which types of gameplay could Ember support?

[Demigan]

There's fetch quests, CTF style gameplay, attrition, king-of-the-hill, assault but also smaller gameplay elements such as puzzling, exploration, gathering etc.

Ember is going to be procedurally generated. This can restrict some gameplay elements. How do you keep exploration as a gameplay element if the entire environment is randomly generated? Is it possible to create some type of CTF gameplay against an AI (or other players) in a procedurally generated map without it becoming stale?

I would like to create a list of possible gameplay types that Ember could support, and hopefully have as many gameplay types in the game to enhance the variety and gameplay experience.

Just a few things we can discuss to kick things off:
Racing elements --> for instance grab a piece of technology, run away with it as infinite hordes of enemies try to stop you.
Exploration --> enter area, search for a certain object/resource while avoiding/fighting with enemies.
Stealth --> sneak through an area to get to the other side/acquire technology/gain access to resources that are otherwise inaccessible.
Exploration&king of the hill --> Defend an object/area while others search the surrounding area for equipment, either to destroy it or to bring it back.


Edit: Source for the procedual generation here http://crixa.io/emberthegame/

 

[Vladplaya]

Can you get a source on this game been procedurally generated? This is the first time I hear that.

 

[Demigan]

Can you get a source on this game been procedurally generated? This is the first time I hear that.

No real source, some people talked about it in another thread, and seeing that the premise of the game seems to be that players will cultivate pieces of different planets I wouldn't be surprised if that was done through procedual generation.

Even so, what kind of gameplay would you like to see in the game?

 

[DARKB1KE]

No real source, some people talked about it in another thread

If it's not fact then don't state it as such. This spreads misinformation and does more harm than help.

A better way to write that might be: "There is speculation that Ember could possibly be procedurally generated." which leaves it open ended until further facts are determined. There's other ways to write it but you get the point. Leave it as theories until proven as fact.

edit: Thanks Demigan!

 

[Demigan]

If it's not fact then don't state it as such. This spreads misinformation and does more harm than help.

A better way to write that is "There is speculation that Ember could possibly be procedurally generated." which leaves it open until further facts are determined.

Ok, here you go:
http://crixa.io/emberthegame/

"A return to the original principles of the Firefall beta. Ember features open world, action based combat where skill and aim matter more than level and power. A resource driven world, where everything is crafted, from weapons to your Omniframe battle-armor. Sandbox planets, procedurally generated, yours to explore and terraform and defend. Step away from the old quest treadmill and enjoy dynamic events that unfold around you. Gameplay comes to you, and even war. Fight alongside your team as you repel alien invaders with mechs, tanks and aircraft. This is Ember, an MMO like no other."

Apparently I didn't read it in a thread, but on the main page.

 

[Grummz]

We're going to be using *some* kind of procedural generation. This might be based on algorithms, or by assembling random tiles. The actual methods and results have yet to be explored.

Ember needs big zones with lots of room. Doing all of this by hand would be prohibitive for a tiny dev team and limited budget.

We'll start with one planet. A very large planet. You'll open up terraforming "pockets" (i.e. zones) on this planet to explore for resources and build bases. If we get the budget and support, we may open it up to multiple planets. But we need to take it one small step at a time.

A note on Terraforming: Right now all terraforming means is locating a new place on the planetary map and dropping down a terraforming machine. That will clear a space on the planet. Zones will not be connected, as its far simpler and cheaper to have separated pockets with loading. We're a small small team.

 

[Demigan]

We're going to be using *some* kind of procedural generation. This might be based on algorithms, or by assembling random tiles. The actual methods and results have yet to be explored.

Ember needs big zones with lots of room. Doing all of this by hand would be prohibitive for a tiny dev team and limited budget.

We'll start with one planet. A very large planet. You'll open up terraforming "pockets" (i.e. zones) on this planet to explore for resources and build bases. If we get the budget and support, we may open it up to multiple planets. But we need to take it one small step at a time.

Thanks for the clarification.

I wanted to help by creating both a fun variety of gameplay in the world and seeing which one's might have problems with procedural generation. Although the exact details as to why some will work or not will probably only be visible to the dev's who actually worked on the code we might already find gameplay idea's that will probably have problems with procedural generation. If not, then at the very least it's a list that hopefully gives you dev's some idea's to put into the game.

Just look at the new T.H.M.P.R. you guys designed. The sole fact that it also needs to be defended when returning the resources home already adds an entirely new dimension to protecting it compared to Firefall, and a good one at that.

 

[DARKB1KE]

Ok, here you go:
http://crixa.io/emberthegame/

Cool, thanks for that! I'll retract my post, thanks for backing it up That's awesome and in the long run it should help speed up worldbuilding. First I heard of it as well.

 

[Demigan]

If it's not fact then don't state it as such. This spreads misinformation and does more harm than help.

A better way to write that might be: "There is speculation that Ember could possibly be procedurally generated." which leaves it open ended until further facts are determined. There's other ways to write it but you get the point. Leave it as theories until proven as fact.

edit: Thanks Demigan!

You're welcome. You were right though, although I was fairly sure there wasn't any other way to build the game I should have looked it up first.

 

[Vladplaya]

@Demigan I think people confuse dynamic events with procedural generation of the world. Different events will pop up dynamically across the world, with AI reacting the same.

The world itself is most likely not going to be neither limitless nor procedurally generated, but instead pre made by designers and artists.

Player build bases require hand crafted world more than anything, the locations for the templates bases have to be hand picked to they make sense and work properly.

This is just how I thought about though.

And to answer your question, I am on the same page with you, I really like to see as diverse types of gameplay as possible, as long as they are engaging and challenging. Like I don't want to see missions put in the game to mark off a checkmark.

However with the reveal of the frame, and the fact that we will be running around pretty bulky mecha suits, I feel like they will be limited to what we will be reasonably be able to do.
Like I don't see mecha trying to sneak around, I mean they can add that but it would be pretty silly.
Also I feel like a lot of indoor gameplay would not work to well either, unless we will costly fight in large vehicle hangers or something.

Right now I see gameplay been mostly hectic warfare in the open or around some structures, which is all good and fun, but they definitely will have expand and diverse that at development goes on.

 

[Bl4ckhunter]

@Demigan I think people confuse dynamic events with procedural generation of the world. Different events will pop up dynamically across the world, with AI reacting the same.

The world itself is most likely not going to be neither limitless nor procedurally generated, but instead pre made by designers and artists.

Player build bases require hand crafted world more than anything, the locations for the templates bases have to be hand picked to they make sense and work properly.

Err nope. they're not going to hand craft the whole thing. read grummz reply five posts above you

 

[Demigan]

@Demigan I think people confuse dynamic events with procedural generation of the world. Different events will pop up dynamically across the world, with AI reacting the same.

The world itself is most likely not going to be neither limitless nor procedurally generated, but instead pre made by designers and artists.

Player build bases require hand crafted world more than anything, the locations for the templates bases have to be hand picked to they make sense and work properly.

This is just how I thought about though.

I think you missed the post with the info that they are doing procedual generation for (parts?) of the world.

Anyway, one of the problems that Firefall had to deal with was that with dynamic events like crashed thumpers and tornado's the dev's had to design the events to be useable/enjoyable no matter where it happened. This, as far as I know, was one of the reasons why they relied on the caves and laboratories to function for the more intricate events, since they had more control over those area's. So not every single gameplay idea we can think off could be useable.

But one of the core principals of a procedually generated world (as I understand it, correct me if I'm wrong) is creating alogarithms that prevent certain things from happening. Diablo's dungeon crawling system needs to make sure there's no inaccessible area's anywhere and that everything can be reached. Something similar would need to happen to the Ember worlds. You need places to travel to and from, especially if the T.H.M.P.R. is going to be the main event of the game and needs to walk back from the mining site to the base. You can incorporate in each procedural generation that a minimum of X land needs to be buildable, or can be transformed enough to build things on top for the template bases.

And to answer your question, I am on the same page with you, I really like to see as diverse types of gameplay as possible, as long as they are engaging and challenging. Like I don't want to see missions put in the game to mark off a checkmark.

However with the reveal of the frame, and the fact that we will be running around pretty bulky mecha suits, I feel like they will be limited to what we will be reasonably be able to do.
Like I don't see mecha trying to sneak around, I mean they can add that but it would be pretty silly.
Also I feel like a lot of indoor gameplay would not work to well either, unless we will costly fight in large vehicle hangers or something.

Right now I see gameplay been mostly hectic warfare in the open or around some structures, which is all good and fun, but they definitely will have expand and diverse that at development goes on.

I think it's all about perspective.
These Mecha's might be just as "tall" as the Firefall characters visually. And considering they are made out of titanium aerogel (gel-like titanium oxide?) they are still pretty light. I doubt that most of the enemy critters will be small either, so hiding from them in a light but large frame shouldn't be too difficult.

So even if you don't think it's visually possible, what would you really like to see? Enemy invaders transporting goodies and bombs across your territory and you need to attack them? Having to go into a nest and kill a big queen-critter to stop them from threatening your production? Setting up a fortress and attacking a nearby alien fortress to steal codes until you can penetrate their defenses and win? (IE a form of CTF). You want stealth? Attrition? solving puzzles? activating a giant bomb and running away giggling?

 

[Vladplaya]

Err nope. they're not going to hand craft the whole thing. read grummz reply five posts above you

I wasn't talking about hand creating the whole thing, I was taking about hand crafting parts that need to be hand crafted, which I am sure they will end up doing, hence why he said *some* kind of generation.

Fully procedural generation trends to be pretty derpy at times.

Also in Unreal tools you can have computer generate the whole world first, then you just skin over it and fix abnormalities by hand, and later on artist can work on whatever party needs to be adjusted or prettied up.

I doubt they will go with procedural generated a sense of Minecraft, where you can walk into any direction and the game will keep generating the world. This is what procedural generation is, and Grummz said that pockets, although large, will be limited in size.

 

[Bl4ckhunter]

I want talking about hand creating the whole thing, I was taking about hand crafting parts that need to be hand crafted, which I am sure they will end up doing, hence why he said *some* kind of generation.

Fully procedural generation trends to be pretty derpy at times.

Also in Unreal tools you can have computer generate the whole world first, then you just skin over it and fix abnormalities by hand, and later on artist can work on whatever party needs to be adjusted or prettied up.

I doubt they will go with procedural generated a sense of Minecraft, where you can walk into any direction and the game will keep generating the world. This is what procedural generation is, and Grummz said that pockets, although large, will be limited in size.

Everything is limited in size due to hardware limits, even with minecraft loading past a certain number of chunks tends to kill servers (i don't know if this happens in Singleplayer but whatever), even with fully procedural generation you have to hand craft "something" be it minecraft cubes or something else, and besides procedural generation is a broad term that isn't limited to "load as you go" system, Rust for example generates the maps all at once but they're still procedurally generated.
Goes without saying that the game can't procedurally generate stuff like threes or chairs from pure nothingness, some art assets have to be premade.
From that to saying that they'll hand make maps there's a lot of distance, i find it unlikely that they will given budget restrains, they'll probably leave things as they end up generated unless it completely screws up

 

[Grummz]

We just don't know what method of procedural generation we will use yet. We have to look at every option from real-time to pre-proessed procedural generation that generate a library of maps that are randomly drawn upon. Sorry I don't have more info. All I know it we can't handcraft the maps like we did with Firefall and we need to find ways to generate a lot of terrain, and a good variety, with a very tiny team and budget.

 

[Nunaden]

meh, maybe with a method like the one used in terratech. They just made a few hand made objects, like mountains and dales and the rest was random generated, wasn't bad.

I don't know much about generating, im mainly from games where you had to make maps with your bare hands. Even when there was a map generator for cube 2, we editors prefered to run over with the raise/lower tool over the map to make a landscape. and in BFME we had no other choice to do that xD

 

[avalon1k]

We're going to be using *some* kind of procedural generation. This might be based on algorithms, or by assembling random tiles. The actual methods and results have yet to be explored.

Ember needs big zones with lots of room. Doing all of this by hand would be prohibitive for a tiny dev team and limited budget.

We'll start with one planet. A very large planet. You'll open up terraforming "pockets" (i.e. zones) on this planet to explore for resources and build bases. If we get the budget and support, we may open it up to multiple planets. But we need to take it one small step at a time.

A note on Terraforming: Right now all terraforming means is locating a new place on the planetary map and dropping down a terraforming machine. That will clear a space on the planet. Zones will not be connected, as its far simpler and cheaper to have separated pockets with loading. We're a small small team.

This is a wise way to do it. Too many games have tried to bite off more than they can chew. The story line can progress from a section of a planet to the whole planet to a universe and on. That would be awesome. There might be one planet (outlaw) where there are players fighting players...but the game should ONLY be balanced for PVE.

 

[HamOnRye]

We just don't know what method of procedural generation we will use yet. We have to look at every option from real-time to pre-proessed procedural generation that generate a library of maps that are randomly drawn upon. Sorry I don't have more info. All I know it we can't handcraft the maps like we did with Firefall and we need to find ways to generate a lot of terrain, and a good variety, with a very tiny team and budget.

Are you thinking something along the lines of the random dungeon generator (ala Diablo), with known tile sets?

 

[Luisedgm]

Bah i hate zones split between loading screens or instanced content, but i guess there is no option if we want a vast world.

 

[Beerdog6]

Just a few thoughts/ideas. Pencil out a general layout of the world. Say divide it up based on the Crixa lore. different
factions laying claim to different areas, Ala Antarctica. Maybe you could have some kind of "wireframe" terrain to be filled in later as funds/time allows. Start for your alpha group a very small section. Say in the lore, the first terra forming group. Have it a small island. Something the first group of devs can manage. It can later be the jump off base for future Stakeholders.
Perhaps you can have some kind of contests for content creation. Just a suggestion. I know people are already
generating ideas.