Procedural terrain.. what about procedural weapons / units?

Hi guys,

Just going off on a bit of a crazy tangent here. I've been playing Borderlands 2 lately and trying to understand just what makes that game so much fun to play, and thinking about what it would take to move the PVE experience of RTS games up to that level, especially in the context of a big Galactic War and how to keep it fun and interesting.

A big part of the replayability of the game is built around the way it keeps delivering content that seems unique because it mixes pieces of weapons, as well as pieces of enemies.

So my question is kind of a technical one for Neutrino -

In the context of a 'Tower Defense' mode, how possible would it be to try to procedurally generate enemy units? Namely to have a library of different arms, legs, weapons, etc and be able to assemble them and throw them at the player?

Re: Procedural terrain.. what about procedural weapons / uni

Tanks and guns (and to a lesser extent, wings). Look at WZ2100.

Legs? Going to be more complicated.

Re: Procedural terrain.. what about procedural weapons / uni

Indeed. I know it's been done, just wondering if the engine has even a teeny bit of support for the idea

Supcom / TA would not have supported this, since they load their full unit lists at the beginning of the game ( as far as I understand anyways). You could make on-the-fly changes to blueprints, but not actually add new ones.

Re: Procedural terrain.. what about procedural weapons / uni

SupCom could attach units on to other units. Neruz tried this a few times.

Re: Procedural terrain.. what about procedural weapons / uni

True, but they also acted like units attached to other units, which made it hard to control the unit (think trying to get a transport to 'attack' a ground target with its attached units)

So I suppose in a way all that would really be needed would be a system in the engine which allowed you to designate a collection of units as a single unit, so that orders to the 'master' unit would be passed down to the children.

Re: Procedural terrain.. what about procedural weapons / uni

Spore did this quite well, so it should at least be possible. Metal Fatigue allowed you do to build giant death mecha with various components on the fly (and steal enemy bodyparts in the middle of battles) and that game is pretty old.

So in that regard, should certainly be possible. And if you let the AI do it, it's probably kinda interesting. I just think that if you're playing with a procedural army,you'll go insane trying to figure out what each unit does each time you play.

Re: Procedural terrain.. what about procedural weapons / uni

sounds interesting, but i'd be really concerned about the ascetic effect of the combinations, it'd be interesting from a continued replayability and constantly changing play style standpoint but i'm sure some of the produced units would be either just hideous or possibly even handicapped by incorrect attachment choices

Re: Procedural terrain.. what about procedural weapons / uni

Procedural weapons/units would make the art style, which is focused on readability, useless. All units you'd see would be slightly different making it impossible to properly balance the game. I believe a non-fixed set of units would truly ruin the game and if they implemented it, I'd be the first to sell my copy.

Re: Procedural terrain.. what about procedural weapons / uni

Sounds like an interesting idea for PvE! I could totally see this as new gamemode, mod or even DLC. Would add a new meaning to stomping the AI with a couple of friends. Wait, Sorian makes the AI. Oh well, it's going to be tough I guess...

Re: Procedural terrain.. what about procedural weapons / uni

I love procedural weapons in Borderlands but it really doesn't fit with the kind of game we are making here.

The engine doesn't care where the model comes from though so someone can certainly build a procedural unit builder if they want to.

Re: Procedural terrain.. what about procedural weapons / uni

Does this mean the unit's model and its hit box are completely separate things?

Re: Procedural terrain.. what about procedural weapons / uni

Procedural wepaons or units, especially if it modifies gameplay, is a bad idea. Even if it was just a graphical change, it'd make it messier and harder to distinguish between unit types.

Re: Procedural terrain.. what about procedural weapons / uni

I'm not sure how that has anything to do with what I said.

Re: Procedural terrain.. what about procedural weapons / uni

Ah. By "doesn't care", I read "client uses whatever model set he wants".

Re: Procedural terrain.. what about procedural weapons / uni

I guess the question he's wondering about is twofold. Is the hit-box auto-generated based on the model or independently defined. If it's independently defined he's then wondering if it would be possible for an individual client, for any given unit, to maintain the same hit-box (to try to keep things fair), but to have custom models (that only they see separate from other players in the game). Which is different from procedurally generated things. Another thing I was wondering that I thought would be interesting in games, along similar lines, is for each player to be able to 'change' someone's color, for just them. Like how some people specifically choose particular colors to make themself harder to see on a given map and the minimap (like blue or green or grey on a metal map). This would allow you to set whatever colors you wanted for other people, but would only show that way for you. So you could have a little color toggle, default (based on original choices of everyone), a green/red for allies and enemies perhaps, and then a custom one whereby you can change colors to whatever.