Randomization and graphics

[Flux]

Interesting bit from Jay Wilson in a new interview with Gamespy.

GameSpy: Other games have tried to do randomly-generated content without much success. Why is it that Diablo can make it work?

Jay Wilson: I honestly think that randomness is incredibly hard to do, and incredibly expensive. And so, to a certain degree -- and I hate to throw it down to just this -- it's a resource problem more than anything else. If you're going to make a really cool dungeon -- let's say a good-sized dungeon probably would be, if you use our dungeon as an example, 12 to 15 rooms is what you need to create. Maybe even a little bit less; we find six to eight rooms can take you 15 to 20 minutes to get through. That's actually a good amount of time for a single level. Maybe you repeat it a couple so times so you get up to 20 [rooms]. It takes about 80 rooms to make a truly random dungeon -- a dungeon that feels random. So you look at that, and it's about four or five times the amount of content. And the creation of background content is one of the biggest bottlenecks in the creation of games.

When you look at games, they don't have problems creating characters. Animation is a bit of a bottleneck, because there's so much animation required nowadays, but if you look at any game company and see who they're trying to hire at any one time... I don't know anybody who isn't trying to hire background people. Part of it is that there's so much background to create, and part of it is that most people would rather create a big, giant monster than a tree. But boy, what we wouldn't give for some good tree creators! People who love to create trees are worth their weight in gold!

Is blizzard uniquely able to create enjoyable, semi-randomized levels? Is their art design uniquely pleasing, in the RPG industry? Or are their whole games just so good that we tend to think every element is great, when maybe it's the whole > sum of the parts?

[In the name of Zod]

My opinion, the bottom line will be their expectations of how the levels should look and ultimately feel. Randomising means joining things together so you can't tell they were originally separate entities (map chunks).

It's like in project management where you have to first work something out (the predecessor) before starting something else. You can't build levels until you know how the chunks of levels are meant to come together. If the formula for level generation is wrong then a lot of work on levels (graphics) would either require a complete rework or dump. So if they are talking about this now then that's not a good sign for level randomisation imo.

[K-Lined]

Man I'd love to design some trees for Blizzard.

[Gigashadow]

Yeah, it all comes down to the horrible HR's Blizzard has. I saw so many people making totally amazing objects, be it trees, textures, and what not, but does Blizzard hire them? No. They want someone "popular" and what not. So they get what they deserve.

[AkumaSlayer]

I could model and texture some trees for them. :p

[teh_Thrasher]

randomization eh? well the new game Left 4 Dead is running an engine that makes every playthrough new and awesome. i forgot the name of the engine though. but the game rocks and is different every time. LOVE IT

[Farmrush]

randomization eh? well the new game Left 4 Dead is running an engine that makes every playthrough new and awesome. i forgot the name of the engine though. but the game rocks and is different every time. LOVE IT

Left4Dead uses a modified version of the SOURCE engine. The Director AI controls where the enemies spawn and how difficult the map is depending on how well the players are doing.

[stillman]

It's not really the randomized dungeons that do it for me. I thought it was a nice feature for its' time in d1. But now, I just find it's something that requires me to keep the big ugly map on all the time.

I'd like to see more randomized monsters appearing in the levels though.

And, there is TOO much randomization for weapon rack drops. You often get a tiny claw or throwing knife off a big huge rack. Remember the Armories of Hell in d1? Those were the good old days. You knew what you were going to get.

So too much randomization is a bad thing IMO.

[In the name of Zod]

The randomisation of levels could be done better though. The D2 way is not the only nor the best way of having this sort of dynamics in the game. They could do with better randomisation of monsters but I do fear what impact this would have on the feel of levels. I'd like to see more grades of monsters rather that just unique/champion/normal. It would also be great to see a group mentality evolve with monsters that involves morale checks. These are all missing in so many rpg ai.

[Sein Schatten]

I'd like to see more randomized monsters appearing in the levels though.


Do you mean stats wise? Visual wise?
I could see Zombies looking different. The game chooses what head/body/legs/arms the zombies get and base the stats on the choosen part. For example a big, fat boy means he has double HP. Arm X means he gets a random weapon and Arm Y means he uses his fist/claws to attack.
Would be awesome. :D

[stillman]

^I meant a different mix of bad guys for each new game you go in. The blood moor always has quill rats, zombies, and imps. Well that gets a bit boring and too predictable after a while. I think it should have any 3 mosnters randomly selected from a list of 10 or w/e. Of course, they would have to make sense for that area. Death Lords would not look right in the blood moor! They would step on and squash the quill rats.

So this would make players have to become a bit more expert. A player who is familiar with all 10 possible monsters that can spawn in the blood moor would be an expert. He would be even more expert if he was aware of certain combos of monsters that work better together giving players more challenge.

[Farmrush]

This is what they said they intended to do with dungeons. The dungeons will be randomized as well as the enemy 'theme.' Eg. You might descend into a crypt filled with skeletal warriors and archers, while the next time you go down it is filled with ghosts and zombies.

[FrostDoombringer]

The randomisation of levels could be done better though. The D2 way is not the only nor the best way of having this sort of dynamics in the game. They could do with better randomisation of monsters but I do fear what impact this would have on the feel of levels. I'd like to see more grades of monsters rather that just unique/champion/normal. It would also be great to see a group mentality evolve with monsters that involves morale checks. These are all missing in so many rpg ai.
It seems like such a simple thing, but Skill and Color swaping to form diffrent monsters is a good and easy way to disversify the enemies. Creating a totally diffrent model is great but takes up more resources, not to mention development time. Upgrade a skill, change his color, add a diffrent weapon and BAM, your attack stradegy just went down the tubes. Better grab a new weapon and put some points in that other skill if you hope to take down these monsters. Fighting a bunch of Fire Imps in the dugeon one time and fighting a bunch of Double Axe Minotars antother time does far more for the randomization then placing the entrance to the north instead of the south. Give me more Monster Variants. Oh BTW, there will be private games again right??

[Srikandi]

I am a big fan of random maps in games :)

But I also know how hard it is to make random maps that keep being interesting. Hellfire was a disappointing example: zones were random but it really didn't feel like it mattered. They all played the same regardless.

And there are lots of RPGs, like the Morrowind/Oblivion and Titan Quest... and even Fable II... that use handmade dungeons, but they're made of tilesets with small numbers of tiles that are used over till the similarities between the dungeons become more salient than the differences.

Spore's another example :/ The procedural generation it uses for plants and terrain is highly sophisticated, and then you throw in random critters from the virutally infinite pool of player-created content. But they are all virtually functionally equivalent from a gameplay perspective, so though different planets may LOOK different, they all play almost the same. You never get the feeling "OMG on this playthrough I feel like I'm in a different game".

However I haven't given up hope that the holy grail of randomization... where you can feel like you're in a new place you haven't seen before, you don't know what's waiting around the corner, and you need different skills and tactics every time through... can be achieved ;) At least for the first 20 visits or so!

[In the name of Zod]

Thats it exactly, I couldn't have put it better Srikandi. Using subtle changes also works well for creating variety. If the subtlies are allowed to stack from the beginning of a map then you could have very different looking maps later in the game each time you play. This would be my preference.