Conference Call

GWJ Conference Call Episode 444

Rocket Golfing, Starcraft II: Avoid The Noid or whatever, Hearthstone Blackrock Mountain, Procedural Games, Your Emails and More!

This week Allen, Elysium and Shawn talk about procedural games and stuff.

To contact us, email [email protected]! Send us your thoughts on the show, pressing issues you want to talk about or whatever else is on your mind. You can even send a 30 second audio question or comment (MP3 format please) if you're so inclined.

Fish Tuxedo

Thread of The Week

Let's talk about Bloodborne, difficulty, and accessibility

Chairman_Mao's Timestamps

  • Subscribe with iTunes
  • Subscribe with RSS
  • Subscribe with Yahoo!
Download the official apps
  • Download the GWJ Conference Call app for Android
  • Download the GWJ Conference Call app for Android

Show credits

Music credits: 

Intro/Outtro Music - Ian Dorsch, Willowtree Audioworks

Blown Out - Broke for Free - http://brokeforfree.com/ - 20:51

Building The Sun - Broke for Free - http://brokeforfree.com/ - 35:30

Comments

Wait a sec, I'm confused... The same thread as last week? And I don't recall you three discussing it this time around. Huh.

Glad to hear more about Legacy of the Void, I'm really looking forward to it, as I already said last week, but mostly mainly exclusively for the sake of the single player campaign. As much as I hated the storyline in Heart of the Swarm (don't get me started, but hamfisted sounds about right), I want to see some kind of resolution.

Great talk about procedurally generated games. I'll confess I'm only interested in the concept of it, as I find games more engaging when there's a story, fleshed out characters, a strong narrative. I understand the appeal of procedurally generated games for rogue likes, but I guess they're not for me.

Whoops, updated link!

I made the thread of the week? Well, I'd like to thank the Academy, and my wonderful agent, and my family for letting me be away so much for all these crazy projects.

Ah yes! The thread about Bloodborne and accessibility, I remember now! Not going anywhere near there, because I'm one of those "filthy casuals" who's too scared to play Dark Souls. You nasty elitist Gran Poobah. ^^

I tend to agree with Elysium on Star Citizen.. I fear the game is really now just about building cool ships to continue to sell on the website to continue to raise millions and never actually launch a completed game... It's in their best interest.

Could be an epic disaster in the making.. will be interesting to see the fallout. I bought in early for $250.. and I think added another $50 the next month and since then I've stopped as I started to get nervous.

Stories of people in for $3,000+ are sorta scary.

I've only followed a bit of news. Star Citizen isn't just a big gallery of ships for people willing to pay for them?

Eleima wrote:

Ah yes! The thread about Bloodborne and accessibility, I remember now! Not going anywhere near there, because I'm one of those "filthy casuals" who's too scared to play Dark Souls. You nasty elitist Gran Poobah. ^^

Take it from a fellow filthy casual, the thread is really great and no where near as scary as approaching any of those games is.

The thread was so good that I'm going to make Bloodborne my next big PS4 purchase, once I'm done running around Pillars of Eternity. (I've never even touched the Souls series.)

EDIT - I haven't listened to the episode yet but I'm super stoked at the TotW choice!

Really enjoyed the discussion of procedural games, though I kept waiting for Dwarf Fortress to make an obligatory entrance. I'm so curious as to what No Man's Sky turns out to be, and hope that there is some interesting procedural storytelling worked in there somehow. Definitely see the challenge with getting those procedural ecosystems to function as if they were the result of some kind of history...look forward to discovering whatever it turns out to be in any case!

I have to say that I feel like some real opportunity was wasted in this week's cast, when describing the pricing of Rocket Golf being indicative of a more fully-featured ios game, (likely) without IAP....

Clearly, the price point should have been described as "par for the course" for these experiences!
(wakka wakka)

marcelp wrote:

Clearly, the price point should have been described as "par for the course" for these experiences!
(wakka wakka)

Bonus lost opportunity: After making that remark, Elysium should then have signed off / been signed off as "Sean Sands Trap".

"Sean Sands Trap"

OH WHAT COULD HAVE BEEN!!

marcelp wrote:
"Sean Sands Trap"

OH WHAT COULD HAVE BEEN!!

The take away is I wouldn't putt it past them to choke on those opportunities and drive a wedge between their listeners by leaving us in a bunker of joke whiffs.

TheHarpoMarxist wrote:
marcelp wrote:
"Sean Sands Trap"

OH WHAT COULD HAVE BEEN!!

The take away is I wouldn't putt it past them to choke on those opportunities and drive a wedge between their listeners by leaving us in a bunker of joke whiffs.

Careful, most people don't have the drive to keep up with you, and they might get a little green. If that happens we're in for a hole lot of trouble.

PewPewRobo wrote:

Really enjoyed the discussion of procedural games, though I kept waiting for Dwarf Fortress to make an obligatory entrance.

I was pretty much yelling DWARF FORTRESS at Elysium as he described what he wanted out of world building in a procedurally generated game. What a 'cast to be missing Julian for......

Procedural generation is just another tool in a game maker's toolbox.... it can be used appropriately to great result, or poorly. In that sense it does not differ even a tiny bit from any other game design decision that can be included or omitted from a title.

Hey! I'm Beardley too!

Respec' follicles.

(I wonder what the ratio of Gamers with Beards to Gamers with Razors on staff is anyway.)

It's good my beard isn't on the podcast because (NSFW SPOILER)

Spoiler:

when Elysium said "dong pre-cog" the first thing that popped into my mind was "pre-c**k" and I don't think I would have been able to stop myself from saying it put loud.

We really do sound the same, don't we?

Certis wrote:

We really do sound the same, don't we?

I've never understood why people can't tell you and Andrich apart. You sound completely different.

That is a fabulous troll or even better layers of confusion. Either way, I fully applaud you, Clocky.

I was pretty much yelling DWARF FORTRESS at Elysium as he described what he wanted out of world building in a procedurally generated game. What a 'cast to be missing Julian for......

Yeah, a couple of people have mentioned that to me now, but no doubt. If I'd been in your place I'd have been screaming at the radio too.

Eleima wrote:

Ah yes! The thread about Bloodborne and accessibility, I remember now! Not going anywhere near there, because I'm one of those "filthy casuals" who's too scared to play Dark Souls. You nasty elitist Gran Poobah. ^^

Filthy elitist here, and I'm not looking for that sort of challenge, either.

TheGameguru wrote:

I tend to agree with Elysium on Star Citizen.. I fear the game is really now just about building cool ships to continue to sell on the website to continue to raise millions and never actually launch a completed game... It's in their best interest.

Could be an epic disaster in the making.. will be interesting to see the fallout. I bought in early for $250.. and I think added another $50 the next month and since then I've stopped as I started to get nervous.

Stories of people in for $3,000+ are sorta scary.

$300 for one game isn't scary? I mean, I knew about this difference between us, but I figure it's worth mentioning. That's multiple-months' fun money for some of us.

Certis wrote:

We really do sound the same, don't we?

That is very embarrassing, because I have no trouble telling everyone apart, but for some reason unrelated to aural confusion I typed Elysium when I meant Certis.

A thousand apologies.

IMAGE(http://s.mlkshk-cdn.com/r/GMQJ)

Haven't played Bloodborne, but first time while playing KSP I landed straight on Mun I raise my hands, and will have shouted and performed the joy dance ritual if it wasn't because it was too late night and my wife was sleeping on the room next to the one I was playing.

I never should had that feeling of accomplishment if I have played with a mod that just let me click on a location and the ship will have landed on it's own, never if before I wasn't tried that 20 times before, some of them complete new runs from Kerbal, I forgot the lights, the landing pads were too short, the point of gravity of the ship was too high etc etc etc

So yes, I don't want that on every game, but there is something to say about a game being too challenging or requiring you to invest heavily on it, the payback is huge.

Certis wrote:

IMAGE(http://s.mlkshk-cdn.com/r/GMQJ)

Hey, I thought we agreed to keep the paddlin' inside the Guild!

Star Citizen is such a weird thing, is there any actual game there yet? And people just keep throwing money at them for 3D models.

As to procedural generation. I have my doubts. Maybe to generate the basic outline of something, that is then tuned manually. But I like a carefully hand crafted feel to my games, even if there is little in the way of story line.

Eleima wrote:

Ah yes! The thread about Bloodborne and accessibility, I remember now! Not going anywhere near there, because I'm one of those "filthy casuals" who's too scared to play Dark Souls. You nasty elitist Gran Poobah. ^^

It's actually a pretty cool thread. I'm a filthy casual myself, but I come down on the side of the elitists because I think it's okay that a game doesn't cater to me. There are enough options out there that the existence of a game that demands mastery doesn't impact on my quality of life, and I can respect the creators enough for sticking to their vision.

I feel like there are very few realms where procedural generation can work, as no matter what you're going to have to build it on a set of laws and guidelines. Yet when listening to the podcast today, I began to wonder if you might do a pretty good racing game with procedural track generation. Give it parameters for turns and course length and potential obstacles, and then let it rip. Is it a good track? Choose the option to save it when you're finished the race. Bad one? Just move on.

Then, depending on difficulty, allow the game to generate a track based on which car you selected. Harder turns or rougher obstacles if you chose a higher difficulty, more leisurely race if you chose the opposite.

Don't know how it'd turn out, but I feel like you could probably make a decent racing game that way.

I think Gran Turismo has algorithmic track generation. It didn't go down well with the audience however, because it was sold as a "Track Editor". I agree that procedural race tracks could work very well. Even better, once you have a good algorithm, you would not be restricted to having traditional loops as the only kind of track. You could also have "endless runner" rally tracks generated in real time, perhaps passing through different terrain types with changing coefficients over time (think Minecraft "Amped Mode" vs. normal).

The whole Dwarf Fortress thing was a little surreal. It was like you guys were having a conversation that was explicitly and pointedly about DF, you just didn't know it!

ccesarano wrote:

Don't know how it'd turn out, but I feel like you could probably make a decent racing game that way.

Race the Sun has procedural track generation (though is flying vs driving), but your idea of tying the seed for the level generator to the custom build of your vehicle is really cool.

I got a kick out of the email section, particularly the discussion about dongs appearing and such.

Pretty sure the guy who scours the ether to clean penis pics out of Mario is on Nintendo's forums.

His handle?

Dongbe Gone

I'll get my hat on the way out.