Before NMS hit, I was finishing up my 3rd round of Gothic II (1st round for NotR). It is actually a nice comparison between the two world building techniques. While I am totally enjoying NMS, I definitely am starting to see what can be perceived as lacking when it comes to the procedural world builds. In Gothic 1 and 2, the worlds felt part of the story, it's own character per say. These worlds (and other worlds in procedural games) do tend to have a static/generic feel to them. I'm definitely not complaining, just comparing between the two. I totally understand that this game would NEVER be released if it was hand built...or released after a 13.21 billion year development period.

I wonder what can be done to improve procedural world building. Creative programming? Quantum Computing?

Regardless, NMS is definitely a technical wonder IMHO. But man Gothic II is such a great story set in a world with character :)

I would say the only reason NMS exists is due to the procedural generated aspect of it. There are said to be a Quintillion stars (or is that planets?), that`s 3000000000000000000000000000000 to you if you`re British, which our Devs are.

Whatever, there are at least a million planets to visit. Recreating NMS with hand-made worlds would be nigh impossible. It would take an unheard of amount of man-hours to do, an incredible number of staff and be cost-prohibitive. The only way I can even imagine it possibly happening is if everyone with a computer in the WORLD made and created 10 planet each- And it still wouldn`t be enough that a procedurally-generated system could do in almost no time compared.

Yes, it`s true that procedurally generated worlds lose that `realistic` touch after a while because the Human eye is so discerning. We are so discriminating of imitated things to real-life things (even those of us who hate reality see the differences). It`s why making realistic AI-Human looking robots is so tough and even just CGI imitated humans can`t fully pass the `uncanny valley` test when put up to one of us!

I believe in time, though, procedurally generated worlds will get much better and even manage generated stories that don`t seem copied, after that, few people will even bother doing hand-made worlds because the computer will do it a lot faster with decent dynamic stories too on most worlds ...

I bet people will still be able to tell the difference between human-made and procedurally made though. :)

The future is procedural content. There is no way in the future someone can hand craft massive, system wide or planetary worlds by hand.

The earliest example of the power of procedural was a 97kb (yes,kb) shooter that looked better than most 1GB shooters at the time, kkrieger. Once we saw that we knew the future was procedural once people got it together and learned to use meshes and maps with algorithms correct.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.kkrieger

While No Man's Sky is a decent enough example of terrain generation, game with the most impressive procedural generation of its game world would be, by my limited knowledge, good ol' Minecraft. It generates a wide range of various biomes (vast oceans, jungles, deserts, but also entirely random settlements, dungeons or huge cavern systems).

With that said, naturally, hand-made world will always be much more polished and interesting - the first time around. However, for a game which wants to focus on exploration and emergent gameplay like Minecraft, Starbound or No Man's Sky, random generation makes a lot more sense.

I think "the future" doesn't exist as one single way to go. There will always be people who prefer smaller hand crafted games (and I am on the edge, I like both for their own reason).

My own best case scenario is this:
- A huge procedural universe like NMS
- In that universe you have a few hand crafted areas (planets are too big, so make it just a special area on a planet, space station, an asteroid or whatever) with hand crafted story content (think freelancer or Mass Effect).
- As you progress through the procedural world, (unlock milestones for example) the story content will be triggered gradually, motivating you to go ever on and on to unlock new story missions)
- You can choose to ignore the story or pick it back up whenever you like
- Add mod support with a creation kit, so the community can create their own stories and add them to the game.

Touch up the gameplay with better combat and trade and BAM! My personal perfect game has been made!

Oh cool, you just described Starbound to a letter.

IMHO it is a useless comparison, in the end any game is good to you, as far it is enjoyable to play by you any kind of content creation is used...

Great thoughts, but that last sentence says it all :) Hoe Lee Crap I remember that game!!! I totally agree that not only is it "the future" but that the future is already here. I'm just curious where it will go to get as good as a human. Excellent point, however there are plenty games that are hand-made that I just keep coming back to, Gothic was just one. Super Metriod, The Legend of Zelda, Oblivion, Dark Souls...I could go on and on. They are like returning to your hometown, a pleasure to revisit and explore again.

But yes, Minecraft is one simplistically impressive piece of gaming history at this point. Yep, I like that one definitely. @Fenixp mentioned Starbound, I haven't played it yet but I have had my eye on it. Might give it a go now.

You totally misunderstood the point of this thread. No trolls or haters here. It is a perfect comparison for the possibilities of future games in this genera.

The problem of pg world is, that you need a very complicated formula to get good results and the more complexe the formula is, the more computer power do you need to calculate it. So the main problem of pg is simple, that our computers today are still much too slow for good pg worlds.

And sure, the second problem is that we don't have much games yet that use complex pg worlds, so even the knowledge about pg is still lacking compared to the knowledge we have about hand made 3D worlds. One of the problem is sure that designers are no good coders and coders are no good designers.

But pg is coming, Elite Dangerous use very much pg, Star Citizen use pg for Planets (or better for the rest of the planet that is not hand crafted), NMS use pg, Starbound use pg, Minecraft use it, so pg is coming, in 3D most combined with a voxel engine (like NMS).

I'm really sure that we have in 10-20 years much better and more realistic looking pg worlds, what ever "realistic" mean.


And hand crafted Planets in NMS? Even one bigger planet in NMS made completely by hand would be already too much for Hello Games.

I think the more interesting possibility lies in the use of both. There is no reason why we can't expect to see, using space exploration content similar to No Man's Sky as an example, a game where there are planets which are hand made with unique civilizations of populations with social and political intricacy and nuance necessary for a compelling story where an aspect of the game would be exploring the frontiers, which would be procedurally generated.

Diablo games for example have a centralized town which is not procedurally generated, but the majority of the terrain is. If No Man's Sky were to have well populated, hand crafted capitol planets (or if the space stations were better populated, or the larger ships were) the game wouldn't seem nearly as empty as it begins to when you've visited a number of planets that are essentially the same, broken up by trips to space stations that are exactly the same.

One important reason why the procedurally generated worlds and games will happen is for the real world reason of cost to profit. You need less people, meaning less money to have to pay out, equalling greater profit. Once this stuff really gets off the ground with pcs able to handle it I`ll bet we`ll see most games that are huge using this.

I like procedurally generated games, even the crap ones, even without a story since I make my own `story` as I adventure. I love them. I don`t need to be hand-fed a story.

The sad thing is, most programming people will likely lose their jobs because now the computer can do most of it by itself.
:( But isn`t this the case with everything? No one seems to care where that will bring us.

Ah yes, good game. But I would want something that does all of this AND looks and feels roughly like NMS does (first person with 3 D surroundings, WASD controls) , something that is really immersive (not saying that Starbound can't be, it's just not for me).
In fact, I think NMS is a great start. "All" it needs is improvements in the gameplay, the story content and mod support. :)

Sorry, maybe it is a misunderstanding of a misunderstanding...but I do say read the further comments, they are all wondrous directions.

Seriously...all of you have put forth some amazing ideas. Something technology and us puny humans can hopefully bring to light...now back to exploring...