.
@@Zhakaron I assume that what is first of all referred to by these people is how Daggerfall is a huge world, but there is not really that much to do in it.
But is there really that much to do in Skyrim other than following pre-written quests? Sure, it looks and sounds prettier but what depth of content is there really to discover and explore? You have a few tedious and superficial crafting mechanics, a few mostly similar dungeons and then what?
It sure is not the RPG mechanics that has gotten deeper :D
nice vid
For experience, narrative, and exploration reasons, procedural generation should have enough assets that the player does not nauseatingly see the same dungeons. On a similar note, when I played daggerfall unity I maxed my level and every dungeon contained either daedra seducers/lords, or ancient and regular vampires. I feel you should go 30 hours without traversing the same or similar outdoor terrain and dungeons, provided it fits the worldbuilding. Main locations and characters should be hand-crafted.
One other simplicity in daggerfall was that races from other provinces never spawned randomly. If you were a nord, lady Brisienna was probably the only Nord you meet, dunmer it was morgiah, barenziah, helseth.
Wayward realms looks promising and I hope it makes the mark where other rpgs faltered.
your right, people want to create games but, they don't understand how hard it is to actually make them, is not just programing, its designing, writing, sound, and let's not even get into the legal side of it, i would love to make a Fable/TES game but, it would take too much time to first learn the proper skills and then actually make the game, now, i will say thing, todays video game companies, have put so much into Graphics that, it just kills the actual game, 90gb of just graphics and 10gbs of game.
Would it be a lot of work to make these available on a podcast site? I'd love to be able to listen at work. Compelling!
I feel like it's the same concept with these hero games ("Spider-Man", "Saints Row 4", "Prototype", "Infamous").
The movement and what not is so fun, that all the game needs is some generic stuff to do, so the player can put the movement to good use.
Like plastering hundrets of upgrade-orbs all over the city... and it doesn't feel like a chore to collect this stuff, since the gameplay is fun enough to allow these lazily implemented activities.
So, procedural generation is fine as long as the underlying gameplay loop is fun, and worlds should be populated and interesting to explore. I'm pretty tired at the moment, but I think that's the jist of it.
You forgot to remind me to like comment and subscribe. Instructions unclear. 11/10.
If others are talking about Wayward Realms I have to say the recent video where the devs went through the first dungeon in Daggerfall has made me very concerned about the developers. They don't seem to get Daggerfall at all. None of them took the time to make optimal characters. None of them understood that you can avoid or run away from the Imp. They played it like Skyrim basically. And that tells me they will design their game like Skyrim. Because they can't comprehend anything else.
???
This has to be the dumbest take I've ever heard.
Looking forward to zaric roasting and praising starfield at the same time, my favourite hypocrite of all time
He is a God among NPCs
Which he did.
Should i try Daggerfall Unity? I have been loosely following its development for several years now. I played original Daggerfall and i hated it.
Yes
people who complain about daggerfall towns looking alike should go on a road trip sometime
Yes, water is in fact wet.
Create an AI that can create procedural quest lines and encounters. Procedural lands are cool but nothing ever happens
...are....you...actually Giskard? Just with a thorough shaving before each recording?
It's him.
They never added procgen dungeons on the planets in No Man's Sky...
No Man's Sky has Proc Gen'd space dungeons, Starbound has Proc Gen'd ground dungeons.
@@Zhakaron I want them on planets so that there is stuff to do on the planets you see. It would make NMS so much more interesting.
9:25
11:50
13:19
World building and world designing have to go hand in hand. You can tell me that a certain city is the capital of a state, but then you better put more than 10 buildings and 35 NPCs into that fucking place.
I'm very much interested in AI generation.
That's distinctly separate from procedural generation.
Or even a combination of the two.
For example, procedurally generate pseudo random descriptions for NPCs. Then import the generic NPC sprite into an image to image AI, modified by the text description. Then upscaled with a super resolution AI.
As long as the image size is kept relatively small, this can be done in almost real time. Particularly on a game that's not pushing the video card very hard anyway.
You could procedurally generate quests and rumors and other such systems. Then stylize the text with an AI so it's more conversational. And then do text to speech. Then speech to style (accent transfer basically). Now you have a fully voiced game.
Etc.
This would probably only work on a game like Daggerfall, all that AI crunching is going to use a lot of compute.
I normally hate the concept of an online only single player game, but a server farm would be useful to share generated assets among separate players. A little bit like how Spore works.
Damn. My weakness. Oh no. How horrible. I just have to watch a talkie about my favorite artist tool.
Bad chroma key or "bad" haircut?🔥😎
Why not both? Why not Zoidberg?
@@Zhakaron 💪😎
If you think about it having a buggy game that is frustrating to play is just some game devs attempt at making a souls like game.
Monkakek
The combo of video essayists advocating for installing mods to fix bethesda games, yet in another video saying its sacrelage to mod fromsoft games to be easier/harder is hilarious
Yeah, I don't know who these essayist are I do rambling videos. So, I recommend a mod called Elden ring reforged which will make Elder ring either easier or harder depending on how you want it, it massively rebalances parts of the game and adds a whole ton of new features.
It works well with the Seamless Coop mod that takes you off Fromsofts servers and let's you play with friends in a coop session that doesn't end because you beat a boss or enter a dungeon.
Procedural generation looks great with modern games like No Mans sky and Starfield from what we have seen, but not back in 1996 when Daggerfall came out.
@@The8BitAvatar Indigo Gaming said that Daggerfall aimed for the stars and got 90 percent of the way, while Skyrim settled for the first floor and achieved it. Dragon age Origins or Witcher 3 beats Daggerfall any day of the week. Which rpg games do you think beats Daggerfall in terms of being more polished and having a better overall package?
Uuuh... First?
Good job
No 😈
First!!!!
Yeah Warframe is not an MMORPG. Idk why it's given that title, because you never need to play with any real players to progress and participate in end game content. You want a real MMORPG play EverQuest 1999.