i agree but also disagree.in order for something like this to happen you would need AAA story telling that would suck you in and not let go. to keep from getting board. thats something they just do not have right now. dont get me wrong there are some episodes with good writing. but not good enough to not have action in it. come to think of it the only games with storys good enough to keep you really hooked are some single player rpgs
i agree but also disagree.in order for something like this to happen you would need AAA story telling that would suck you in and not let go. to keep from getting board. thats something they just do not have right now. dont get me wrong there are some episodes with good writing. but not good enough to not have action in it. come to think of it the only games with storys good enough to keep you really hooked are some single player rpgs
That's basically the opposite of what procedually generated content is. There is not much story to speak of, you write your story yourself. Written and scripted stories you find in the episodes.
^ Memory Alpha.org is not canon. It's a open wiki with arbitrary rules. Only what can be cited from an episode is. ^
"No. Men do not roar. Women roar. Then they hurl heavy objects... and claw at you." -Worf, son of Mogh
"A filthy, mangy beast, but in its bony breast beat the heart of a warrior" - "faithful" (...) "but ever-ready to follow the call of the wild." - Martok, about a Targ
"That pig smelled horrid. A sweet-sour, extremely pungent odor. I showered and showered, and it took me a week to get rid of it!" - Robert Justman, appreciating Emmy-Lou
i agree but also disagree.in order for something like this to happen you would need AAA story telling that would suck you in and not let go. to keep from getting board. thats something they just do not have right now. dont get me wrong there are some episodes with good writing. but not good enough to not have action in it. come to think of it the only games with storys good enough to keep you really hooked are some single player rpgs
That's basically the opposite of what procedually generated content is. There is not much story to speak of, you write your story yourself. Written and scripted stories you find in the episodes.
Would you consider a map that just contains 5 Tholian Ships viable Exploration Content?
A map with 5 sensor anomalies to scan?
And I really mean just like that. No stuff like "Starfleet has send us to patrol this region of space" or "Imperial probes have detected a few anomalies that warrant further inspection." Nothing.
Star Trek Online Advancement: You start with lowbie gear, you end with Lobi gear.
I think the quality aspect is still quite valid - there were always maps where you could fall through the floor, buildings that would float, objects or enemies almost or entirely unreachable. This isn't somethnig that they generally allow mission maps to behave like - even if they get released with such bugs, they are usually adressed quickly. And it can be adressed quickly because people were just actively working on it. it's not stuff that has been sleeping hidden for weeks until someone encounters it and decides to report it.
Yeah, in exploration clusters there were thousands of these mini missions, per cluster! It wasn't until someone noticed and actually reported it that something could get done.
Having read over the OP in more detail it is essentially the old exploration system combined with a new currency (exploration marks) and a shop for said currency.
As i recall, the problem with the "old" exploration maps generator was the relative small number of map variations and te fact that it interfered with other content in the game.
I would like to see the federation counterpart for "empire defense" make a comeback, but it should not be rushed with all the potential havoc which comes with it.
and also the immense size of the data. allegedly it took up almost as much data as the entire rest of the game. For semi-random, and rather repetitive missions.
That sounds like merely the result of very lazy and poor programming. Take a look at Elite: Dangerous.
Elite Dangerous doesn't create missions, just maps. Of course, it's also technology developed 5 years after STO.
Same thing for Star Citizen and, as far as I can, see No Man's Sky.
It's pretty impressive what can be done in terms of map generation. Apparently Star Citizens current generator procedurally generates an entire planet as you aproach and land on it - of course only the parts you can actually see are generated. But they got their own team in Germany working on the project and Star Citizen is in development now for more years than Cryptic had for STO AFAIK. And also a much larger budget. (And the planet they showed in a recent video was not habitated and didn't even seem to have life, basically just a giant stone desert.)
But still, no mission content there. Just a map.
Cryptics efforts probably also directed on creating mission templatse with exchangable elements. (The Borg were not the only species after artifacts of their 3rd Dynasty.)
The Dragon Quest games apparently had the ability to compress an entire random map into a few numbers. These had no story though. But that could be saved separately. Apparently it's the map geo that took so much space with the clusters.
I think a problem is that the "story" needs to be linked to the map - NPC and interact placements and so on. And potentially also conditionally appearing elements. Creating a system that can do that is probably possible (it has to be, or Star Citizen, Elite Dangerous and No Man's Sky are all heading towards a dead end), but a complex task.
Well, yes and no.... See... Quest functions are tied to objects inside the map and not the map geo itself. So you have the list of quest objects, and the map randomizer. The Dragon Quest Monsters 2 version actually did have goals and such that you could complete while you were there.. some of which you kinda needed to complete actually. You couldn't recruit monsters until you beat the map boss. So I usually did that first. Also, there was sometimes up to 3 minibosses to beat as well. The game remembered if these points had been cleared. As well as whether you had looted the dungeons.... These seemed to be Boolean flags though, and thus may had only represented a dozen bits of data... or maybe 8.
Would you consider a map that just contains 5 Tholian Ships viable Exploration Content?
A map with 5 sensor anomalies to scan?
And I really mean just like that. No stuff like "Starfleet has send us to patrol this region of space" or "Imperial probes have detected a few anomalies that warrant further inspection." Nothing.
That again? Didn't you start the debate sometime before by claiming because someone has to write the templates it doesn't qualify as generated content?
If so, it's missing the point. But to answer the question, yes I would. The dialogue box in the beginning is secondary to the gameplay mechanic here. I wouldn't prefer it as having some kind of on-screen text describing what is happening is just part of the whole system and nothing you can take out of the equation for some reason, it makes as much sense as saying "would you play this game but with your player character missing".
^ Memory Alpha.org is not canon. It's a open wiki with arbitrary rules. Only what can be cited from an episode is. ^
"No. Men do not roar. Women roar. Then they hurl heavy objects... and claw at you." -Worf, son of Mogh
"A filthy, mangy beast, but in its bony breast beat the heart of a warrior" - "faithful" (...) "but ever-ready to follow the call of the wild." - Martok, about a Targ
"That pig smelled horrid. A sweet-sour, extremely pungent odor. I showered and showered, and it took me a week to get rid of it!" - Robert Justman, appreciating Emmy-Lou
A perfect exploration system that's completely random and limitless is impossible or nearly impossible especially Considering Cryptic's resources and manpower.
However, I have no doubt they are putting everything they have into finding a suitable system.
0
rattler2Member, Star Trek Online ModeratorPosts: 58,467Community Moderator
All I have to say is this. Most of the ship functions that were done and you never see were mundane and really REALLY boring. Most of the time a ship spends in space, it's boring patrols where nothing happens, getting from place to place, Spectral analysis, map updating, etc.
Majorly boring stuff guys, it's not always run and gun and blow stuff up.
Star Trek Battles member. Want to roll with a good group of people regardless of fleets and not have to worry about DPS while doing STFs? Come join the channel and join in the fun!
The scan X things in space/ground and the give planet XX items from your replicators were pretty lame i think. Better to just leave those out and put in something else. I no longer think of scanning in STO as scanning...i think of it as moving somewhere and hitting F. To tag an Epohh you chase it and hit F, to take a dirt sample you walk to it and hit F, to scan a puddle of water you walk to it and hit F, to scan an anomaly in space you fly to it and hit F, to transport supplies to a friendly ship you fly to it and hit F. F...F...F....F...F well you know what? F-that (haha see what i did there?). They need to take the scanning minigame and keep moving forward with it and developing it somehow. Or how about instead giving players the ability to direct a boff to scan stuff instead? you walk up to the thing, you hit F and your science officer comes over busts out their tricorder beep boop beep you two converse for a bit and you move on.
Now as far as the replicator thing where you make stuff and donate it to a planet? cant really improve upon this. Unless they add in a barter system or something where you had to warp to a nearby planet or station to get what is needed. Instead of talking to a planet, finding out they need 50 shield generators, then you make the 50 shield generators right there and you are done.
Would you consider a map that just contains 5 Tholian Ships viable Exploration Content?
A map with 5 sensor anomalies to scan?
And I really mean just like that. No stuff like "Starfleet has send us to patrol this region of space" or "Imperial probes have detected a few anomalies that warrant further inspection." Nothing.
That again? Didn't you start the debate sometime before by claiming because someone has to write the templates it doesn't qualify as generated content?
If so, it's missing the point. But to answer the question, yes I would. The dialogue box in the beginning is secondary to the gameplay mechanic here. I wouldn't prefer it as having some kind of on-screen text describing what is happening is just part of the whole system and nothing you can take out of the equation for some reason, it makes as much sense as saying "would you play this game but with your player character missing".
It's more so that we're clear what we are talking about, that this is really what you would enjoy.
And I think if you want a story-less exploration system, then even those tiny dialog boxes would need to go. They are not integral to any procedural creation system. Of course, I suspect that creating a basic "boiler plate" text like "Scan this system for anomalies" or "Patrol the area" would be trivial.
The real problem seemed to have been getting the system to make maps that were really bug-free. Problems like the 3rd Borg Dynasty would be solvable if there was a link between species and type of artifact, at least for pre-rexisting species. Borgs don't have a 3rd dynasty, but maybe they'd use for artifacts of the T'Kon Empire or Omega Molecules or whatever.
But getting ground maps reliably functional seems difficult.
And the other part is - they probably really want this content to be procedurally generated on the fly, not procedurally pre-generated as part of the game install.
Star Trek Online Advancement: You start with lowbie gear, you end with Lobi gear.
Would you consider a map that just contains 5 Tholian Ships viable Exploration Content?
A map with 5 sensor anomalies to scan?
And I really mean just like that. No stuff like "Starfleet has send us to patrol this region of space" or "Imperial probes have detected a few anomalies that warrant further inspection." Nothing.
That again? Didn't you start the debate sometime before by claiming because someone has to write the templates it doesn't qualify as generated content?
If so, it's missing the point. But to answer the question, yes I would. The dialogue box in the beginning is secondary to the gameplay mechanic here. I wouldn't prefer it as having some kind of on-screen text describing what is happening is just part of the whole system and nothing you can take out of the equation for some reason, it makes as much sense as saying "would you play this game but with your player character missing".
It's more so that we're clear what we are talking about, that this is really what you would enjoy.
And I think if you want a story-less exploration system, then even those tiny dialog boxes would need to go. They are not integral to any procedural creation system. Of course, I suspect that creating a basic "boiler plate" text like "Scan this system for anomalies" or "Patrol the area" would be trivial.
The real problem seemed to have been getting the system to make maps that were really bug-free. Problems like the 3rd Borg Dynasty would be solvable if there was a link between species and type of artifact, at least for pre-rexisting species. Borgs don't have a 3rd dynasty, but maybe they'd use for artifacts of the T'Kon Empire or Omega Molecules or whatever.
But getting ground maps reliably functional seems difficult.
And the other part is - they probably really want this content to be procedurally generated on the fly, not procedurally pre-generated as part of the game install.
Well, DWM2 used a map generation system with a multilayered form of randomization.
step1: choose the theme; this could be zombie underworld, desert wasteland, elf forest, or one of several others.
step 2: choose the overworld map layout; the overworld had a number of islands that varied from one big island to 4 small islands.
step 3: place map tiles; this takes premade pieces of modular terrain that are appropriate for the chosen map layout and decorates them using the theme chosen in step 1.
A similar approach for STO would put the story as part of the theme. IE it's a Borg story so we use Borg stuff. In theory, this approach would make maps less glitchy since the maps are not generated as whole objects, and you can test the components much easier than the whole maps.
One major limitation is that you need to make the edges of the terrain tiles match. DWM2 solved this by having edges be uniform. IE if part of the tile edge was water and part was land, the divide was always in the center. Not sure how to solve this in STO since STO has much greater elevation variance than DWM2 did.
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That's basically the opposite of what procedually generated content is. There is not much story to speak of, you write your story yourself. Written and scripted stories you find in the episodes.
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Would you consider a map that just contains 5 Tholian Ships viable Exploration Content?
A map with 5 sensor anomalies to scan?
And I really mean just like that. No stuff like "Starfleet has send us to patrol this region of space" or "Imperial probes have detected a few anomalies that warrant further inspection." Nothing.
My character Tsin'xing
That again? Didn't you start the debate sometime before by claiming because someone has to write the templates it doesn't qualify as generated content?
If so, it's missing the point. But to answer the question, yes I would. The dialogue box in the beginning is secondary to the gameplay mechanic here. I wouldn't prefer it as having some kind of on-screen text describing what is happening is just part of the whole system and nothing you can take out of the equation for some reason, it makes as much sense as saying "would you play this game but with your player character missing".
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However, I have no doubt they are putting everything they have into finding a suitable system.
Majorly boring stuff guys, it's not always run and gun and blow stuff up.
Star Trek Battles member. Want to roll with a good group of people regardless of fleets and not have to worry about DPS while doing STFs? Come join the channel and join in the fun!
http://forum.arcgames.com/startrekonline/discussion/1145998/star-trek-battles-channel-got-canon/p1
Now as far as the replicator thing where you make stuff and donate it to a planet? cant really improve upon this. Unless they add in a barter system or something where you had to warp to a nearby planet or station to get what is needed. Instead of talking to a planet, finding out they need 50 shield generators, then you make the 50 shield generators right there and you are done.
And I think if you want a story-less exploration system, then even those tiny dialog boxes would need to go. They are not integral to any procedural creation system. Of course, I suspect that creating a basic "boiler plate" text like "Scan this system for anomalies" or "Patrol the area" would be trivial.
The real problem seemed to have been getting the system to make maps that were really bug-free. Problems like the 3rd Borg Dynasty would be solvable if there was a link between species and type of artifact, at least for pre-rexisting species. Borgs don't have a 3rd dynasty, but maybe they'd use for artifacts of the T'Kon Empire or Omega Molecules or whatever.
But getting ground maps reliably functional seems difficult.
And the other part is - they probably really want this content to be procedurally generated on the fly, not procedurally pre-generated as part of the game install.
step1: choose the theme; this could be zombie underworld, desert wasteland, elf forest, or one of several others.
step 2: choose the overworld map layout; the overworld had a number of islands that varied from one big island to 4 small islands.
step 3: place map tiles; this takes premade pieces of modular terrain that are appropriate for the chosen map layout and decorates them using the theme chosen in step 1.
A similar approach for STO would put the story as part of the theme. IE it's a Borg story so we use Borg stuff. In theory, this approach would make maps less glitchy since the maps are not generated as whole objects, and you can test the components much easier than the whole maps.
One major limitation is that you need to make the edges of the terrain tiles match. DWM2 solved this by having edges be uniform. IE if part of the tile edge was water and part was land, the divide was always in the center. Not sure how to solve this in STO since STO has much greater elevation variance than DWM2 did.
My character Tsin'xing