Procedural Generation VS handcrafted Scenarios

CastleDan I doubt that you are the only one worried about this... there are many people on this forum who like to just read, and prefer stay out of the conversation... so I would guess there are others with your concerns. And I bet many of us have your misgivings about ProGen being used in this game... and I would rather talk about them, then have everyone act like those potential problems are not there.

I would think Mana and the dev team would hear out our concerns over this matter... Iga-sama has my trust, no doubt... but redundancy, generic floor designs, lackluster backgrounds and rooms are a deep concern for me. I don't think Iga-sama will let us down... but the those thoughts are still there.

I do get that. I'm saying personal touch is best always IMO. It's the focus of bringing it up in the interview that's a concern because it sounds like LESS personal touch. You can use procedurally generation to help fill out rooms but the over-reliance because the castle is so big kills the person flair of coming up with background designs yourself.  He himself says if they did it themselves it'd probably look more beautiful but it'd mean delays. 

I'm not concerned with the placement of chairs, I'm concerned that the structures within the background themselves will be procedurally generated. Actual background designs which I think deserve a personal touch. I could be wrong about that assumption, maybe it's just used for a bunch of chairs, and what food is put on tables and small items such as that but that's not how i was reading it. I read BACKGROUNDS.

So I want them to plot out, okay there should be a statue right here with this hanging from that, and maybe something like this in the sky here. Not, okay here's a bunch of statues in the system now let it put random statues in locations and mix them up. The personal touch makes a location. Am I completely reading this wrong?  That's what I got from him saying backgrounds. Is there a limit to what it's used for?

CastleDan the latest screen shots are amazing. Sure there is a lot of repetition there, but repetition is a huge deal in architecture. I really think there is nothing on worry about. Have you watched the video o posted about PG walls? Just skip to the end of it if you want, but it shows how to use your tools and make them intelligent in UE4.

I am indeed concerned with all of this. Procedural generation for some assets, backgrounds and hell, some[/i] enemy placements is fine, because if the scope of the game is THAT big, then you really need something like that to make it work.

But, I just hope they don't overuse this kind of technique, using it for level design and enemy placement for every corner of the castle.

Talking specifically about repetition and bland design choices, something that can happen both by Prodecural Generation and by human creation, i think all Igavanias had their share on this. Symphony of the Night and Harmony of Dissonance had two castles and the second castle was a modified copy of the first one. That idea was obviously made to extend the game's length on a lazy way. Good idea, creative idea, but we all know the main purpose was to make the game bigger with the less amount of resources.
From there on, each game had it's share or this, but just to give two examples here, i think two of the biggest offenders are Portrait of Ruin and Order of Ecclesia.

REPETITION ON PORTRAT OF RUIN

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City of Haze                                              13th Street         

For those who not played, in Portrait of Ruin the Castle has paintings. Magical portraits that when you enter, throws you on another dimension, at a separate map. The whole idea was neat, because they could create scenarios that wouldn't fit a castle (like a Pyramid on a desert), but what they did to make the game bigger? Create four main portraits scatered around the castle AND THEN create four MORE portraits that are just alternative versions of the first four, all in the same place, for you to beat and then reach the final bosses.


REPETITION ON ORDER OF ECCLESIA

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Order of Ecclesia had a bunch of scenarios outside the castle, and then the castle. The idea was also to make something different and diverse in look. They did it, but it also had copy and paste scenarios all over the place. You beat a bunch of scenarios and then you have more scenarios and some of them are copies one from the other.

CLOSING COMMENTS

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Those copies were made due to Procedural Generation? Overall Lazynes? Lack of resourcers and time? All those things at the same time? Hard to tell. But those games ended up being great games noneless.

I don't need to insist it when IGA literally makes that point for me with what he said. Granted he said it'd take loads longer too which is why my point was maybe the castle should have been a more modest size.

I'm well aware that you can use procedural elements to space things out for you and evenly put down statues but I feel like you're missing my point. That isn't my worry, my worry is they put statues of some sort into the system and then I'm gonna see variations of that statue in various areas in that location. When I rather them make a statue for this room and make a completely different one for a different room which gives it a true sense of personal touch. It's the overuse that I'm worried about because they're speaking out about the vast SCOPE of this game and has daunting it is, so whenever there's a game that's huge there's always a worry for overuse of a program to help get it done.

In other words, it's a completely valid concern.


Pure Miriam


Interesting post but you're looking at repetition on a broad scale. Yeah, the castle flipped upside was repetition but it provided a unique experience turning everything on it's head. What I'm talking about isn't the extra factor but on a room to room basis.

Take for instance Portrait of Ruin:


This location had bland hallway like the above, bland hallway, bland hallway that all looked the same some with water some without, and a unique room type that repeated over and over again. Most people are okay with that, me? I think it's lazy. Not only is the design boring, but it's really repetitive and makes it uninteresting to explore and then you start relying heavily on the gameplay to make the game interesting which wasn't the case for me in SOTN or Aria.

SOTN's underground caverns however keeped a repetitive LOOK to it but the layout and the unique rooms were in high force.


See the floor and how the geometry of it is never just flat and boring. They could have easily turned this into repetitive hallway after repetitive hallway. Instead you had









The variety of how rooms looked, how they were laid out, how they made you REMEMBER the different paths were astounding. Sure the background and coloring were the same but the layouts were UNIQUE and the things in the rooms had a real personal touch to them. That died a fiery death the longer Igavania's went on. This post has probably been my most effective way at showing why Sotn's castle is so well done. You can look at pictures and TELL where in the location it takes place BECAUSE of the unique rooms or unique moments. So the knights being drowned tell you it's to the area on the left instead of the right. If I showed you a pictures of Portrait's underground area you wouldn't be able to tell crap.

I think it is more of an issue of creating the assets by hand vs. having AI created assets. Once the assets are created, using procedural generation to place them/fill out a room is no big deal.

For example, a wall tile could be created by hand with dirt, texture, sheen, and cracks. Then the computer can populate an entire hallway with that tile. But, each tile would look exactly the same. Each crack would be in the exact same place on each tile. Alternatively, if the computer is given the details (crack, dirt, hole, bloodstain, etc) and then allowed to place them randomly within each tile, then populate the hallway; then you end up with more unique hallways and not just the same tile over and over.

Regardless of how you generate each tile, you need the computer to fill out corridors and such using the already-created assets or you end up with mountains of work just to create a single hallway.

I could be completely wrong, but that is how I see it happening.

EDIT: I can't read this topic without wanting to go back and play some of the old IGAvanias.  Especially with all the screenshots.  I'm looking at you SotN.

This game is Iga-sama's baby... I doubt he will let ProGen to completely take it over. I bet he has some awesome ideas for certain areas. And while ProGen works on most of the castle, Iga-sama and his team will work on certain parts of the castle by hand... as CastleDan pointed out the waterways were so unique and memorable even if many parts of SotN used ProGen as Galamoth has pointed out.

Again, the fear is there, but the point that Iga-sama is at the helm, in my opinion, makes this choice easier to take.

I know this is going to be a large castle, "Iga-sama's largest castle" but I doubt Iga-sama would have offered it without understanding the work that would have to go into it... I feel he would make sure his masterpiece of a castle was not a bland, cut and paste mess. but that is only my opinion lol.

I also am enjoying this thread... and yes Iga-sama was at the helm of those games but did he really have control over them?... I personally don't think he had as much control as those games as he does in Bloodstaind... In my opinion, konami had given up on "igavanias" and just wanted the product out. So Iga-sama worked with what he had, and I think they were good games... but as I said, this game is his baby, his masterpiece... I doubt he will give an inch when it comes to the integrity of this game. And I think that is why he hired on new people to work on this game that knows more about ProGen then his team does. I think it takes a lot to even admit to that...

And yeah I agree with you, RE1 & 2 were my favorite in the series... I didn't know why I did not like the others... I just knew they were boring, I guess that was why, the areas were really uninteresting and boring...