[joosters]

I agree - the 2015 e3 demo video was a disappointment to me. The whole "Let's pick a random planet to fly to" sounds awesome, but then it's a big letdown when it looks remarkably similar to the ones in the other videos.

The problem is you can have an unimaginably large number of unique planets but yet they still all end up looking the same. Sure, the coastlines might vary or the colouring may be mildly different, but if the gameplay effect is negligible, then it's not an advantage.

I was (unrealistically) thinking that there would be planets with bustling cities, unique architecture, races, cultures and technologies.

[hacker_9]

Yeah I was thinking it would be something like Mass Effect with cities generated by overlaying algorithms. Something like: 1. Generate buildings 2. Generate transport links 3. Generate mission objectives 4. Refactor city layout to make objectives harder, and so on until a relatively stable (and fun to play!) environment is created.

They could even import races from nearby planets that have already been generated if it made sense that they would have colonised the new planet also.

Obviously those steps are very high-level and the genius would be in making it all actually work together... but yeh, just seems like the hype machine was in overdrive and really this is just Spore 1.1

[pavel_lishin]

There's no better way to spend a half hour online than to look at people's projects that generate cities. If they do a decent write-up along with some videos and demos, it really shows you just how difficult it can be for a simple fly-through 3D video. I can't imagine generating whole cities and cultures that you can interact with.

[hacker_9]

Yeah it can get complex, I even know someone who got a job because they showed off a city they created with procedural generation in an interview! But that was just layout of buildings and roads, the next part of bringing it to life with people I imagine is even more complicated.

[obstinate]

> sounds awesome

I think that's why people keep on making games like this, but all past attempts have utterly failed at being interesting, except where human construction and ingenuity impinges on the random.