The title means nothing. It was there as a ploy to catch your attention. (also it needs to be changed to 'everything' instead of monster. MONSTERS: Basically, what I'm saying is that for a monster, say, zombie. There are several parts to a zombie; head, torso, arms, hands, legs, feet. So for each of those little categories, there is a list of combinations. Example: For head, you have: "Normal" and "Pumpkin" (example), torso "Normal" and "Pumpkin" and etc. for all parts. Now you have 2x2x2x2x2x2 combinations, or a total of 64 combinations, just by having two possible sprites for each thing. Let's say you have five possible things in each category; regular, decaying, pumpkin, ghost, giant, clawed, spiked, monstrous, slimy, tiny, fast, slow, and mechanical. Thus you have 13 to the sixth power, or 4,826,809 combinations. Thus, you can see a total of close to 5 million different zombies, each with traits that exist in the body parts, and when combined, exist in the whole! But this goes to a different level as well; in the difficulty level that was mentioned, there are 100 different 'levels' of difficulty, and each planet has one. So, let's say that decaying is the worst possible combination for a zombie to have, then regular, then pumpkin, then ghost, then giant, then clawed, etc. until mechanical. So let's say that on level 1, Zombies can only be decaying. On level 2, they can have one regular body part. Lever 3, another regular body part, and etc. and etc. so that on each 'level' the possibility of zombies being stronger grows and grows, until at level 100 you have all 4.8 million + combinations. ALTERNATIVELY! As each body part is unlocked, the previous body part is not allowed to exist; so zombies just get harder at a flat rate. Even more alternatively, all body parts are possible from the beginning, but as the levels proceed, the weaker body parts are eliminated, so that the zombies get steadily stronger. WEAPONS: Essentially the same thing as above; there are many different possible combinations for each part of the gun, which, when combined, have an insane amount of combinations, all of which are different. Perhaps you could 'enchant' the gun to change the combinations? ENVIRONMENT: Now, here is where the procedural generation comes in. Let's say for all blocks on the surface, you can have either dirt (high probability) grass (lower) or death and pain (miniscule) Assuming harder planets have harder environments (like spiked blocks for example, or lava) the probability to get a 'bad' block increases. Now, the reason that this part does not follow the same pattern as the monsters, where they just get flat-out harder and you cannot encounter a weak zombie, is because the worlds are procedurally generated (I think?) so that as you go to the edges of the world, the chances to get a bad block could either increase to punish you for straying from the main quest or something, or decrease to reward you for exploring. NPCS: The same as weapons, but only different sprites.
Thanks. When I release my "Ideal Starbound" compilation, I'll be including lots of generation-related things like this.
Good to know, I'll look out for that. This should be applied to NPC's, so they're not always the same sprite, sound good?
Great idea, I already kindof said this in a thread where someone asked how they would make procedurally generated backgrounds, so I told them say there were 5 different layers, each with 4 variations. Layer 1 (In the front): Large Plains, Large Forest, Large Plains with Lake, Large Forest with Lake Layer 2 (Behind 1): Medium Plains, Medium Forest, Medium Plains with River, Medium Forest with River Layer 3 (Behind 1 and 2): Small Plains, Small Forest, Small Hilly Plains, Small Hilly Forest Layer 4 (Behind 1-3): Medium Mountains, Medium Mountains with some Trees, Medium Mountains with many Trees, Medium Tree covered Mountains Layer 5 (Behind 1-4): Small Mountains, Small Mountains with some Trees, Small Snowy Mountains, Small Snowy Mountains with some Trees This already makes it possible for 4x4x4x4x4 combinations, which is more than ONE THOUSAND combinations for a great looking forest planet background, and the engine can randomely color the trees (maybe light saturated green, light unsaturated green, dark unsaturated, dark saturated,) and if there's 64 different colors (it's not that hard for the devs to pick some random colors) for rocks and 64 different colors for plants (grass/trees) that is now more than FOUR MILLION possible combinations for a forest planet background, with only 20 (22 with the color ones) sprites. And THAT is how powerful a procedural generating engine is. If the devs only have to make 22 sprites per planet type, and the only make these types (swamp, forest, coniferous forest, desert, rocky, mountains, ice, snowy forest, tentacle, candy, tundra, jungle) which is only 264 sprites, not too hard for a team of 3 (is it 4?) spriters to make within say a week, and then there are this many possible combinations for a planet's background: OVER FIFTY MILLION! The devs would only have to make that amount of sprites OR LESS for each weapon type, block type etc.. and then the game would be able to have TRILLIONS of possible ways to play. Amazing, right?
