grep ‐‐week 39

This week’s headlines in procedural generation and design:

Jotun creators unveil eldritch-horror adventure Sundered
@destructoid.com
This game was just announced, describing itself as ‘replayable Metroidvania’, which is another way of saying ‘I want everyone to click on my link’.  They also reference procedural level creation ala Diablo and a dynamic AI system ala Left 4 Dead.

Chris Roberts on Star Citizen’s Procedural Planets, Alpha 3.0, & CitizenCon
@gamersnexus.net
I suppose I’ll link to this, since it’s y’know topical and all, but it’s a pretty terrible interview with ultra poor quality audio.  Sounds like Chris Roberts is in a closet underwater.  I didn’t really get any takeaways from this, except that Star Citizen might have a little bit of procgen in creating planets.

Could ‘Astroneer’ Be The ‘No Man’s Sky’ Killer We’ve Been Waiting For?
@techtimes.com
“Astroneer, like No Man’s Sky, is procedural generated, but only to a degree. Many parts of the game have been handcrafted by the developers, and that’s a good thing because in theory, it should make the world more fun.”  — More fallout from No Man’s Sky.  Is ‘procedurally generated’ a dirty word now?

Mass Effect Andromeda: Curated Story Content vs. Procedural Generation
@gamingbolt.com
“Procedural generation isn’t bad in and of itself.” — I’ll take that as a yes.

Hearthstone pro says randomness isn’t really the game’s biggest problem
@polygon.com
Here’s an interesting take on the use of RNG and player perception of randomness.  This sort of ties back to last week’s article about how developers communicate about procgen with their audience.  This is something I’ve debated at length with colleagues ever since playing Tharsis earlier this year.  This is great fodder for future posts.

Take a close look at the level design of some exceptional Zelda games
@BossKeys
This seems a bit off-topic but the MVP of my new game can lightly be described as ‘procedural Legend of Zelda’ (moar clickbait ftw), and so I love these Zelda level design breakdowns.  This video introduces a very nice graph notation for describing Zelda dungeons that will make a  great reference when I start building my own puzzle generator.