Star Citizen - Procedural Generation

Erillion

Here is a nice article (and video) about procedural generation in Star Citizen.

http://www.gamersnexus.net/news/1602-pax-star-citizen-procedural-generation-interview

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Time Stamp     Question      Summary of Answer

0:27 Gamescom Recap

Chris discusses V0.9 alpha, indicates a next-week launch, talks racing, and more.

Control mapping and multicrew ship combat previews referenced.

3:50 What is CIG's definition of "Procedural Generation?"

It seems like so many companies use it as a buzz-word now -- how do you define it? "We are going to use it as a tool for universe building. I know a lot of people think Star Citizen is purely hand-crafted and that something like Elite or No Man's Sky is all procedural, but the reality is that all of these games have a mix of hand-crafted and procedural stuff in them."

Chris notes how procedural generation will be deployed modularly to "help" in world and universe creation, rather than replacing a hand-built approach.

Voxel approach discussed.

 

7:50 What's the current status of the team? How many are working on procedural generation?

Total team size is now 271 people, more or less. Includes contractors.

Procedural generation team recruits assistance from well-known industry veterans (unnamed).

 

9:00 What types of content will be procedurally generated? Planets? Stars? Systems?

Not ships. Not enemies. Planets and stars for sure. Systems might be generated in limited part by procedural generation as the game ages, but it isn't an immediate desire or concern. Discusses philosophy of deploying procedural generation as a helping tool. Discusses limits as players consume content faster than development.

 

10:25 What sort of constraints are being placed on generation? Planet size, etc.

Too early to say. Moving to 64-bit, which is a huge change for Cry Engine, but it's needed for scale and special handling of planets.

32-bit doesn't handle the size of a planet vs. size of a space ship (scaling) very well.

 

11:34 What's the next milestone / pipeline for procedural generation? Still in R&D. First major milestone procedural generation is being used for will be asteroids, freeing up artist resources. Voxel mining.

 

12:35 Conclusion. Thanks!"

 

So .. to me it sounds like

 

Step 1 (at game launch) .... asteroid fields, asteroids, modular frontier bases, parts of cities (420 ish in 100 systems),

                                                  planetary surfaces and weather systems as seen from orbit

 

Step 2 ... exploring planetary surfaces on foot or in a buggy   (limited size areas), finding resources or alien cities

 

Step 3 ... planet exploration (total planet), partial system generation (placement of asteroid fields etc.)

 

Step 4 ... system generation (never totally random)

 

Never:  ships, enemies, fully automated star system generation

 

Guiding principle:  higher level of detail than e.g. has been shown for No Man's Sky or (planned) for Elite: Dangerous

 

 

When CR says "enemies ... never" i speculate that the generation of pirates for the bounty hunter missions (think mission terminals in older games, that give you endless missions) will contain some procedural generation elements. After all he has a pool of names from several tenthousand backers whose names are supposed to appear in game somewhere (perhaps as pirates). And if you add a touch of "Shadow of Middle Earth" nemesis system to that, it would be very cool for some of these pirates to become legends in their own right as they slay multiple players (or survive the destruction of their ships time and time again .... e.g. "Ole Cyber-Peg-leg Marty Jones, da dastardly Cutlass-pirate, yarr !!"

 

 

Have fun

JonBonJawa

buzzword indeed, since No Mans Sky trailer with their "Procedural everything".

This is one thing I absolutely do not want to see in SC, or only used rarely and with caution, not starting with that whole random generated maps/dungeons thing and make X systems with random names, thinning out population.

Eve is already too big with its thousands of systems, at some point you stop being an MMO because everyone will play somewhere else if your playfields are ridiculously oversized.

Privateer was big enough with 50 systems, didn´t even go to all of them I guess, but each one was unique and had character and a backstory going on. I prefer quality and depth over quantity.

 

 

 

DocBrody

the last thing this game needs is procedural generation, I´d rather go for content and gameplay focused on 10 locations than having a billion random areas with nothing to do