Planet Diver Aims For The Core On The Wii U eShop

Sigh, whenever I read "randomly-generated," I can't help but think "lousy level design."

Hmmm... This looks really interesting. Might have to give it a try

@BulbasaurusRex Same here, I hate random generation...

Looks like a lot of fun, and that's a lady with her priorities straight, judging from that checklist.

The heroine looks like a lesbian. I need more lesbian games. Is she a lesbian?

@Spin Guys right you are agree I totally so.

@LemonSlice Hmm, I am not really seeing why sexuality and orientation is even being considered here (it's not a dating sim or anything of that sort)? Unless the game creator is here on NL, I don't think you'll get an exact answer...

@BulbasaurusRex That's a little bit unfair. Obviously there are some that do it lazily and it's not so great. But randomly or procedurally generated levels can actually be a very lot of work, and when done right can really extend a game. But I've no idea if this is the good or bad kind here!

Seems an interesting concept. I might pick it up if I'm between games when it launches.

@Ogbert It's random, so how would you do it well versus poorly? While there are some genres where it's less obtrusive than others, the fact remains that the overall quality of a randomly generated level system will heavily suffer compared to most professionally designed levels. You get some that are absolutely great, but then you get a lot of others that absolutely suck. Even in an arcade style score attack game, the general preference is to play through the same well designed levels again and again (as long as there are enough of them) rather than constantly being surprised by "new" levels that are extremely hit or miss.

I think procedurally generated levels can actually be very good, but it really depends on the rules with which the programming provides the game to generated them. If done right, it can spawn really nice and diverse worlds! I hope No man's Sky will manage to do exactly that.

Planet Driver though, I don't know... the graphics alone look really terrible, I don't get why this "retro" trend is still a thing.

@BulbasaurusRex The thing is the word 'random' is misleading. Truly random would likely be a mess but these things never are truly random, they follow a large set of rules to procedurally generate a level that works and plays well, and is perceived as random. And large chunks of it can still be bespoke and hand designed, which are then 'randomly' inserted into the level as it generates according to whether or not the rules that let that part generate will allow it too. It can be just as much if not more work than generating a fixed number of levels by hand. And making the levels individually doesn't guarantee quality anyway. There are a lot of bad games out there and they're not all randomly generated.

Fun fact: the music streaming service Spotify had to generate a specific set of rules by which it's 'random shuffle' would pick tracks to make it appear actually random. As when it was truly random people didn't believe it was as they were imposing perceived patterns and complaining.

Games do similar things all the time. If you have a game that gives you a random prize at the end of a level from any given pool of potential prizes, having it then give you the same prize a million times in a row is a perfectly valid result for true random. But obviously this won't be perceived as random by the player and will be highly frustrating, so extra code is added to make it not pick the same as last time or too many times in a row, or items might be sub-divided into categories from which it must pick a different one etc.

The same applies to generating levels except there are a lot more variables to consider. You should check out some of the No Man's Sky dev vids to see what goes into generating 'random' levels. they're pretty surface stuff for the most part but it should help shed some light on just what goes into these things. It's way more than you think.

@shani
because it's cheap, so people can actually afford to make games like that look like that.

@Ogbert Well, sure the levels still have to follow the game's rules and be playable and beatable, but pretty much everything else is usually still random. If they're going to go much further than that with the design, then they might as well just design the whole levels. The levels in "No Man's Sky" may not drop as far in quality as in most games with randomly generated levels, but I'm sure it has plenty that still suck pretty badly than if they had just done the little extra work to actually design the levels themselves.

The amount of work involved has nothing to do with it, anyway. I never claimed they were lazy for doing it. As I said above, if it's going to be a similar amount of work anyway, they would be better off going the route that provides better quality.

Yeah, there are also some games that have badly designed levels anyway, but randomly generating them guarantees that you're going to have many that are just as bad rather than striving to make all (or at least most) of them good.

@khaosklub I don't, I'm not an indie developer myself (yet ), but there are tools like Unity 3D out there that are for free on Wii U and can produce better graphics.
I even understand that from the perspective of an indie dev, they have to keep the costs down (although there a lot of indies with beautiful but simple graphics, Runbow, Beatbuddy, Cloudbuilt...). But that still doesn't explain why so many players actually like thise retro look, I still find it terrible.

@BulbasaurusRex apologies you didn't say lazy. You said 'lousy'.

Either way you're jumping to many negative conclusions here. I guess you have had unfortunate experiences with bad procedurally generated games in the past and are now tarring them all with the same brush. You can continue to act ignorant and negatively towards it, assuming things will not be up to scratch, not fully understanding the process and making absolutely ludicrous statements where you -who has had no involvement in the making of, nor experience playing the game - "guarantee" that half of it will be bad. And hey, I don't know that this game won't be like that. In this particular case you might be right.

But I do know that you're talking nonsense with those 'guarantees' and statements of low quality based entirely on a game being procedural. But it's no skin off my nose. You don't have to buy it and it makes no odds to me if you do or not. I was just hoping I could enlighten you a little but it seems not

Random generated AGAIN?! I really hate this trend! It looks like developers have become very lazy. Nothing is better then REAL gamedesign!!

Still not arrived in 2017...