Procedural Content Generation

[kaelisebonrai]

I have a suggestion, regarding content creation/age creation.

My suggestion is a procedural content program/script. Now, this would be mostly for the creation of meshes to import into say, blender, then pyprp (etc), and/or libplasma.

[This post is a bit of a disorganised mess, due to it being cobbled together from points from the original suggestion back when OSMOUL was first announced, read the original topic here: http://mystonline.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=16870 ]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Procedural_generation <-- this is a bit of a backgrounder on the subject.

http://www.introversion.co.uk/darwinia/ <-- This is Darwinia. The landscape is procedurally generated. It may not look like much, but, the graphics are like that, by design, not by lack of effort. (Its actually quite hard to do that kind of thing, I can assure you.)

The Procedurality Engine an open source offering, with a research paper on how it works, as well.
http://oddlabs.com/procedurality.php

http://sponeil.net/index.htm

http://www.procedural.com/ <-- example of city generation.

http://www.vterrain.org/Elevation/Artificial/

http://www.speedtree.com/ <-- used in The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, and games, etc since.

NOTE: I do not suggest we use these existing examples. They are merely there as examples of what can be created.

-In Canon-true writing, the writer could never be 100% sure if the age was right, until /after/ they linked into the Age.

-These would be *new* ages, written by explorers, so, no, they would not have several thousand years of history. That's a given,. and that's the same no matter what age you write, nor how you write them.

- They would not have Journeys, but, then, why would every user-made age have journeys? That would make no sense.

Anothing thing to note: you would still be able to alter the age in blender, for example. the model would be written, not unlike the speedtree system. so, later on, you could add buildings, etc. This would be much more canon-friendly, and IC-friendly than the current methodology of Age Writing. I don't for a moment suggest that the current method should be done away with.

Also, note, that there is Dwarf Fortress, while the graphics of the game itself are crude, the procedural content generates an entire world, along with *many* Z-Levels, including veins of rock, ores, etc, civilisations, animal populations, and even the worlds entire history up to a date... conflicts, great works of art, etc. Not very pretty on the eyes, but, man, the content is *vast*.

[Nadnerb]

All these procedural terrain generators and no links to Mojoworld? D:

Show Spoiler

http://www.pandromeda.com/
http://www.mojoworld.org/

Sure, it's a massively overpriced software package, but you can try the demo version for a more or less indefinite period of time, (everything except saving) and it does a good job of exposing what goes into procedural generation. I found them back when they were cooler, and more or less pioneering the field. It's somewhat the literal successor to Bryce, being made by at least some of the same people. They've kind of stagnated over time though. Though there's that Dmytry guy who created the volumetric rendering plugin for doing entirely accurate light propagation in clouds and stuff... not that that's really applicable to a real-time game.. but it's still awesome. >.>

Show Spoiler




I recommend reading https://www.internal.pandromeda.com/eng ... Notes.html
It's kind of funny how familiar it sounds when Musgrave describes his "Parametric Hyperspace".

If you get a big gnarly warning trying to follow that link, it's because the ssl certificate is expired... which means basically nothing, except that site hasn't been updated in years. You can safely ignore it.

Also, to make a point about linking, even "new" links made by writers would link to ages with thousands of years of history, due to the whole linking to existing but previously unlinked worlds thing.

[kaelisebonrai]

Thanks Nadnerb for the links, I hadn't heard of that one, yet. =)

also, RE: the age of, well, Ages..

I guess it would depend on if the age was populated, as to "history". If it was populated, I'd certainly agree, if it wasn't, well, its a bit like the story about the Tree and the Forest. But, what I was mostly getting at, was they wouldn't all have to have structures by default, on them. =) If they did, it wouldn't be a horrible break in the more canon-true (ish) nature of them to add them afterwards. Since (specifically) the D'ni rarely added structures via writing, though Atrus has been known to do so, on occasions.

[kaelisebonrai]

Sorry for the double post, but, found something new and interesting:

http://arnaud.ile.nc/sce/index.php <-- Suicidator City Generator (found via http://www.blendernation.com/suicidator ... -released/ )

[Chacal]

Fascinating.
You guys shot down what little productivity I had left.

even "new" links made by writers would link to ages with thousands of years of history

WOuld explorers get a message about expired certificates?