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[vdgmprgrmr]

As a PG fetishist, I salute you, and... other things.

You did the cool land generator and the cave generator and now you say you're going to try and randomly generate freakin' NPC dialog?

I love you. I love you. I love you.

Next is the thing that I've always contemplated; randomly generated story-lines.

[Kneecaps]

Next is the thing that I've always contemplated; randomly generated story-lines.

Any genre in particular that you were thinking about?  And would the story be explained through text/dialogue or in-game actions?

I want something to waste time on.

[vdgmprgrmr]

The randomly generated plot would be played through, not simply read. A preferred genre would be medieval fantasy (low-magic, if it matters).

If someone could make a random-world-generator, then make a system to generate story-lines in the world randomly, it would be totally awesome. So you could play through a huge story in the world, then start a new huge story in the same world, or just play another one in a totally different world.

I figure it would basically make a big map, store a goal in the form of action-object-location (So, destroy-ankh-caves, deliver-letter-city, etc.) and randomly choose two locations in the map, then draw a path between the two points. Each point would be assigned a value. Then it would go through each point, and use the value as the chance for a plot-twist to be added. The plot-twist would basically be the game choosing from a list: betrayal, reveal, change-of-plans, etc. So if originally you have quest:kill-king-dwarfcity, path:city1-forest-mountain-road-city2-cave-dwarfcity, the game might select the road point to add a change-of-plans, which basically moves the end point. So the change-of-plans would cause the dwarven king to suddenly move to city4, meaning you have to reroute, so the path would change to city1-forest-mountain-road-backtomountain-desert-city3-forest2-city4. After that, no more changes-of-plans could happen, so it would continue through there and select some points (or not) to add a betrayal (one of the factions in the world suddenly has their disposition meter changed radically) or a reveal (turns out the dwarven king is actually your father).

So, we could have:

quest:find-powerstone-deathcaves
path:city1-forest-road-city2(change-of-plans:powerstone was moved to icemountain)-road2-city3(betrayal:the king who sent you on the quest suddenly reveals his intent to use the powerstone to take over the world instead of destroying it, he now becomes the main villain)-mountain-cave-icemountain-endfight

Every time I think of this it sounds good in my head, but I never actually try it.

[Hideous]

If someone could make a random-world-generator, then make a system to generate story-lines in the world randomly, it would be totally awesome. So you could play through a huge story in the world, then start a new huge story in the same world, or just play another one in a totally different world.

Dwarf Fortress.

[Business Bear]

This tutorial was very interesting and useful to me.  It's got me excited about making some sort of PG game down the road.

[JasonPickering]

going on the randomly generated story route a neat addition would be adding a love interest,( nothing major think a simple Harvest moon style) once you complete your quest the world jumps ahead 25 years and you are the off-spring of the original hero, and the girl that you chose. (each lady can be given random stats, but they are kind of obvious, the chick who loves books has high intelligence and then the stats are randomly chosen from father and mother.) you get a new story, but feel like your past exploits have helped to shape this world somehow.

also a neat thing would be allow them to chose whether their character is male or female at first, but your child is randomly chosen, imagine if you are a fierce knight, 25 years later you are stabbed by an evil knight and your daughter goes off to avenge you. plus the knight stole that really bad ass sword you spent the whole last game upgrading.

there is a terrible danger in this though cause it would be possible to get the worst stats from both parents making you a bumbling clumsy idiot.

[Lynx]

there is a terrible danger in this though cause it would be possible to get the worst stats from both parents making you a bumbling clumsy idiot.

Just avoid traits that are flatly positive or negative; instead, make both ends of the scale be useful, and the center be balanced.  The number of points you then choose to allocate to the trait would determine the power and importance of that attribute.

I would allow the player to choose which traits to inherit from which parent though.

[SaintXi]

Cool looking caves, very natural effect.

I have always found procedurals much more fun to make than to play. Players tend to grok the 'ingredients' very quickly then the endless creation spreads the actual creative content thinner and thinner over more area.

The early Elder Scrolls used loads of procedurals for town and battle creation - but the appeal came from the hard work designing the art and enemies. Later games like Morrowind reserve procedurals for the contents of chests - but even then each item is carefully designed first.

I've made entire procedural continents complete with cities and villages - but then had more fun playing tiny hand crafted caves. I guess it comes down to how much content your game has on top of the map designs

[TOM SENNETT]

Great article Chevy.

I hacked together a procedurally generated terrain system for RunMan's Monster Fracas back in the day without really realizing what I was doing. I just wanted to give the game some variety.

For anyone interested in this stuff, definitely give it a shot. It's surprisingly simple if you start basic and work in more and more detail. It's also really rewarding when you can get the computer to design levels for you!

[Epitaph64]

Ah yeah, I also have wrote a VERY simple terrain generator in Java using basic recursion.

Still might get back to fooling around with it one of these days.

Alright I did add a little more to it for fun: http://validopinion.wordpress.com/2009/05/27/terrain-generator-part-2/ :D

[Glaiel-Gamer]

Isn't that method similar to doing, generate grayscale perlin noise, then any pixel over 50% gray = land and any under 50% = water?

[Fifth]

Heh, Perlin noise is fun.

I'm glad this topic resurfaced, though.  I love that cave method you made, ChevyRay.  I tried re-creating it (for a platformer, which is why I made it carve out passages 3 tiles high), but I was doing so from memory and didn't quite remember how it went.  The result is a bit different, but I still like the idea behind the method.

[Fifth]

Okay, I gave it a slight inclination to spin sounter-clockwise around the center.  Is it too obvious?

[William Laub]

I originally tried to add crawling, but forcing taller passages is probably much easier to implement and much more fun to play.

[ChevyRay]

Okay, I gave it a slight inclination to spin sounter-clockwise around the center.  Is it too obvious?

What I would do is something like classifying the different formulae for each of the significantly different cave results, then randomly picking between these classifications when generating the dungeons. You can have things like "small spiral", "big spiral", "large passages", or "narrow passages", etc. etc. etc. for as much as you want. Based on how far the player is in the game, or what type of dungeon it is, you might want to exclude some of these choices, or add others in. This way, it won't be too obvious because every cave generated isn't generated in quite the same manner, and even repeated combinations of certain classifications will result in such significantly different caves that it can hardly matter.

Looking great, though, Fifth! I'm glad you like the method, as I sort of stumbled upon it accidentally. It's odd how actually "digging" the trail with a programmed mole has such neat, natural-looking results. I like that it can be manipulated quite easily to change the size of the cave, as well as make it more open/narrow, etc. If you wanted more round-ish caves, though, it's not the best solution.

I'm assuming the number at the top-right is the amount of floor tiles?

Anyhow, how long did those two caves take to generate? Is your adaptation pretty much always instant, or is there a bit of a wait?