So we will be able to create unique buildings with procedual creation. That´s great. Will build a great fortress. But are there other things that are created that way as well? Can my people have their unique airships? Or are there randomly created enemies (could use a system like spore, only with random created creatures)? Can I at least pick modules for the vehicles and outfit them with my choice of weapons? Can I individually equip my soldiers or are there fixed classes? ´Cause you know, have my own unique heroes fighting the unthinkable creations of hell was the most fun part of DF for me.
Someone in the weird ideas thread suggested procedurally generated gadgets and machines and such, but that would probably a massive new level of work to implement.
Yeah the procedural extrudation of buildings is pretty straightforward because houses are shaped with simple shapes. For more complex and intricate stuff you'd need a wholly different tech
Airships could have some proc'd features, like number of engines, location of engines (central/side/upper/lower/front mounted), size/number/location of fins, pointyness/fatness of envelope, etc. But it's also possible they want to use some of these details to represent tech level (if you have a Legendary Airshipwright working with Adamantium and Plutonium the ships would look different from a fishermen working with balsawood and rubber bands!) rather than mechanic-less cosmetics. Monsters similarly could have proc'd horns/tendrils/spines to go with their proc'd fire/acid breath, wings, hypnosis, etc, without needing quite so deep a system as Spore.
Well then it would require shittons of 3D model and texture assets, which would kinda defeat the point of having something procedural
For airships and vehicles it could preety much use the same technology as for the houses, I think. Maybe some adjustments... The problem is that we don´t know how powerfull the engine actually is, since what we saw until now is more or less concept rendering. But if spore managed it a couple years ago, why shouldn´t it be possible now? Especially if they are going for four-core and upward specifications.
Actually there's nothing inherently simple about them. Not only can they be shaped in numerous weird ways they need to have certain features and connect pipes and such. The buildings would be still incredibly difficult to code.
Of course, what I mean is that the tech to do this : Is different from the tech that would allow to generate random monsters/airships that look convincing
Buildings we've promised. Everything else, we'll see. We have actually discussed assembling 'monsters' out of random body parts, but this is nothing final and our foremost goal is to establish a "minimum viable game" in terms of both quality/playability and deliver we've said we would absolutely deliver. (But feel free to speculate and give us more ideas! I like the procedural airship thing, actually, and there was talk of procedural inventions/gadgets ... )
Thanks for clearing that up. It´s nice to see the developers answering the forum. I guess it IS preety early in development, though.
Procedurally generated monsters would be badarse. maybe a database of textures and models, with a random ability for basic randomness? Much like dwarf fortress, and (from my very limited knowledge) shouldn't be too hard to set up. When a random monster comes onto the map, it has those three options randomly selected. So you could have a crimson slug that emits poisonous gas, or a blue-tinted diggle that spits webs.
Well most of companies start communicating on their game when they can't possibly change it anymore (i'm closely following Europa Universalis IV development, but now the design was mostly set in stone when they announced it), so it's good for once we can talk about development early on with devs
