Project Glitch Hunter has made some notable strides since last featured here, thanks in no small part to a short break to work on less ambitious projects - figuring out some clever design tricks in the process. Most notably, there's a sense of increased scale, as the panoramic cityscapes featured in this episode might suggest.
By far the biggest challenge with this game has nothing to do with code or collisions, but knowing how to answer that cursed question, the bane of aspiring artists everywhere - "what's it about?" I imagine that established creators are able to dodge this question, and let their narrative ambitions speak for themselves once the product is finished. Of course, those of us who have yet to reach that point have no choice but to write inane "back-of-box summaries" like the following:
"New Year's Eve, 1999. Your eagerly anticipated Christmas gift has just arrived, a prototype virtual reality console complete with copies of the newest hit games. You decide to forego the traditional festivities and stay in, excitedly booting up the system."
"Fifteen years later, you log out to find yourself connected to a life support machine, your console having been affected by a massive network glitch at the stroke of midnight. As you root through your old apartment, you piece together that you aren't alone. The entire internet was lost in a moment, only to be gradually replaced by limited networks managed by corporate superpowers."
"Stepping outside, you barely recognize your once-familiar Californian suburb. Most residents have chosen to relocate to state-of-the-art smart condos, with former cities now populated only by consumer-controlled remote drones. The skyline is dominated by construction sites and decaying mega-malls, with low-flying hot air balloons providing regional satellite internet. Countless unfinished renovation projects decorate the decaying cities, stuck in development limbo thanks to unprecedented, violent shifts in the coast's weather."
"Armed only with an archaic Homeowner's Utility Device - a mobile communications device and all-purpose toolkit - you now must make ends meet by doing odd jobs for housebound employers. But in doing so, you only find a growing mystery, with impish hackers and corporate spies hiding behind innocuous usernames, and rumors of strange, distorted creatures living in the few remaining wild areas, said to defy the laws of reality. And somehow, at the center of it all, is you - an uninspired, out-of-date gaming addict with the lowliest of job descriptions - Glitch Hunter."
A few notes, in regards to setting:
I have a confession: in spite of my fetish for abandoned structures, I think they're on the verge of becoming overdone in a game context. From a level design standpoint, it's easy to see the draw: it's easier to give a building a linear structure with convenient "pathblockers" like rubble and collapsed tunnels. But with a few notable exceptions (most notably, some of the set pieces of Fallout and Bioshock), game ruins rarely feel like they were ever part of a functioning world. Part of the Glitch Hunter mythos is that California has become stuck in a state of continual renovation, with modernist, 3D-printed towers being appended to the stucco faux-Victorians of its suburban period. Fact is, a construction setting can make use of the same pathblockers as a ruin, but also have the potential to open up a level's structure as well as its potential for story (with each neighborhood having a sense of history as well as plans for the future).
I've always found text to be one of the most fertile methods for in-game worldbuilding, but it's almost always done on a larger scale, with found notes or computer terminals containing several-paragraph entries. One of my goals here is to do more with microtext - randomized store names, station names, and news headlines can be seen in some of these previews, and I also plan to implement historical markers, "coming soon" posters, and advertisements to give the world that much more flavor. There's also a system for intercepting conversations from the drone NPCs that populate the world, but details will have to wait until I revise their AI script in the coming weeks.
Personally, I find it hard to get invested in narratives which don't at least poke at the fourth wall, and games seem ripe for meta-humor, given the way their immersive nature often contrasts with their less realistic conventions. And yet, I have yet to see a game which satisfactorily acknowledges glitches - the most unique and unpredictable element of player experience. Important distinction: I don't think "crafting a game which acknowledges, and plays with bugs" is equivalent to "rushing out an unfinished, broken mess." Rather, I think there are some exciting narrative possibilities for a world in which the inevitable rough edges are a central part of both the lore and the gameplay.
A quick tour of the Level Generator:
Yes, this one of those "procedurally generated" games that you know and either love or hate, with more of an emphasis on narrative and open-world exploration than many of its brethren in the trendy "roguelike" camp. The player travels to new areas via a long-abandoned, experimental high speed subway train, and, after finding a route to the surface, can complete optional clue-and-cash seeking quests while investigating each unique world. Part of the charm, I think, is that the fun of exploration multiplies exponentially with each new level component added, as different sets of scenery combined with weather and lighting effects can completely transform the feel of an area.
For those interested in the technical bits: Each neighborhood is assembled from a chosen set of "blocks," laid out over a background terrain. Blocks are somewhat multi-layered - while the layout is based around the central street level, there are also jumbled subterranean sewers and rooftops, which form their own emergent patterns. For example, a billboard or freeway sign can form a bridge between rooftops, or work as a makeshift sniper's nest, depending on its surroundings. In city settings like those pictured here, street blocks check for empty adjacent areas, and then generate connected streets as well as buildings, canals, and overpasses. This system also works for multi-block buildings like malls and apartment complexes. Once a certain number of blocks have been placed, the generator instead creates "End Blocks" - structures like construction sites or parking lots, which are less complex and also provide a level-friendly explanation as to why the street might suddenly end.
I've also crafted a pretty efficient "random forest" system to add some variety to the standard terrain. Unity's built-in tree system is honestly only any good for brushy undergrowth and distant details, given the lack of rotation and some unpredictable billboarding kinks. My approach is to augment this system with clusters of mesh trees and rocks, which have customizable rotation and scale variation. It generally works best when used in small clusters of less than five trees, though it has also shown mixed success with adding rock formations and sparse vegetation to large, open areas. It's a system which is still evolving, but has definitely moved past the "what can it do" stage to the less daunting "when should I not use it" movement.
I imagine that procedural generation is somewhat controversial among game designers, and can certainly see why. Purists likely consider it a cheap solution to let random levelbuilding become a replacement for intricate level design, with the resultant worlds sacrificing structure and purpose for the sake of scale and novelty. It's a viewpoint that I can certainly understand, but I don't think it should dissuade those with interesting ideas for procedural content from experimenting, as it can provide some interesting insights into modular design, the centerpiece of good gamebuilding.
As for the question of "why procedural generation over set level layouts," I'd say it's just a matter of wanting a higher "bang for buck" ratio - the game's replay value is already pretty substantial even in these prototyping stages. Besides, experimenting is both fun and informative, and exploring shifting mazes like these has already provided some important insight on the developing mechanics.
Next episode: Revised NPC/enemy behavior adds some actual challenges to the game world, in the form of a brief mission synopsis. Also, some designer's commentary on the evolving nature of challenge in games - coming soon to a home computer (or mobile device) near you.
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