Procedural generation and mod creation

[Mister X]

Sooo... Starfield is coming closer and closer with more information getting revealed.

One of it being that a whole bunch of content will be procedurally generated and now my question is: what do you think will be the depth of this and how will that affect mod creation?

 

We already do now that the planet surfaces will be procedurally generated, with certain "blueprint" points of interest to sprinkle it for story/atmosphere. How far does this reach? Will the whole planet get generated the first time you visit it, and each planet gets a seed when you get near it the first time? (More probable:) Will it be like in Minecraft, so the whole game generates a seed for a new game that serves as a base for the randomness algorithm? But what about quests? Let's say, for a big questline you have to visit a certain outpost. Will this get a fixed place (like their cities) or do you think it will or can be set to generate anywhere (with conditions) when the quest starts? As generic POIs might not be there as long as you didn't visit the planet / region for the first time.

So I assume one has two options to create such places: either choose a fixed position on a planet or create it as a new "blueprint" with conditions when it may spawn.

 

And what else do you think will have procedural generation as base? I hope it will be the look of plants, creatures and NPCs. No more pools with pre-generated looks like in Skyrim but a pool of assets to choose from, that get mixed and matched in way more possible variations.

For creatures, as they are animated, too, I assume there will be a base pool of shapes with their corresponding skeleton rig and then there are assets to switch the head shape, change colors or add horns and stuff for individual looks.

Here again, I assume modders will be able to either create a totally new base shape or simply add assets to a pool. Now, as this is LoversLab and probably there will be bestiality at some point, do you think one certain asset can be added this way, too? Will there be a differentiation in sex for creatures at all?

[DocClox]

On 7/5/2023 at 11:02 AM, Mister X said:

We already do now that the planet surfaces will be procedurally generated, with certain "blueprint" points of interest to sprinkle it for story/atmosphere. How far does this reach? Will the whole planet get generated the first time you visit it, and each planet gets a seed when you get near it the first time?

 

Apparently not. Planets are generated at the Studio, and then re-created using the same seed. Todd confirmed that everyone gets the same planetary geometry.

 

On 7/5/2023 at 11:02 AM, Mister X said:

Let's say, for a big questline you have to visit a certain outpost. Will this get a fixed place (like their cities) or do you think it will or can be set to generate anywhere (with conditions) when the quest starts?

 

We don't know for certain, but it seems like major quest based locations will always be the same. If Skyrim used the Starfield system, Bleak Falls Barrow would always be in the same place, but Redoran's retreat would be in a different location from one character to another.

 

 

On 7/5/2023 at 11:02 AM, Mister X said:

For creatures, as they are animated, too, I assume there will be a base pool of shapes with their corresponding skeleton rig and then there are assets to switch the head shape, change colors or add horns and stuff for individual looks.

 

Going to be interesting that. Have a look at the Starfield Direct presentation some time. There's quite a range of limbs and body shapes on display.

 

On 7/5/2023 at 11:02 AM, Mister X said:

Here again, I assume modders will be able to either create a totally new base shape or simply add assets to a pool. Now, as this is LoversLab and probably there will be bestiality at some point, do you think one certain asset can be added this way, too? Will there be a differentiation in sex for creatures at all?

 

I can't see why not.

[Mister X]

14 hours ago, DocClox said:

Apparently not. Planets are generated at the Studio, and then re-created using the same seed. Todd confirmed that everyone gets the same planetary geometry.

 

Ok, so the base shape of planets is fixed, as a "canvas". Still, what's with all the assets at the surface, to "paint it"? Those definitely get placed procedurally for everyone individually ^^

That's what I was talking about. Will every planet get its own seed for every playthrough to "paint its canvas" or will it be one seed for the whole game and all planets?

 

14 hours ago, DocClox said:

We don't know for certain, but it seems like major quest based locations will always be the same. If Skyrim used the Starfield system, Bleak Falls Barrow would always be in the same place, but Redoran's retreat would be in a different location from one character to another.

 

Sounds logical to me. They want to make sure that the capital always is at the same position for everyone. So likely we get the same option for mod creation.

 

14 hours ago, DocClox said:

Going to be interesting that. Have a look at the Starfield Direct presentation some time. There's quite a range of limbs and body shapes on display.

 

I already saw that, but if you look closer, you'll find that quite a few base shapes are similar. Eg, the long neck creature: one has a beak similar to a duck, another one has what looks like nostrils, but their base shape is similar, so one can assume that they use the same skeleton rig. Of course, they need a big palette, even when only 10% of their planets allow life, these are 100 whole planets to fill with creatures.

[DocClox]

17 minutes ago, Mister X said:

Ok, so the base shape of planets is fixed, as a "canvas". Still, what's with all the assets at the surface, to "paint it"? Those definitely get placed procedurally for everyone individually ^^

 

You mean like trees and rocks and so on?

 

My understanding is that the planet is made up on one km square tiles. The tiles are hand made at the studio, and then a procgen algorithm maps them to the planetary sphere. So the trees and rocks are probably going to be the same as well.

 

What I think they might do is use markers for trees and rocks like they do for leveled actors and critters at the moment. Then you could have pines in cool temperate biomes and weird blobby fungus things another piome, and still have the placement be sensible,

 

But that's guessing.

 

21 minutes ago, Mister X said:

their base shape is similar, so one can assume that they use the same skeleton rig

 

That makes sense.

[kaxat]

Based on Todds description of their procedural generation I suspect that both the the height map and flora all have a preshared seed. So if you see a large tree in one spot on the planet all other players will see the same tree.

 

What is certainly random is the point of interest that gets generated. In the Direct presentation you can even see an example of one POI having two alternate things spawn in that location. One is a large blue crystal formation and the other is large human built dome. Somewhere they explicitly said POIs are random. Much like the Radiant encounters in previous games. You have a set list of possible locations but the actual encounter is random.

 

Some of the POIs were caves. Others enemy bases. And others natural formations. I suspect there will be encounter types. Perhaps a cave encounter type for underground bases and natural caves. The entrance will be mostly procedural but once you get inside it gets unique. Similarly I bet there is a flatland encounter type. Perhaps a cliff side or mountain side one. And modders would more than likely be able to add their POI to a respective type and thus have it spawn in an appropriate spot.

 

It would not surprise if you can place something similar to level objects within your custom POIs. In Skyrim you can place a leveled armor item in the world at a specific location. The item is random but its type is not. Similarly I expect we will be able to place large, medium, and small flora within our modded POIs in order to incorporate some of the surrounding environment into our level designs. I bet you will be able to do the same with terrain colors and similar. This way the POI integrates into the environment visually but remains as custom as needed.

 

They mentioned that most planets will not contain life. This likely means there is a finite variety of fauna rather than them being heavily procedural. Like you I bet they will have alternate styles for horns and sliders for head size and so forth. This will give the procedural algorithm variety to play with. While limiting the number of skeleton rigs to a manageable number of basic types. Still if you wish to add extra appendages to these skeletons we can be confident this will require a new Skeleton system. Same as past games. You won't be adding those appendages in the Creation Kit.

 

On 7/7/2023 at 1:28 AM, DocClox said:

My understanding is that the planet is made up on one km square tiles.

 

Do you remember where you read this? I saw an interview where they mentioned the vertical slice getting extrapolated out to the entire planet. But I do not recall a specific 1km size for the vertical slice.

I ask primarily because this concept left me with more questions than answers. First of all they said the slice was extrapolated to the entire planet. Not just the individual biome. And yet the UI in the Direct demo heavily hints at multiple biomes per planet. Similarly I had wondered how large the vertical slice was. Your source indicates it is 1km. It sounds like you may have found more info about this than I did. I would love to learn more.

[ThyraUnn]

@kaxat I know Todd mentions the 1km Tiles in more then one Interview but this is the only one I remembered off the top of my head. He starts Talking about it around 18:50

 

 

 

Spoiler

 

 

Edited July 23, 2023 by ThyraUnn

[kaxat]

@ThyraUnn Your spoiler appears empty for me. Could be a site error. But I think I found your link anyways by googling it: IGN Interview June 2023 At your timestamp he mentions the 1km tiles. Thanks for the timestamp.

 

I also found this Kinda Funny interview with Todd Howard. Talks quite a bit about procedural planets at 16 minutes. At 20 minutes discusses biomes. Mentions some planets have 1 biome. Others have multiple biomes with unique flora and fauna.

Those were new details to me. I watched an interview a year ago talking about how they extrapolate that little 1km slice out to the entire planet. The wording intrigued me. It did not sound similar to the procedural algorithms I am familiar with. And it made me wonder what possibilities modders will have to tweak it.

 

I hope modders will be able to add content to the procedural zones. For example when the algorithm goes to place an object like a tree. It would be tremendous if that tree is pulled from something akin to an LVLI record. A list of all possible trees for that biome. Then modders could inject new items into the list. Things like a stump or a fallen version of the local trees. Specify how rare they will be chosen. This would make it easy to start populating procedural areas with more diverse content.

 

However based on Todds descriptions I will not be surprised if procedural areas end up being extremely difficult to modify. They may not include many APIs for this. You do have a wealth of considerations when it comes to performance. Also visual issues like preventing models from clipping through each other. LOD is another major concern. Trying to make all of that easily moddable would be a massive effort.

[ThyraUnn]

@kaxat That is the Exact vid I was referring to and I fixed my Post, Thanks luv~

[Reigor]

The Lex Fridman Podcast had a 2 hour interview 7 months ago where Todd and Lex discussed Starfield and other topics. About Starfield I remember Todd talking about the the process of creating a planet in the game and why they chose the 1000 planet number. It's quite long but worth a listen.

 

 

[dagobaking]

On 7/5/2023 at 4:02 AM, Mister X said:

And what else do you think will have procedural generation as base? I hope it will be the look of plants, creatures and NPCs. No more pools with pre-generated looks like in Skyrim but a pool of assets to choose from, that get mixed and matched in way more possible variations.

 

That would be cool. But, I would be really surprised if plants and creatures themselves are procedurally generated. I think they would be boasting about a feature like that already if it was like Spore or something.

[Gray User]

On 7/7/2023 at 12:06 AM, Mister X said:

 

I already saw that, but if you look closer, you'll find that quite a few base shapes are similar. Eg, the long neck creature: one has a beak similar to a duck, another one has what looks like nostrils, but their base shape is similar, so one can assume that they use the same skeleton rig. Of course, they need a big palette, even when only 10% of their planets allow life, these are 100 whole planets to fill with creatures.

 

I hope that yes, there are finite number of skeletons with variable meshes on them. 

 

Maybe it is a failure of my imagination, but I do not see how you could have proc gen skeletons in such a way that it would not be a nightmare to animate (for the devs maybe, for modders for sure). 

 

I just hope whatever modding tools actually work well for making animations for non-human creatures and calling them in-game. Doing it for FO4 creatures was a mess and there are things that I never could get to work reliably.