[pc999]

Originally Posted by Shifty Geezer

It depends. Artists already use lots of procedural creation for things like noise and textures, or even terrain generation. Or even, artists take a base model and then change it to generate a new model, such as a new pose. If the generation algorithm sucks and it places chairs on tables and coffee cups in the light fixtures, the cost outweighs the benefits. But get a good algorithm and the player should be able to walk around a town with it looking authentic and without that needing an artists hand for every feature.

There is some great generative algorithms for music, it will be "perfect", it is actually a heavy researched field as far as I know... Can you tell me the last time such a thing was used? In any thing? Probably not, it is perfect by the rules you set (eg classical) but it will not bring anything to the game but boredom and in games there is already some "contextual music and fxs".

Dont ask me why, that music is perfect, it isnt even repetitive (if you dont want to), if you hear you will probably be amazed by how it sounds, you still will not save it to hear again.

It is just uninteresting and out of context, it lacks the human being.

Most homes etc. don't use interior designers!
It wouldn't have to be perfect. It'd just need to be a step up from the constant repetition of the current systems. A street shouldn't be a street made out of building models 3, 4, and 7 of ten, but of buildings that look different enough to add variety.

Every home is made by a human.

Anyway I agree that only a few games need that much attention to detail, like only a few home/spaces need a interior designer, all the others can have less detail, artist time in this case, so we can have open big worlds

Depends on the game. As with all games, where not every tech is suitable for every game. A linear path may well benefit from a full artist's approach. Anything that doesn't need that level of attention, where the scenery isn't a focus, can get away with the cheapness of automatic generation IMO.

In music I wouldn't go that way unless I wanted a very specif goal (reactive sci fi fx/music), from what I have seen in other stuff I wouldn't want a automatic/random generated stuff in anywhere.

The very few things I can imagine it being somewhat useful is some sort of "genetic algorithm" for natural stuff like plants trying to replicate how they grow, in a previous man made scenario.

[Shifty Geezer]

Music's very different to background scenery. One is a language, and the other is varied visual scenery. They aren't comparable entities. Algorithmic landscape generation is much closer to the idea of algorithmic scenery generation, and that works extremely well. If you look at any housing estate, you'll see the same basic model house tweaked via human behaviour - some have gardens, some drives, some planters or hanging baskets, some messy bins and some very tidy - which should be easy enough to model given a suitable rule-set and adjustable parameters. TBH I'm a bit surprised some people doubt background scenery could be created effectively when you consider how sophisticated mathematical models have become in many fields! And perhaps more importantly, that adding automated variation in games would lead to worse experiences. I'll point a finger at ModNation Racers for how autmoated scenery generation can do a lot of the basic scenery work to add interest without needing a lot fo effort on the part of the level designer.

[pc999]

Getting out of philosophy of music...

Originally Posted by Shifty Geezer

TBH I'm a bit surprised some people doubt background scenery could be created effectively when you consider how sophisticated mathematical models have become in many fields! And perhaps more importantly, that adding automated variation in games would lead to worse experiences.

I didnt said it couldnt be done, just said that it (at the very least at this moment) it dont look good enough to replace a artist and repair and tweaks is even worst

I'll point a finger at ModNation Racers for how autmoated scenery generation can do a lot of the basic scenery work to add interest without needing a lot fo effort on the part of the level designer.

Exactly what you get is a game with looks of a amateur job, but you are fine with that because it is a amateur job on a game that is to share amateur jobs.


When you look for a more pro game you want a pro look, scenario, level design...


If any, the big revolution in visuals and games will not come from the engines or HW, but from the tools artist have IMO, let it be to do new levels/enemies/animation/basic AI/....Rage is a good showing of it IMO.


I am the only one that miss lot of variety in stuff like we had in SNES games, different kinds of levels, with different enemies with different abilities, and new traps and a touch of personality.

[patsu]

I am with Shifty. I think it depends on the game. I don't think realism or exquisite visual quality is the mantra for nextgen; with the casual crowd playing games big time, I'd say the visuals will be more varied.

For a game like Modnation Racer, I would be more curious about a driving game that auto generates a track from Google Map's A-B driving directions. The game may have to create an art style from the photo shots (LBP's cardboard look, or 2D-to-3D image conversion, blah). After all, people complain about Gran Turismo's 2D scenery but we still have tons of fun fooling around with it.

For AI, I would expect someone to extend Demon's Souls. Basically, observe/record the white ghosts (i.e., actual players in their own worlds) in different spots and play them against the current player. This is essentially like the World 3-2 boss where the game summon another player to fight on its behalf (brilliant !). the game can also choose failed moves from real players to add unexpected behavior to the "AI". Naturally, it can steal the moves from low level and advanced users to match the skill level of the current players.

EDIT: Come to think of it, both can be done now. Map auto-gen can be done asynchronously. GT5 supports autonomous racing anyway so the users are already used to leaving their game running for an extended time.

Player recording and remote playback is already implemented today in Demon's Souls using PSN's realtime player info infrastracture. They need to vary the moves, split and organize them. Uncharted's animation blending system may be a good starting point too.

[Laa-Yosh]

The start of the discussion was - why so linear games. One of the reasons is that producing high quality content is very expensive, so when a studio chooses that way, they're also motivated to make sure that every player will see it all in the first playthrough. Otherwise a lot of the art budget is badly allocated and thus it's wasted.

All this talk about how and what should be automated or what can't be is interesting, but ultimately irrelevant. Just because you might have lifeless computer-furnished rooms it still won't make a labyrinth out of a COD level.

[patsu]

May be balance high quality games with lower visual quality but "more fun/experimental" games ? That should allow game developers to explore both ends. They may have different price point or even business models.

[Shifty Geezer]

Originally Posted by Laa-Yosh

All this talk about how and what should be automated or what can't be is interesting, but ultimately irrelevant. Just because you might have lifeless computer-furnished rooms it still won't make a labyrinth out of a COD level.

Automated scenery should stop it being lifeless though. Or at least less lifeless. Looking at my Ps3 games in this draw, Resistance, Borderlands, and Dungeon Siege 3 to a degree, could all be enriched with procedural content. Of my PSN games, Infamous would benefit a great deal, as would Dungeon Hunter Alliance. Uncharted won't benefit because everything there is crafted as part of the linear story, as you say. LBP also needs carefully crafted levels. Horses for courses, but it's a tech that should see investment and progress to get the best out of next gen. I really don't want another open-world game that's populated by bland clones of the same handful of people wearing the same handful of outfits and living in the same handful of buildings. We were even promised procedural content this gen but it never came to anything. Future game engines from Epic and friends will hopefully be looking into this on a serious level in the same way we have libraries for procedural game mechanics (physics), procedural behaviour (AI) and procedural animation (Euphoria).

[patsu]

Laa-Yosh, I am more inclined to play linear games. I still haven't completed an open world game yet.

I think besides your artist perspective, from a not so hardcore gamer's perspective, I think linear games can be more focused and easier to have fun. Some games will benefit from a more open gameplay (e.g., Open space FPS + dynamic AI), but not all. I think the more restrictive/linear tower defense game is easier to enjoy than a full blown RTS.

I think Shifty is making a different point though.

EDIT:
Just to clarify... It is possible to make an inferior linear game.

e.g., Gran Pulse in FFXIII is more open and fun than the carefully crafted linear section in the first half of the game. But that is a gameplay and pacing issue. Not art related. In fact, Gran Pulse is pretty bland with random creatures and pre-defined sidequests. It is fun for me because it has more interesting combat, more variety, and rewarding outcome. Around that time, all our characters are equiped with Eidolon and have more powerful spells.

[Laa-Yosh]

There's no procedural content because the tools are not up to the quality that's expected.
That's what I've been trying to tell you guys but everyone's more clever and thinks that it's such an easy thing... About time to realize that maybe I'm not just making all these arguments up, that there's some reason behind it

[patsu]

What do you want to generate procedurally ?

Is randomly spawned creatures a procedural exercise ?

Is observing player's tactics and stealing them a procedural AI ?

Are we after gameplay or just the atmosphere ? An auto-generated level may be unbalanced, but an auto-beautify level may be ok.

Modnation Racer's autogen tracks and auto-populated tracks have a user-generated content angle. So the draw is more the community than the actual content. e.g., When I play LBP, I half expect to see silly levels. And we do enjoy playing them after lowering our expectation. Some of them are pretty funny.

[Shifty Geezer]

Originally Posted by Laa-Yosh

There's no procedural content because the tools are not up to the quality that's expected.
That's what I've been trying to tell you guys but everyone's more clever and thinks that it's such an easy thing... About time to realize that maybe I'm not just making all these arguments up, that there's some reason behind it

The fact the tools aren't up to snuff now doesn't mean they could never be created. Nor is the current status quo disproof of the concept or potential. The argument I'm putting forwards is games need the tools to push the content forwards, because it won't be feasible to pay artists to create the variety of assets, or else next-gen is going to be seriously hampered in appearance in some games do to repetitious content. Or do you disagree, and feel next-gen's visuals are going to be paid for by employing yet more artists?

[patsu]

What specific procedural systems are we talking about ? I can see balancing requires lotsa human testing and tweaking. So we can't really run away from tweaking even if the original level is generated by a human. One of the key questions is can a tool generate an easy-to-tweak level, or does it generate raw and unmodular "spagehtti" ? Laa Yosh seems to imply it's the latter ?

[Laa-Yosh]

Is it really that hard to understand my point? Just because we need high quality procedural content creation tools is not enough to overcome their inherent problems, the greatest of which is that a computer has no intelligence and artistic sense.

[patsu]

I am afraid it may be hard to visualize the future unless perhaps we pick a concrete (and simple !) example to start.

[(((interference)))]

Originally Posted by Laa-Yosh

Is it really that hard to understand my point? Just because we need high quality procedural content creation tools is not enough to overcome their inherent problems, the greatest of which is that a computer has no intelligence and artistic sense.

Couldn't you teach a computer to have some idea of aesthethics? Like by just getting it to randomly furnish rooms and select which ones are satisfactory or not? Or showing it thousands of labelled pictures of rooms etc.

[joker454]

Coders have been trying for decades to get procedural content working decently. Aside from generating clouds and random mazes they don't seem to have gotten very far with it, certainly no where near the ability to replace an artist. In the short term at best you could hope for human generated art perhaps tweaked procedurally, but having it all created from scratch by code and not having it look machine generated is a tall order.

[3dcgi]

Originally Posted by Laa-Yosh

Games need 1000x faster hardware, VR goggles and other stuff too - but just because we want them is not enough to turn them into reality.

Yes it is. It just takes time. Creating art is another challenge, but consider a game like Dragon Age 2 which had a lot of repeated and uninspired areas. I'm sure procedural generation could help in cases like this if there were tools for it..

[3dcgi]

Originally Posted by joker454

Coders have been trying for decades to get procedural content working decently. Aside from generating clouds and random mazes they don't seem to have gotten very far with it, certainly no where near the ability to replace an artist. In the short term at best you could hope for human generated art perhaps tweaked procedurally, but having it all created from scratch by code and not having it look machine generated is a tall order.

I don't think anyone's saying to replace artists and have a machine create everything. Consider a restaurant that has a lot of antiques (or junk) on the walls. Artists could create objects and use tools to place them in rooms, thus saving time and allowing artists to focus on the more important aspects of a game.

[(((interference)))]

Originally Posted by joker454

Coders have been trying for decades to get procedural content working decently. Aside from generating clouds and random mazes they don't seem to have gotten very far with it, certainly no where near the ability to replace an artist. In the short term at best you could hope for human generated art perhaps tweaked procedurally, but having it all created from scratch by code and not having it look machine generated is a tall order.

Well I agree that having the art created from scratch is a bit unrealistic, but I don't see why it is so difficult to write programs that can decorates rooms, houses and other environments by creating varied configurations from a palette of artist generated content (eg. couches, doors, lights etc.)

[Shifty Geezer]

Originally Posted by Laa-Yosh

Is it really that hard to understand my point? Just because we need high quality procedural content creation tools is not enough to overcome their inherent problems, the greatest of which is that a computer has no intelligence and artistic sense.

Computers don't need intelligence to run algorithms. Dumb computers can simulate intelligent systems like crowds or behavioural physics just fine. Artistic sense isn't needed in every single case. If I look through a living room window of some random house I pass in the street, the blue or pink or beige walls I see isn't part of any great artistic vision. A car passing me in the street that's red or green or black or blue isn't decided by some great artist in the sky making sure everything is colour coordinated! Likewise in a game, the choice of wall colour or car colour doesn't have to have artistic insight on the part of the computer if it's just background content - it just needs the artist who adjust the parameters to set the right rules so we don't get lime green living rooms or technicolour cars.

Originally Posted by joker454

Coders have been trying for decades to get procedural content working decently. Aside from generating clouds and random mazes they don't seem to have gotten very far with it, certainly no where near the ability to replace an artist. In the short term at best you could hope for human generated art perhaps tweaked procedurally, but having it all created from scratch by code and not having it look machine generated is a tall order.

Firstly, this wasn't about creating whole assets from scratch, but adding variation to existing assets. Secondly, technology progresses, and just because for decades developers with limited programmable processing resources haven't been able to enable asset variation on the fly, doesn't make that impossible. Artists have used procedural content for years, from simple noise deformations to complex materials, hence the existence of programmable shader languages instead of fixed-function flat asset rendering. Laa-Yosh knows this and could explain better than anyone here how WETA's Massive enables convincing crowd scenes by generating content algorithmically without needing artists to model tens of thousands of characters. I'll even add procedural content has been used effectively in good games too, like Elite and Captive - it's hardly some impossible Holy Grail myth!

Procedural content in games just needs another step forwards to integrate variation code and object placement code into the game engines, so a character model you encounter five times in Infamous on a walk in the street isn't the same 'red top guy in jeans' but 'variously coloured top guy with different hairdos and either jeans or combat trousers'. Things like displacement shaders could allow subtle variations in faces too. It isn't going to create authentic human characters as well as an artist could, but this isn't about replacing artists. It's a request for an improvement in our artificial worlds to make them a little less artificial. The arguments against so far have been 'it's artistically poor' and 'we haven't managed it yet', neither of which convinces me it's a fool's errand.

[Laa-Yosh]

Dumb computers can simulate intelligent systems like crowds or behavioural physics just fine. Artistic sense isn't needed in every single case.

Yes, but a game is similar to movies in that it has to be a directed experience. Otherwise it gets boring and lifeless and elements won't fit together to create an overall impression. You'd be surprised how much has to be art directed, down to stuff you'd thought to be very simple.
Sometimes it's also more effort do develop even a simple tool for a task than to have someone do it manually.

And of course the things you keep mentioning - furnishing rooms, changing car colors - is just a very tiny bit of all the work. Solving two problematic tasks out of hundreds isn't going to be a big help. So I'd rather not stick to these certain elements as there's a billion other things that have to be done and have an effect on how the game content is built. Let's not try to oversimplify this complex problem please.

technology progresses, and just because for decades developers with limited programmable processing resources haven't been able to enable asset variation on the fly, doesn't make that impossible

You keep repeating this but it doesn't make it happen... Very clever people have been at this problem and failed, but you still think they've just been to stupid to find solutions or what?

Laa-Yosh knows this and could explain better than anyone here how WETA's Massive enables convincing crowd scenes by generating content algorithmically without needing artists to model tens of thousands of characters.

We have used Massive and it requires a lot of manually built content. The actual scale and proportion variation of the orc army was built by a separate tool by the way.
Weta also had a procedural city builder to create 1930's New York for Kong but it was an incredibly complex system that still relied on manually built content - all it really did was compiling together the assets required to render a shot, based on camera movement and perspective and such.

a character model you encounter five times in Infamous on a walk in the street isn't the same 'red top guy in jeans' but 'variously coloured top guy with different hairdos and either jeans or combat trousers'.

The problem is that the level of variation you describe still isn't enough to sell the guy as two different characters...

Things like displacement shaders could allow subtle variations in faces too.

Doesn't work - either it's too subtle and from 2 meters away everyone still looks the same, or it's too much and people stop looking like people, animation breaks down and so on. The artificial quality will stay... Again, we've been through a lot of these ideas that sound good on paper but fail completely in practice.

[RudeCurve]

I think for characters you could use procedural generation techniques for body/build types and faces but it won't work for apparel...which needs to be designed by hand.

[Laa-Yosh]

What might work is to manually build several distinct body types and then somehow morph between them by using intensities for limbs, torso, etc.

The problem is that morphing requires the bodies to have the same polygon structure and it can seriously limit the quality, and you'll also run into texture stretching if you push vertices around too much.

For example we've never even tried to use the same mesh for a male and a female. And even with a male, the results for building thin/average/overweight variations didn't really give us good results in practice.

Faces are even more complex. Sure there are some examples, like Oblivion (which looks horrible IMHO), Mass Effect (very hard to get good looking characters for Shepard and you can always see which NPCs were built with the tool and which by hand) and there's Eve Online's which uses stylized characters but seems to be the best so far (wonder how much effort it took though)

[Shifty Geezer]

Originally Posted by Laa-Yosh

Yes, but a game is similar to movies in that it has to be a directed experience. Otherwise it gets boring and lifeless and elements won't fit together to create an overall impression. You'd be surprised how much has to be art directed, down to stuff you'd thought to be very simple.

I'll grant I haven't been on the front line of level design, so perhaps they are experiences that throw up unexpected problems, but there's definitely room for improvement.

And of course the things you keep mentioning - furnishing rooms, changing car colors - is just a very tiny bit of all the work.

Each tiny improvement is a step in the right direction. Or would you abandon any progress that isn't a giant leap forwards? If you were at Intel, would you have stopped research into MLAA because it was imperfect and could never offer a solution comparable to supersampling?

You keep repeating this but it doesn't make it happen... Very clever people have been at this problem and failed, but you still think they've just been to stupid to find solutions or what?

I never said nor implied they were too stupid. They had limited options and limited understanding. Just like modern post AA techniques - there's a massive flood of ideas that no-one was exploring 5+ years ago. That's not because everyone was too stupid back then, but because the advent of programmable graphics hardware and a bit or innovative thinking by Intel to solve a problem that the graphics IHVs weren't considering because they already had the MSAA solution opened the doors to new opportunities.

We have used Massive and it requires a lot of manually built content. The actual scale and proportion variation of the orc army was built by a separate tool by the way...

So you're saying it'd have been quicker, cheaper and easier to build all your models from scratch and animate them all from scratch? Or are you saying that Massive's procedural solutions help take some of the work off the artists and increase the variety of content producible for a given budget?

The problem is that the level of variation you describe still isn't enough to sell the guy as two different characters...

But it is enough to stop him looking like an identical clone! Again, I'm not expecting a perfect solution. Just an improvement. In the case of people also, it's hard to make things look varied as we're hard-wired to be very sensitive to perceiving people. That's the hardest possible application you're starting with! For other objects and characters we aren't so sensitive, so a goblin base character with a variety of displacements and costume pieces will look like different goblins and only require a few models to achieve more variation than currently having to model discrete characters.

Doesn't work - either it's too subtle and from 2 meters away everyone still looks the same, or it's too much and people stop looking like people, animation breaks down and so on. The artificial quality will stay... Again, we've been through a lot of these ideas that sound good on paper but fail completely in practice.

And again, it doesn't have to be perfect!

What might work is to manually build several distinct body types and then somehow morph between them by using intensities for limbs, torso, etc...

Now you're starting to think about approaches and solutions, instead of just giving up. This is the beginnings of progress.

Faces are even more complex. Sure there are some examples, like Oblivion (which looks horrible IMHO)..

Lots of games have lousy faces. Lousy faces are with us to stay. At least with advanced procedural content the lousy faces won't all look like the same person in various false beards and hats.

Stop looking for perfect solutions. Creating perfect, artistic game content is your area, and you're damned good at it, and that's why we need artists. For a lot of stuff in games, made to a huge range of budgets, that are already filled with compromises due to budgets and techs, we can't hope for perfect worlds with perfectly realistic and varied people populating homes where every feature and object can be interpreted via Sherlock Homes to explain the occupants. All we gamers need next-gen is less repetition, and the developers need cheaper asset production to achieve that. Isn't procedurally assisted content the only real answer to that?

[Laa-Yosh]

Originally Posted by Shifty Geezer

I'll grant I haven't been on the front line of level design, so perhaps they are experiences that throw up unexpected problems, but there's definitely room for improvement.

You think that no-one at any of the game studios has ever thought about this?
Everyone's aware of these problems, they're just incredibly complex and properly solving them is usually out of the budget of nearly everyone. Sometimes movies get enough money to solve it with VFX, but then a movie shot has fixed camera position and movement...

Each tiny improvement is a step in the right direction. Or would you abandon any progress that isn't a giant leap forwards? If you were at Intel, would you have stopped research into MLAA because it was imperfect and could never offer a solution comparable to supersampling?

I never said nor implied they were too stupid. They had limited options and limited understanding.

The content creation side has costs so massive associated with it that the research into tools and methods is several orders of magnitude bigger than post AA. You cannot compare these two classes of problems at all.
And I've always been critical of these clever blur filters anyway - I see the need for compromises regarding performance, but this is still too much for me.

Or are you saying that Massive's procedural solutions help take some of the work off the artists and increase the variety of content producible for a given budget?

I'm saying that your impression of Massive's procedural abilities is wrong and probably way beyond of what the tool can actually do. Besides, Massive is about making the characters themselves move, it can't do anything beyond that. The army variation tool (called Orc Builder) wasn't part of Massive, and again, the vast majority of the work wasn't the tool, but all the assets that the tool had to combine together.

But it is enough to stop him looking like an identical clone! Again, I'm not expecting a perfect solution. Just an improvement.

It will be just as artifical as if they were the same character slightly distorted - and in many cases even worse, as the forced variety ruins the otherwise good looking assets.
You also have no idea how complicated it is just to fit the same single piece of clothing onto different body proportions. I've been through such problems and it's always a lot more work than anyone would estimate. And games still haven't started cloth simulations yet!

For other objects and characters we aren't so sensitive, so a goblin base character with a variety of displacements and costume pieces will look like different goblins and only require a few models to achieve more variation than currently having to model discrete characters.

Trust me on this one, please. Doing crowds that look neither completely identical nor totally stupid is incredibly hard and will require a lot of actual asset variation. Mixing them together is the smallest and easiest part, even I could write scripts to do that. But it takes many many man-months to build everything that you want to mix together.
And just changing colors and sizes won't matter, such differences don't make the results register as unique characters at all.

Now you're starting to think about approaches and solutions, instead of just giving up. This is the beginnings of progress.

Again - we've done a lot of this stuff and I know just how hard it is from experience. I've had a lot of nice theories and expectations before we actually started production, too...

All we gamers need next-gen is less repetition, and the developers need cheaper asset production to achieve that. Isn't procedurally assisted content the only real answer to that?

This is an assumption that's wrong. People do have an instinctive sense for this stuff and good art direction is almost always appreciated and provides an advantage. Developers of COD-type games won't scale back on quality just for the sake of more variation because variation on its own is far less important for the audience. Most people playing their game wouldn't ever notice it.

When it is an important element then they will spend enough to realize it. Eve Online, and Brink as well, has a lot of these variations, but even there the characters are ultimately very, very similar because of cost issues. Just as you can't be a fat Shepard in ME either.


Please try to understand that your thinking isn't ahead of the curve at all, everyone involved in such tasks has faced such challenges and spent considerable effort on finding solutions for many years now. But the problem is very complex, and sometimes it's either too expensive to solve it (compared to the gains), or there isn't any solution at all. It's not that we're against tools to help us in our work and give us time to focus on the more important and exciting parts...