Procedural game design

[zoombapup]

I've been thinking about Introversion and thier approach to thier new game "Subversion" and it got me thinking about using procedural techniques for game designs.

What I mean is, is it possible to generate random elements in such a way as the overall game still works.

So for instance, if you were doing a puzzle game, could you randomly generate the rules of the game?

Or how about a different take on the idea. What if you were doing an adventure game, could you randomly generate adventure story scenarios that made sense?

[PoV]

Or how about a different take on the idea. What if you were doing an adventure game, could you randomly generate adventure story scenarios that made sense?
Shhhhhhhhh!

Localization issues. :(. Requires *lots* of language homework.

[jankoM]

About adventure... I think it depends how random it is. If it is random in a way that each node has some amount of possible paths to other nodes and you pick a random one of them -- then I think it could work without much more black programming magic. As AIML showed human communication or memory is not so much continuous but trigger-response works very well. In a same way story might only need each two events (current-next) to have a logical link between them... well I don't know..

randomly making rules of a game?... I don't know how this could be done..

[PoV]

About adventure... I think it depends how random it is.
Point and Click Adventure isn't the genre this works in. A lot of that stuff on story writing is an essential starting point. Conflict, Man vs. Man, Man vs. Nature, Man vs. Himself, those wacky classifications. That's a good base for coming up with a list of plot starting points, twists, and so on. From that you can generate the plot outline, a big list of points that the story and world generation use. Of course, random plot and story suffers from the same issues as bad or generic plot. So if your game mechanics are strong enough to stand on their own with a simple story, then you have a tool for replayability. On the plus side, doing research in to story and storytelling will likely make your random story more compelling than the stories found in most games, written mostly by people with little to no writing experience. ;)

randomly making rules of a game?... I don't know how this could be done..
It's not all that random, but it boils down to something like either Super Dudester/Elvis or the Wario Ware games. It's not very effective if you can't safely test all your game variants if they'll work, and not to capitalize on their quantity in how it's played.

[soniCron]

My sincerest apologies for this post in advance:

This would be the discussion of procedural content generation. Procedural game design would actually be rightly referred to as emergent game design and stems from dynamic mechanics that interact with one another to manifest one of an unlimited number of gameplay scenarios.

I know. I'm sorry. I'm just being pedantic. But I got so excited when I saw we were going to discuss the topic and was disappointed to learn otherwise! Please accept my apologies for this asinine post! :o

[LilGames]

Haven't there been RPGs with randomly generated dungeons?

[TimS]

What I mean is, is it possible to generate random elements in such a way as the overall game still works.

So for instance, if you were doing a puzzle game, could you randomly generate the rules of the game?

The problem here is that the goal for the algorithm is "a fun mechanic", so to arrive at the goal via procedural methods is going to be complicated. Theoretically, if you had the chops to code such a thing AND an army of players to weight the "fun" of each iteration, you could randomly and genetically change the rules and the mechanics of a game over time based on user feedback, eventually honing in on a fun game (and probably one unlike anything that had been created... but it's hard to say given the pre-trained minds of your army of players).

Now if you could change the rules of the game on the fly as the player was having or not having fun... there's some good times, right thar.

(discordian checkers anyone?)

-Tim

[ZeHa]

Check out "Indiana Jones Desktop Adventures", I only played the Demo version (which only "generates" a single adventure), but the full version made a new adventure with every launch. It WAS possible, though that particular game wasn't too successful.

But it's a cool idea, of course, and I think with proper research and planning, it's also possible to create a game like that.

One thing that would be bad about it: You can't ask your buddy how to get along some difficult point ;) (perhaps expand the game concept to a 4-player-online-game or something ;) )

[electronicStar]

Point and Click Adventure isn't the genre this works in. A lot of that stuff on story writing is an essential starting point. Conflict, Man vs. Man, Man vs. Nature, Man vs. Himself, those wacky classifications. That's a good base for coming up with a list of plot starting points, twists, and so on. From that you can generate the plot outline, a big list of points that the story and world generation use. Of course, random plot and story suffers from the same issues as bad or generic plot. So if your game mechanics are strong enough to stand on their own with a simple story, then you have a tool for replayability. On the plus side, doing research in to story and storytelling will likely make your random story more compelling than the stories found in most games, written mostly by people with little to no writing experience. ;)

I see you've done some research in the field of randomized storytelling.
I've been down that road too:)

[PoV]

Check out "Indiana Jones Desktop Adventures"
I haven't tried it, but I wanted to use somebody's note as a starting point. I actually didn't think it could work for an adventure game (random story), or rather I couldn't figure out how. But after thinking about it more, I imagine you can create a game with a fixed set of locations (only some used per story), a list of characters, props and tools, and generate a detective story around an arrangement. It'll probably boils down to a supped up version of Clue, but still.

I see you've done some research in the field of randomized storytelling.
I've been down that road too
Yeah, I've certainly put some thought in to it. I have an RPG concept that I think can utilize even a flawed random storytelling quite well. But it's content and engine requirements make it more expensive than I'm spending currently, so it'll have to wait. :)

[zoombapup]

Ok, imagine this scenario:

A "mystery" game, where you have a fixed set of assets, be it characters, items, locations within a mansion, methods of killing, responses to events (based on the structure of the method of killing) and so on.

Do you think it'd be possible to generate a compelling game that randomized those elements? Or would the knowledge of the randomization cause the player to feel that the thing is pointless (as it is basically never truly solved).

[Mikademus]

Ok, imagine this scenario:

A "mystery" game, where you have a fixed set of assets, be it characters, items, locations within a mansion, methods of killing, responses to events (based on the structure of the method of killing) and so on.

Do you think it'd be possible to generate a compelling game that randomized those elements? Or would the knowledge of the randomization cause the player to feel that the thing is pointless (as it is basically never truly solved).

Didn't Sierra On-Line's "The Colonel's Bequest" have some semi-random elements to its story? That game was based on Cluedo and Agatha Christie...

[electronicStar]

Ok, imagine this scenario:

A "mystery" game, where you have a fixed set of assets, be it characters, items, locations within a mansion, methods of killing, responses to events (based on the structure of the method of killing) and so on.

Do you think it'd be possible to generate a compelling game that randomized those elements? Or would the knowledge of the randomization cause the player to feel that the thing is pointless (as it is basically never truly solved).
The problem with randomized mechanisms is that the human brain is very good for recognizing patterns and repeting structures, so after a while it becomes obvious to the player how the code is randomizing the different parts and the brain becomes focused on solving the mechanism, not the story that's upfront.
So you have to make sure that your mechanism is compelling and fun, as for the story bits make sure they aren't too long/boring to read because the player won't even read them if it's not necessary for solving the game

That said there are good examples of randomized storytelling mechanisms in boardgames/cardgames, IMO there's a lot of inspiration to be taken from there.
I'm not talking about Cluedo, there are better examples than this one.

[HairyTroll]

Ok, imagine this scenario:

A "mystery" game, where you have a fixed set of assets, be it characters, items, locations within a mansion, methods of killing, responses to events (based on the structure of the method of killing) and so on.

Sounds very much like Clue/Cluedo (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cluedo).
Didn't Lords of Midnight (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lords_of_Midnight) randomly generate a lot of each new game?
As did Valhalla (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valhalla_(computer_game))

[jankoM]

SAHM (Strange adventures in Haunted Mansion) could be interesting too... like SAIS (Strange adventures in Infinite Space) --very-- is...

[GolfHacker]

I did purchase "Indiana Jones Desktop Adventures" when it came out, as well as the Star Wars equivalent "Yoda Stories". They were fun for a little while, but structure of nearly every story was identical, and you quickly learned the pattern: find item x for character a, which is either in the possession of character b who wants item y or is in location p which you can't reach without item z. Do this 3-5 times (depending on which skill level you selected), until you unlock the final puzzle - which was one of 20 or so prewritten plot scenarios.

Darkstone was another game that randomly generated quests and dungeons. I really enjoyed this game, but it suffered from similar problems: only a handful of prewritten plots. Also, even though the dungeons were randomly generated, they followed a set of predefined patterns (necessary to ensure you could get through it and not have a lot of dead-ends that made no sense). After playing the game for a little while, you quickly picked up on the patterns.

I've looked at doing randomly generated stories, and PoV is right. It would take a lot of work, and even then it can't be 100% random or the resulting stories would make no sense - there has to be some precanned content and constraints placed on it. To build something meaningful and immersive where the player doesn't pick up on patterns would take a lot of time.

I highly recommend reading "Interactive Storytelling: Techniques for 21st Century Fiction" (http://www.glassner.com/andrew/writing/books/interactive-storytelling.htm), by Andrew Glassner. This book really got me thinking about the issues involved and potential solutions for procedurally generating stories for adventure games. But it also made me realize the monumental effort it would take for a lone developer like me working part-time to create such a game (even a plain-text ASCII game).

[Agent 4125]

A "mystery" game, where you have a fixed set of assets, be it characters, items, locations within a mansion, methods of killing, responses to events (based on the structure of the method of killing) and so on.

Murder on the Zinderneuf did something like this:
http://www.lemon64.com/reviews/view.php?id=272