In the light of procedurally generated universe

I am not a NMS player, but just from my own casual observation of the concept art Stardock has provided for the different types of landscapes and alien critters they are designing, I'm going to go ahead and say Stardock (and most other companies) have the right approach to design, whereas NMS did not.

As many have already pointed out with NMS, the problem with procedurally generated content is that computer software isn't really imaginative enough [at least not yet] to create truly unique lifeform designs that have a start-to-finish conceptual execution. A lot of them look disproportionate and peculiar because they are just variations on a boilerplate design theme.

When an artist designs something like a little alien creature from the ground up, they take a holistic approach to deciding how its biology came to be and what purpose its serves, and how it might interact with its environment. And as much as advocates for procedurally generated aliens might want to believe otherwise, computers are not artists, and procedurally generated content is a long way off from ever providing that kind of variety and thoughtful design to come up with really imaginative flora and fauna that look like something designed by real artists.

I'm thoroughly impressed with the sketches Stardock has given us so far for the variety of alien critters and landscapes. They look way better than the silly procedurally generated junk from NMS. If Stardock can really execute on those concept sketches, they're going to make me and a lot of fans pretty happy.

I was actually more concerned about them having enough manpower when it comes to art and design.

Well, Brad Wardell has gone on record saying this is Stardock's biggest undertaking thus far, and that they have more manpower for this title than for anything else they've worked on. So I guess the answer is yes? They don't provide very detailed comments about these things, unfortunately. We'll be able to see what they've been up to as more art assets are released in the near future.

Btw. i think that there might be some artists in the community who could contribute artwork, models and etc, for free for the plain vanilla game (i.e. not mods) and might be even ready to sign waiver (so they won`t have to get paid for their artwork) and etc.

I think that if there is need for manpower then Stardock might ask for "free of charge & waiver type help" and some will answer the call.

You should've stopped right there.

NMS creatures are PG, SCO are not. Let's get that out of the way first, so you're no concerned about seeing ridiculous looking creatures (which was the case with NMS).

NMS planets while repetitive in nature as all things PG are fantastic. The PG variable limits could've been wider to make for example totally flat, caveless planets etc, but I think a lot of planet PG was restrained by gameplay mechanics such as necessary variety of elements (so you don't get stranded or some such) etc. SCO on the other hand, might suffer from the "planet flatness disease", since that's what you want most of your planets to be like, 'cause lander/exploration mechanics. It would be super cool to have a mountainous, maze-like planets where you could only explore in the valleys, but I wouldn't bet my house on it.

My main gripe with NMS planet variety was that most of the planets had their PG variables somewhere in the middle of their range - absolute most (98%) of the planets were hilly, flora and fauna present (80%) and atmosphere color variety was very limited. But, NMS had its moments. Some planets were truly breathtaking looks-wise, the game kept wowing you even after 60-80 hours of play. They were super rare, but unfortunately, in other aspects, there was nothing special about them.

From what I see, SCO has already beat NMS in at least one regard - sand dunes planets. NMS doesn't have have those.

I urge Stardock to implement as much color variety in planet PG. For example: red, green, blue sand dune planets, monochromatic (grayscale, spectrum scale (rainbow worlds?), any color scale) crystalline planets etc. Use pre-determined color pallets that are known to work well together.

For example, I'd like too see Black/Green mushroom planet(s) with Cyan and Magenta particles floating in the air:

Pink/Brown planets with Baby Blue features like flora snake-like patches/river/lakes. (EDIT: you got that covered with mushroom planet concept)

Etc. etc.

Make those rare and make most of the planets Moon/Mars like (flat, barren, empty) so you don't have to land on every planet in a star system, but star systems don't feel empty.

This is something we shouldn't be concerned with TBH. We're not running the business. Just the feedback train.

@Lone_Utwig: Yeah, I know there are. I'm one of them. I reached out to Stardock about this very subject as I am interested in writing music for the game. I didn't really get a firm answer and I can't really blame them. My impression was that the way they are designing the game to incorporate fan modding is basically the response to such inquiries. If these forums have proved anything, it's that I think they understand there's no way to satisfy everyone, and that their smartest move is to allow fans to create their own content to avoid any legal obligations.

My conclusion is that is as much as Stardock would appreciate free help, they're probably not interested in the potential repurcussions of being on the hook to reimburse people somewhere down the line if they should suddenly change their minds about working for free, and they aren't interested in drawing up waivers for them to sign either. This isn't a new concept exclusive to Stardock. If they were interested in someone's talents, they'd probably be discussing a job offer. So I'd still love to write music for some part of game, I just won't be writing it for their part of the game.

Anybody else getting real sick of the NMS circle-jerk?  Can't read a single bit of game news without it coming up.

It's "The Glorious Vision" syndrome.  The procedural generated thing is giving lots of people a "Glorious Vision" of a perfect super-game that the system isn't actually ever going to be capable of creating, but lots of people see this "perfect game" in it that can never actually exist.

In the end they will finally realize that it is a powerful tool, that must be used to create the basis of something that humans must then complete "by hand".  It's patterns are more than recognizable to humans, they stand out.  Jump off the page.  That needs to be "destroyed" before you have something truly usable.  Raw PG will rarely be useful in something that people think is actually good.

We used to call this type of thing the "Glorious Vision", and it's what is going on with NMS.  It is giving a lot of people "Glorious Visions" of a game that will never exist.

^ WTF are you talking about? SC2 had PG planets. It was "perfect" for its time. NMS has the best PG planets in a game to date. Just 'cause the game is trash, it doesn't make all of its components such.

http://www.mit.edu/afs.new/sipb/user/sekullbe/furble/planet.txt

PG is great for some things, generating "dead worlds" to populate a galaxy with is certainly one of them.  Drawing that galaxy map, for example, is not one of them.  In SC2 they carefully designed the map of the galaxy, and PGd the "dead worlds"... then "hand designed" the worlds with life.  An excellent example of exactly how PG should be used.

Only couple, if not one (Earth) planet was hand designed in SC2 to my knowledge. I don't see a problem in PG'ing the galaxy/cluster map. Do you?

But I'm all for hand designed planets here and there.

it depends on what you mean by "galaxy map".  If you are wanting to make something unmanageably big, to be "realistic", then you can do that with just raw PG.  Nobody is likely to notice the patterns and repetition because it is too much for the human brain to comprehend so we just see a mess of stars either way.  But if you are making a manageably sized "game galaxy", then you are probably going to need to re-arrange whatever the computer generates.  Both to destroy the reptetive/pattern of it, and ensure things are good distances from each other for how the game works.  And other reasons, as well.

PG makes people think of an "infinite game" where everything in it is just infinite.  It isn't anywhere near capable of doing that yet, and even if it was that "glorious vision" is not nearly as good a game as those with the vision think it is.  There really is such a thing as too much.

We're talking about SCO here. Let's not talk about imaginative instances unless they are directly related to SCO. I haven't read anything about anything infinite here. I don't think people associate infinite with PG. Not here at least.

Stardock said that SCO galaxy will have 5-6 clusters the size of SC2 each (506 star systems). And about a year ago I suggested to have pre-made constellations, configurations we're already familiar with. But that's not even up to discussion 'cause we don't know what the map is gonna look like.

If Stardock Planet PG dept is very good this is gonna make a helluva variety for PG galaxy. Planets like these should be fairly scarce and varied in color.

My issue with NMS was actually not the procedural generation. It had clunky interface (holding down a mouse click to select something?? what?), the combat didn't feel snappy and fun, and it took way too much grinding to keep exploring. The exploring itself was fun, but didn't feel worth it. 

With the plot driving things forward in Star Control, even if everything else was from NMS I would still play it - but it wouldn't be Star Control, obviously. 

I think Stardock seems to have its head on good here. Everything they've said so far has indicated they understand "personality" is a huge part of star control. Both with the creatures, but also the planets, space ships and so on. Obviously we can give more feedback when we have something to play, but I think the balance (as we've talked over in threads before) is having enough "bare" or "boring" planets that the exciting ones are actually exciting, and also not going too long without running into something exciting.