Here is a musical demo combining Push, Madrona Lab’s Kaivo and Zynaptiq’s new Adaptiverb which sounds like it could be an essential tool for us Ambient muso’s who use reverb as an instrument.
I haven’t been super productive over the last fortnight as I’ve been spending most of my spare time with No Man’s Sky, the latest implementation of a thing I very much like, exploring procedurally generated worlds.
Noctis is probably the earliest obsession in this regard though i’ve always played flight simulators and open world RPGs for much the same reason. While there is an overarching story to the universe it is mostly flavour to set atmosphere.
I showed NMS to Joe and he agreed it was “Noctis on ‘Roids”.
What has been slightly depressing is watching the online tantrums among those who were clearly expecting something more like Star Wars. Game elements are minimal and repetitive but comparable to similar titles with a similar focus on exploration and procedural generation. While it is certainly buggy and unoptimised, something that is more glaring is the apparent disparity between what was demonstrated during development, feeding the hype, and reality. This amusing video summarises it quite well.
It’s quite clear to me the first one does not utilise substantial procedural generation as the creatures look realistic… and dull.
I recall the same negative response to Spore – and this excellent article by Soren Johnson thoughtfully explores the chasm between ground-breaking theories and hard truths about game design. I certainly think that NMS is an interesting case. While it didn’t suffer the same amount of interference with a much smaller development team it certainly seems to be copping a similar backlash.
One thing with Procedural Generation is that you can end up with the “Library of Babel” effect – illustrated above by a generated page from one book, on one shelf, on one wall of the section in the virtual library generated by my birthdate in hexadecimal format. A real page-turner!
If the player can bring some of their own imagination to NMS then I feel it is quite an engaging procedural sandbox but placing this in a commercial game is clearly problematic. Noctis IV was a free game as is the more serious / less gamey Space Engine. Artmatic Voyager (from the makers of Metasynth) is a payware title that generates Procedural Worlds but not real time environments; rather it renders attractive backdrops for you to populate with your own sci-fi assets.
Perhaps the most promising procedural worlds generator on the horizon is Ultima Ratio Regum – but that appeals more to the rogue-like obsessed who also worship at the altar of Dwarf Fortress (nothing wrong with that!)
Anyway – that’s my two cents. To return to the more music focused purpose of this blog – Ohmwrld is something I worked on with Joe that is inspired by virtual worlds and features cover art generated by Bryce, one of the earlier strands of Artmatic Voyager.
And here is something that sounds procedurally generated (but is actually improvised) that I made recently with Paul Forbes-Mitchell.
Final thoughts – the death of Makrotulpa is exaggerated – something new is coming.
Secret Killer Of Names 