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[X3N]

So I was replaying Super Metroid again, and was thinking about procedurally generating a Metroidvania

http://www.squidi.net/three/entry.php?id=4

(and I would link but I don't remember your name / name of game.. a black/white SHMUP adventure with procedurally generated rooms. someone post a link so I can edit this line?)

Anyways, I'd like to discuss designing one of these, how you would do it, anything related to this idea.

Some things I've thought of:

-Generating a "series" of rooms with progressing difficulty. Example: The maze generator wants to place a missile power up in the second world. Variables dictate this should be a series of 3-6 rooms from a main corridor or "easy" (difficulty) branch off (the side rooms) so it starts building a 3-6 room series from one of these, randomly selected. The series grows randomly in whatever directions it can (it might go right, right, down, right, up for example). At the end is a missile power up.
-Shortcuts: I'm not sure about the logic for choosing where these go, but something like a 10 missile door for a shortcut between areas (maybe the worlds should be subdivided into sectors, and these sectors are linked via shortcuts?). So if you have 10 missiles, you can blast your way through the shortcut, otherwise you take the normal route.
-Puzzle generation: see the squiddi link above, but this would be more complicated. Example: From the start, generate mazes to reach 2 PowerUps, A and B. Generate 2 series that requires its related powerup to advance eg you need 5 missiles to get to a missile increase. The second series is longer than the first, and optionally hidden with a "secret"
-Secrets: Hidden ceiling switch that must be shot, hidden floor/wall that needs to be bombed, kill XX enemies to open secret door.
-More on puzzle generation: route to a new sector (where Items C,D,E and F are located) requires Boss1Killed. To reach Boss1, must go through a 10 series room of increasing enemy difficulty that ends with a puzzle room requiring PowerUp A and B to pass (like morphball + bombs).
-Recharge points: if this is a roguelike, then saved games are for bleeders . Place 2 1 time use recharge points in the sector, both covered by a "secret", a series 5-10 long, with 1-2 secrets and a PowerUp A or B puzzle in one of the later halves of the room.
-Puzzle: puzzles can be logic stuff, or just tricky platforming eg a missile door that's covered by a buncha flying enemies, or the use of an item (grappling hook required). Puzzles rated by difficulty (platform design), and difficulty can be added by upgrading the enemies, adding more enemies, or adding an environment obstacle
-Environment: Timed lava rising, falling spikes, endless spawning of enemies who fly at you from unkillable spawn points.
-Enemies: enemy generation could be set up so they're weak vs certain power-ups (or nearly impossible to pass without eg. resistance to normal missiles but not super missiles). Further in the game, enemy difficulty goes up (based on what items/powerups the game thinks you should have gotten by then).

Er, that's my 2c. Discuss? 

[Inanimate]

We've had this conversation. I don't remember where though.

[anosou]

Somehow I think the flow might be disrupted if you don't have an endless variation of different "levels" of rooms. Part of Metroidvania-games charm is how they're incredibly streamlined in difficulty and level design. While most of your points sound very interesting it'd take a lot of work to make the "rooms" work as a procedural element. And, in my opinion, then you might as well just make really good levels and skip the procedural.

Still, I would love to see this in action since I bet it could be tweaked to perfection as everything else.

[SirNiko]

A procedural Metroidvania is certainly possible. The article linked in the opening post does admit it is starting with the very basics: designing regions that are entirely locked off by a single chokepoint.

The biggest problem with procedurally designed games is that they lack the charm of intelligently designed regions. Would Super Metroid have been as fun if you didn't have that section of Norfair with the rising acid? Would Symphony of the Night have been as cool if it didn't have the giant waterfall in the caves? I'm not sure it would have. That's not to say procedurally generated games are bad, they're just always going to be stuck at a level below that of non-procedural games.

Also, obligatory link to Slashie's randomly generated Metroid Rogue-like.

http://slashie.net/page.php?24

-SirNiko

[Tanner]

Gregory Weir is actually working on one right now.

[X3N]

A procedural Metroidvania is certainly possible. The article linked in the opening post does admit it is starting with the very basics: designing regions that are entirely locked off by a single chokepoint.

The biggest problem with procedurally designed games is that they lack the charm of intelligently designed regions. Would Super Metroid have been as fun if you didn't have that section of Norfair with the rising acid? Would Symphony of the Night have been as cool if it didn't have the giant waterfall in the caves? I'm not sure it would have. That's not to say procedurally generated games are bad, they're just always going to be stuck at a level below that of non-procedural games.

Also, obligatory link to Slashie's randomly generated Metroid Rogue-like.

http://slashie.net/page.php?24

-SirNiko

Oh, right. I played that a while back, it's cool.
I'm talking about Spelunky style though. Spelunky meets Zelda/Metroid or whatever.

Regarding waterfalls in caves and rising lava: why not have these randomly set? Region 4 is a Cave and the Cave region will always have one big puzzle room with a waterfall.. Lava Region will have 2 rising-lava rooms. Ambitious, but I think it could work.

Re: TannerP:
http://ludusnovus.net/2009/10/12/intruders-detected-in-the-computer-core/
Says early 2010! Hope he gets it done

[anosou]

A procedural Metroidvania is certainly possible. The article linked in the opening post does admit it is starting with the very basics: designing regions that are entirely locked off by a single chokepoint.

The biggest problem with procedurally designed games is that they lack the charm of intelligently designed regions. Would Super Metroid have been as fun if you didn't have that section of Norfair with the rising acid? Would Symphony of the Night have been as cool if it didn't have the giant waterfall in the caves? I'm not sure it would have. That's not to say procedurally generated games are bad, they're just always going to be stuck at a level below that of non-procedural games.

Also, obligatory link to Slashie's randomly generated Metroid Rogue-like.

http://slashie.net/page.php?24

-SirNiko

Yeah, don't get me wrong, it's certainly possible. I just think it might end up being worse (even though it's novel) than if you made a metroidvania that was NOT procedural.

[X3N]

Very possible. This is the kind of thing I'd like to work on once I've got the  to spare iterating on this, with enough work it could be amazing  . ..but maybe making a regular metroidvania would be a better first step 

[s0]

My game 444, which is kinda a Zelda/Metroid/Shmup mashup, does a few small "procedural" things. I have multiple "versions" of several rooms that get randomly chosen when you start a new game, so the dungeon will be slightly different on each playthrough. The enemies in some rooms are randomized too.
[/shameless self promotion]

Anyway, I don't have a lot of technical knowledge on this stuff, but I'd say if people manage to write algorithms to generate something as intricate as a good roguelike dungeon or a Dwarf Fortress world, why shouldn't a Metroidvania map be possible? I know about Gregory Weir's game but I haven't heard anything about it since it was announced a few months ago, I also know about Slashie's MetroidRL but I have yet to play it.

[William Broom]

Regarding waterfalls in caves and rising lava: why not have these randomly set? Region 4 is a Cave and the Cave region will always have one big puzzle room with a waterfall.. Lava Region will have 2 rising-lava rooms. Ambitious, but I think it could work.

I think the problem with this is that once you have large set pieces like that, it detracts from the feeling of being randomly generated. Although the game is somewhat different each time, you know that in the cave level you will always find a waterfall, and that reduces the suspense.

I'm not trying to poo-poo the whole idea, just pointing out a possible flaw with this part.

[st33d]

Isn't metroidvania side on? Aren't Metroid and Castlevania 2D platformers at their core.

The choice of side on or 2D is a massive design consideration, especially in the context of procedural generation.

[SirNiko]

Yoda Stories and Indy's Desktop Adventures sort of worked just like this: each game started you with a single item, and you ran around a randomly generated overworld hunting for the other items. The game just knew to create the puzzles and rewards in such a way that you could always reach the next puzzle, and that all the puzzles had to be solved to beat the game. If you just changed the game into a side-scroller and made the items into weapon power-ups, you'd have a metroidvania.

I don't think 2-d or 3-d really changes the basic logic for the procedural generation.

-SirNiko

[X3N]

My game 444, which is kinda a Zelda/Metroid/Shmup mashup, does a few small "procedural" things. I have multiple "versions" of several rooms that get randomly chosen when you start a new game, so the dungeon will be slightly different on each playthrough. The enemies in some rooms are randomized too.
[/shameless self promotion]
I played that! It's cool.

Anyway, I don't have a lot of technical knowledge on this stuff, but I'd say if people manage to write algorithms to generate something as intricate as a good roguelike dungeon or a Dwarf Fortress world, why shouldn't a Metroidvania map be possible? I know about Gregory Weir's game but I haven't heard anything about it since it was announced a few months ago, I also know about Slashie's MetroidRL but I have yet to play it.

Yeah, I think the toughest thing would be making sure you don't run out of room, but I guess you could spawn new "series" from any where if the main hallway's full (because on all its sides are other rooms).

Yoda Stories and Indy's Desktop Adventures sort of worked just like this: each game started you with a single item, and you ran around a randomly generated overworld hunting for the other items. The game just knew to create the puzzles and rewards in such a way that you could always reach the next puzzle, and that all the puzzles had to be solved to beat the game. If you just changed the game into a side-scroller and made the items into weapon power-ups, you'd have a metroidvania.

Crap, I forgot about Yoda Stories and IDA! Those were zelda..rogues? I don't remember specific rooms being randomized but it did have the map layout and puzzle requirements randomized. So.. take that meets Spelunky.

I don't think 2-d or 3-d really changes the basic logic for the procedural generation.
-SirNiko

Depends: if you've got walljumping or other cool movement tricks, it might be inadvertently easy to jump past all the obstacles.. or snag a spare bit of geometry on a wall and reach ground, allowing you to jump again. I think it wouldn't change the basic logic, but it would require more polish / testing.

[Tifu]

I thought of making such a thing once, I got as far as a simple map generating test that created a map much like you describe - branching corridors with prizes at the end to aid progress to new areas, then I put the idea on hold until I can devote more time to it. (it was just a map, no actual platform areas were generated or anything. It was really early stuff)

One idea I had was that at the start of each game, you would enter some kind of code (your name, the planet's name, something) and the map generator would use that code as the random seed. The idea behind that being that people can effectively share levels because each code should (I think anyway?) generate the same world for each person with the same code. I think worms used a system like this to create levels, although much simpler I think the principle can be applied.

[SirNiko]

Depends: if you've got walljumping or other cool movement tricks, it might be inadvertently easy to jump past all the obstacles.. or snag a spare bit of geometry on a wall and reach ground, allowing you to jump again. I think it wouldn't change the basic logic, but it would require more polish / testing.

In Super Metroid, you could already use the walljump to sequence break the game pretty brutally. Technically speaking, a TRUE metroidvania would have to have opportunities for sequence breaking. Metroid Zero Mission on the GBA even went so far as to add opportunities for sequence breaking, and a special ending for breaking the game and getting a really low item collection score.

Do people consider Blaster Master a Metroidvania? The basic gameplay was there: each boss drops an item you need to reach the next world. A procedurally generated version of Blaster Master would probably be pretty easy to make.

-SirNiko

[X3N]

Depends: if you've got walljumping or other cool movement tricks, it might be inadvertently easy to jump past all the obstacles.. or snag a spare bit of geometry on a wall and reach ground, allowing you to jump again. I think it wouldn't change the basic logic, but it would require more polish / testing.

In Super Metroid, you could already use the walljump to sequence break the game pretty brutally. Technically speaking, a TRUE metroidvania would have to have opportunities for sequence breaking. Metroid Zero Mission on the GBA even went so far as to add opportunities for sequence breaking, and a special ending for breaking the game and getting a really low item collection score.

Do people consider Blaster Master a Metroidvania? The basic gameplay was there: each boss drops an item you need to reach the next world. A procedurally generated version of Blaster Master would probably be pretty easy to make.

-SirNiko

I should play SuperMetroid Zero again.

That's true.. and yeah, sequence breaking is awesome - or at least the possibility for multiple roads leading the same way (like the scattering of missiles in Super Metroid.. not the same as being able to say, get different items in the first Zelda but yeah).

When Metroid Prime was re-released, they took OUT the sequence breaks  
..I think it's bad if you can do ridiculous skips, though. Like maxing out speech and stealth and getting the Power Armor in Fallout 2 .. then massacring the rest of the game world getting the items you need to win. Some kind of checks and balances would be needed.

EDIT: I haven't played Blaster Master. Looking up YT

[SirNiko]

Blaster Master is an NES game. There are sequels on the original Game Boy, Genesis and PS1, but those games are not the same. You want the NES version of Blaster Master.

-SirNiko

[Akari]

Speaking of Metroidvanias and sequence breaking, some of you might know of a game called Bunny Must Die / Chelsea and the 7 Devils. I managed to sequence break the game so that I skipped the first boss and first item (dash boots) completely and played as far as you could get. It breathed some fresh challenge into the game since the dash boots are a pretty vital item in some areas of the game. The new solutions to these places usually involved very creative walljumping. Unfortunately you can't beat the game without beating the first boss since one door won't disappear without doing so and if that door isn't gone you can't enter the final boss area (you can actually get to the entrance, but like I said, it's closed).

Here's a pretty screenshot for those who have played it:



So the moral of the post is that sequence breaking in Metroidvanias is awesome, especially if you've 100%'d the game before doing a sequence break run

[gimymblert]

Google ashmore thesis 

[X3N]

Google ashmore thesis 

This?
http://www.emoware.org/evolutionary_art.asp