Video Games

No Man’s Sky: Procedural Gaming and Procedural Materials

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com, www.SeventhSanctum.com, and Steve’s Tumblr)

As I wait for No Man’s Sky (if I disappear for a week in June, you know why), I’ve been analyzing the game, what it means, and what it tells us about procedural entertainment. Today I’d like to focus on crafting.

I love crafting. I enjoyed the Atelier series of games, finding new alchemical potions. I love Starbound‘s crafting (OK, maybe I’ll vanish in July too). You can guess that Minecraft was a revelation. This all goes back to Demon’s Winter, a vastly underrated DOS game that let you build magic items.

With No Man’s Sky, the huge emphasis on crafting has me intrigued. The thrill of finding elements, the joy of a discovered blueprint, the fun of creating the right components. I love the challenge of building the ideal loadout, and NMS is going to give me that and all of the exploration and resource collecting. I’m looking forward to it.

I will be the guy staying on one crap planet for hours because of a wealth of ruins filled with schematics. Trust me.

No Man’s Sky provides a mixture of real and made-up elements, a nice nod to both recognizability and to the proper sci-fi feel. But as I’ve watched the game, I’ve come to realize there’s another, missed opportunity that other games should take up.

Procedural elements.

Imagine a game like NMS (or NMS II, which again I feel is possible) that has procedural elements. The joy of discovery is not just felt on finding a new world or a new blueprint, a strange crystal or interesting rock formation could hold an element no one else has seen. There could be elements even the creators hadn’t foreseen, out there, lurking.

Sci-Fi and fantasy is often about strange and unusual materials. Let’s see more of that in games.

Of course to make them useful and understandable, procedural elements would need to be handled in certain ways. here’s my thoughts on it:

Where They Fit

Procedural elements would have to work into an existing crafting structure. The elements have to have some recognizable use despite their procedural nature. This would likely mean:

  • The crafting structure recognizes general classes of elements (builds weapons, catalyst, etc) and procedural elements fit a general class but have unique cases. “Iron” is the same all over, but that procedural deposit of “Dekelite” has unique traits, thought both can be used to build weapons.
  • Thecrafting structure recognizes specific elements, and procedural elements can “substitute” for regular ones and bring certain benefits. Thus “Chromatic Polytanium” may substitute for “Copper,” but any scanning device built with it has extra bonuses.
  • Items that are used to power/supply other items may provide unique bonuses. A unique element that provides energy may, perhaps, deliver double the fuel value of a common one.

Unique Traits

It’d be pretty easy to make procedural elements that seem very samey, so work would have to be done to vary them. The need for variance would depend on how often they’d be encountered, of course (more on that later). But traits may vary along such areas as:

  • Specific use.
  • Elements they substitute/are used for.
  • Bonuses and combinations of bonuses.
  • Disadvantages and tradeoffs.
  • Additional effects (perhaps if you make a potion with this element it always confers invisibility)
  • Physical traits (even different colors or weights).

A game that uses procedural elements should have enough variances that they’re actually interesting, unique, ad surprising. Otherwise it might not be worth implementing.

But done right it could be amazing. Imagine traipsing through a fantasy forest to discover a rare gem deposit whose naturally holy traits repel demons and confer charisma. Imagine exploring a distant world to find a fuel source that boosts your hyperdrive beyond capacity – but will wear down your spaceship.  Each finding is something unique, wondrous.

When You Can, Add Story

I’ve written about the need for procedural games to have pproceduralhistory. Same goes for procedural elements – I can’t say it’s required, but having “more” to the elements than a name and trait may be neat.

Maybe a procedural element in a fantasy game exists because a certain area is irradiated with magic. A procedural element in a SF game may have unusual energy properties because it was formed on a planet near the sun. Add something tomake the elements meaningful.

Or at least give us some flavor text for fun. Something to help us build our own story.

Oh and make sure the names are appropriate. I’d much rather find Chromatic Steel with it’s ability to make swords tht dazzle with rainbow light than a similar element called Furbonanium. Only use nonsense if it fits.

Don’t Overdo it

Finally, unless procedural elements are a theme of the game (and it may be), don’t overdo them. If you want these elements to stand out, then they have to stand out.

In any game of reasonable gameplay (20-40 hours) odds should be that only 1 or 2 procedural elements are found unless that’s a core part of the game. An element like this should be fascinating, amazng, perhaps game-changing – and overdoing it reduces the wonder.

That moment you find that rare deposit should be one you remember for the rest of the game.

So that’s my take on where NMS’ offspring should go – and a lesson we can learn from the current development of NMS. If a game focuses on the wonder of discovery and crafting, why not surprise your audience with procedural elements. Give people that unique experience that is personal – and perhaps theirs and theirs alone.

 

– Steve

No Man’s Sky: My Concerns

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com, www.SeventhSanctum.com, and Steve’s Tumblr)

With No Man’s Sky (NMS), the giant procedural space game coming out, I am gladly analyzing as A) I game, and B) I love procedural generation. So let’s turn back all my speculation on what could be and focus on what could go wrong.

As much as I am enthused about it, I can see areas where the game could have problems. I’m going to explore these areas, so we can review how right/wrong I was – which should be useful to measure both my predictive abilities and how the NMS team works!

Now to make this more useful, I’m going to rank the chances these things could go wrong as Red (at least 50% chance), Yellow (50-25%) and Green (under 25%).  These are not necessary interest-killers or will make it a bad game – but it would be a problem for enjoying it and experiencing the game.

Now let me get predicting:

High-pressure Survival Grind (Red): NMS is a survival game, but my concern is that the game is going to mix high-pressure survival with tedious grind – you’ll be on the edge of your seat all the time, but the edge is going to feel the same and never end. That’ll get both stressful and boring, and that would be an interest-killer.

Hopscotch (Red): Planets may be procedural and bursting with detail, but I’m also concerned that planets could be clusters of neat stuff separated by not so neat. This means hat exploring a planet is really a game of scanning-and-flying hopscotch that will also turn into a kind of grind. My concern is that this would not be optional but required to really experience the game.

Pacing (Red): You start out with little equipment on a distant world, have to survive, and eventually build your technology and resources.  Sounds standard, but unless the game is carefully designed, you could experience highly erratic pacing – most likely a slow start but a surprisingly fast end if you max out equipment (see below).  I also see potential pacing issues in different worlds and goals making it extremely hard to predict what one has to do to achieve a goal – because of the procedural generation.

Every Planet Different – And The Same (Yellow): I’m pretty confident the planets themselves will vary interesting, but not quite confident every planet will be different enough to warrant interest in exploring it a lot. I could be wrong (which I why this is yellow), and the NMS team seems to want to avoid this, but I can’t shake the concern. It seems like there’s a lot of impressive math, but what I’ve seen suggests some relatively standardized environments and all planets are single-environment. That can get boring – it’ll be new then quickly seem the same.

Stretches Of Boredom (Yellow): I don’t mind a bit of boredom or peace. But one of my concerns about NMS is that it’ll have uncontrollable stretches of boredom, stuck on dull worlds and sectors of space.  Good visuals and environments will alleviate or eliminate this (yes, you spent 30 minutes looking for a mineral but it looks awesome).

Topped Off (Yellow): There’s supposed to be all sorts of ships and blueprints to find, but I’d be concerned the game could have some people max out their equipment and the like too early – loosing challenge and initiative. It’s procedural, so it may be hard to put pacing into the game.  This is part of my larger concern about Pacing (above).

The Hunt (Yellow): Certain items, equipment, minerals may be vital for parts of the game, for equipment – but for some players they may be out of reach (again, due to procedural generation). If it’s not something people can find/buy/substitute for in a reasonable amount of time the game may be frustrating.

Same Old Equipment (Yellow): We get various ships, suits, and Omnitools, but from what I see they’re mostly about premade traits and various plugin spaces. Not sure they’re going to be that interesting after awhile.  Are you going to go that far to get an Omnitool that moves a plugin space to one grid cell further rightward?

It Doesn’t Hold Together (Green): Though I trust Hello Games on the Lore, I’m concerned that it won’t be experienced enough, in enough context, to keep interest. The game may not need a story, but it’s sense of experience requires Lore.  The whole thing could not cohere, have no sense of “there.”

Different, But Not Different Enough (Green): I’m mostly confident Hello Games can deliver varied worlds – but not entirely convinced it’ll be different enough for a whole game.  I’m concerned that past a certain point – say about 70% of the way – things will start looking too much alike.  I’m aware we’ve only seen a limited subset of worlds, but I’m not totally convinced.  Yzheleuz and Phlek do give me some hope.  This is one of my lesser concerns, but if planets aren’t different enough from each other and individual planets are large stretch of “same” (above) it’d get boring fast.

So there’s my concerns, roughly boiling down to:

  • Most concerned about serious pacing/challenge issues
  • Mildly concerned about equipment, resources, and variance on a planet.
  • Slightly concerned about lore coherence and worlds varied enough.

What concerns do you have?

– Steve

No Man’s Sky – Release The Coding

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com, www.SeventhSanctum.com, and Steve’s Tumblr)

Last time I speculated on what would come next for No Man’s Sky. My take is that though it may have a good life (5-10 years) it’s going to end eventually. The comparative lack of interactivity is probably the killer.

My friend Serdar noted something that jumped the gun a bit in my analysis of the future – namely, that the studio should consider releasing the code. I was going that direction and wanted to expand on it.

So at some point I think NMS will end-of-life, and I’m leaning towards five years. But in that time – and at that time – Hello Games could do a few things.

First, I think they should release a planet generator that allows people to tweak various parameters – or randomize it. Serdar referred to the idea as a generator for Roger Dean Album Covers. I heartily concur. People might even pay a few bucks for it.

Secondly, the above planet generator? Pair it with some non-interactive exploration and music. After seeing what could be done on Panoramical, imagine what it’d be like to just jam to procedural music and scrolling alien landscapes?

Third, and foremost, at some point they should release all or most of the code of the game. Maybe license it, maybe free. Have the final legacy of No Man’s Sky (which will truly be foundational if it’s what they say it is), be the launching of even more children. It would doubly cement Hello Games legacy, and give innumerable people and groups and games a boost.

NMS could truly be world-changing. However there’s one more thing . . .

I think there will inevitably have to be a No Man’s Sky Next. No Man’s Sky-er. The Noer and the Manner Skye. Whatever.

Hello Games is going to learn an enormous amount of lessons from this. They will learn more about their code. They will learn more about players. They will release patches and updates and experience the limits of what their engine can do. They will, in short, be equipped to create a sequel that would outstrip what the original could do.

So, with NMS having a probable limited lifespan, my thoughts are this:

  1. Begin research for No Man’s Sky Next immediately.
  2. After a year or two release the “Roger Deanifier.” It’d also probably give any cooperative coders and 365 days of static a boost yes, I want them to team up with the guy behind Panormalical, OK?
  3. 3) As things calm down, begin work on No Man’s Sky Next – using the current NMS as a bit of a testbed.
  4. 4) When ready to release No Man’s Sky Next, drop the code of the original game on the internet.

Would releasing the code empower competitors? Doubtlessly, but you can be pretty sure they have and will have plenty. Releasing the code just cements the possibility of it.

And of course if done right, NMS Next would live on far longer than the first, becoming a doubtlessly deserved fixture.

– Steve