Add Procedural Generation- Be Able To explore this alien ocean forever.
Bambam625
Missouri, USA Join Date: 2015-07-31 Member: 206580Members
i absolutely love this game, but ive seen the limits of the map and I havent been playing very long. This could be the underwater equivelent of No Mans Sky, if you guys added in PG. imagine if this game was endless. Only reason i brought it up was because i THOUGHT it used procedural generation, but i found out quickly that it doesnt. Ive reached the limits of the game in a very short period of time. Built a few scattered bases, and have all the vehicles and tools. Ran off the corners of the map too , went under it actually, the map is actually a big cube sitting in the ocean.
Imagine if the game didnt end, and you could travel one direction forever.
Be able to build outposts, spread out across the areas youve explored.
Imagine if there were no limits to the exploration in this game.
Then the dev team could just keep adding things to the PG engine to increase diversity, then if there is an area they have specific plans for they could just handcraft that area.
Then the dev team could just focus on adding more and more features to aid you in our exploration of this interesting planet.
Thoughts?
(btw I came here from the link provided in the steam community forums for subnautica)
I believe this game is too unique, and wondrous to not go this route. I don't ever want to be like....well...theres nothing else to do...it was fun Subnautica.
This game is too good for that, I haven't truly been immersed and intrigued by a game in a long while, this game managed to do that.
I hope i can come back in 5-10 years and still find things i never found. I understand this game is still in alpha, which is exactly why im proposing this.
Imagine if the game didnt end, and you could travel one direction forever.
Be able to build outposts, spread out across the areas youve explored.
Imagine if there were no limits to the exploration in this game.
Then the dev team could just keep adding things to the PG engine to increase diversity, then if there is an area they have specific plans for they could just handcraft that area.
Then the dev team could just focus on adding more and more features to aid you in our exploration of this interesting planet.
Thoughts?
(btw I came here from the link provided in the steam community forums for subnautica)
I believe this game is too unique, and wondrous to not go this route. I don't ever want to be like....well...theres nothing else to do...it was fun Subnautica.
This game is too good for that, I haven't truly been immersed and intrigued by a game in a long while, this game managed to do that.
I hope i can come back in 5-10 years and still find things i never found. I understand this game is still in alpha, which is exactly why im proposing this.
Comments
1) It's very, very hard to make a procedural world that doesn't look empty & boring (we spent months on procedural land generation only to throw it mostly away)
2) It's a huge effort to give enough variety and interesting locations, hard to generate 'awesome'
3) Aesthetically, doing things by hand virtually always gives better results, with full control.
You might notice from some big-name open world procedurally-generated games, they all seem to have similar looking maps/areas/planets. Because our world is completely hand-crafted, it's a visual feast with no areas that look the same. It takes MUCH longer to do, but we think it's a trade-off we want to make to hit the experience quality we want for Subnautica.
so you do plan on expanding the map? and to what degree?
I will say the little bit of map you guys do have is beautiful.
Although I will also say that NMS wont look all the same, the reason u keep seeing all the same stuff is because most the videos have been on the same few planets. Like every video. But we will see, can only tell once ive played it.
I thought i had read something about subnautica using procedural generation. Well , like i said you guys could use a hybrid approach where you use PG to fill in all the areas you guys don't have plans for. (this is what star citizen has talked about doing when their planetside module drops, itll be awhile lol)
I will say its nice to hear from a DEV so quick.
When the game builds the map, it would place all of these tiles according to a semi-random pattern, with space between. The space between would be procedurally generated, and "meld" with the extended edges from each biome, effectively creating a seamless area between these areas. Given enough areas, this would allow the map to extend infinitely in any direction, adding certain areas (reused if necessary) at random intervals.
To this suggestion, UWE replied it would be too hard to make the generated content look natural along side the hand-built content.
but if that's too hard or just plane not a good idea, then at least make this giant cube of a world larger.
Would it be possible to double the X Y Z limits?
Basically quadrupling the area?
Its even possible that just X and Y would do. The water is already VERY deep.
Only horizontally the game feels small.
Thanks bye
The only comments I have seen related to additional content were about potential plans after the 1.0 release. However, those would presumably depend on reception and popularity at that time, and certainly haven't been promised.
I agree with everything you said.... but you are sacrificing replayability. It is not fun to play for the 3rd -4th time when you know where everything is... So ultimately you are trading of the longivety for a better first experience.
Now there is another game that has solved this perfectly already..,.. 7 Days to die. They launched the game with both options. You can play on a hand designed map called navezgane OR you can start a game with a random generated map.
Now I suggest that Subnautica launches with the handcrafted map as planned. And that you can unlock an option to start a game with a random map instead.
This could be done by X hours played in the handcrafted world or even better by finding or scanning fragments very very deep down.
This will makes sure that everybody experiences the beautiful handcrafted world and you add replayability to the game by adding an option to start a game with a random map.
I think this would be one of the best ways to ensure that the handcrafted world is experienced as the devs want but also keep the game alive in the long run by keeping it interesting with the random maps.
To this day I still love exploring the random maps in 7 days to die, simply because you NEVER know what you can find around the next bend.
What do you mean with game breaking?
This would be a choice when starting a new game, if and only if you have completed the requirements, whetere that be amount of hours or scanned the fragments in a previous game.