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Mjjstral

Procedural Lua Missions

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I totally love procedural algortihms and after genuine games like No Man's Sky (proc planets, proc animals, proc plants, proc missions, proc ships, proc all xD) I was always thinking about how to use proc gen in the sage engine. Here is one idea I came up with: Procedural lua mission+story gamemode, playable on any map (map independent):

1. Mission Templates: These are the puzzle pieces that get merged together to create a mission. I expect 20-30 unique templates with additional subvariants. Non-trivial interlockings between templates with good overall coherence.

2. Random Map Events: These are events that happen randomly during the course of the mission and give an additional variance for gameplay. Examples: Random positional asteroid storm, random black holes appear on map, third party units appear and cause trouble (creepsteam),... (events like these are already implemented in aod gamemode of meta mod)

3. Map Regeneration (optional) flexibiity: We can remove all objects on the map (even tiberium fields) and set up an entirely new object/building placement configuration. Im also thinking about random maze structures and stuff like that for maximum variance and unpredictability.

4. Seed based: For procedural lua missions I thought about a wide range of mission templates that all get put together by a random seed value. The user can also use his own custom  seed values. Example: MissionTemplate1 -> defend a building (seed code "DB1" - number stands for number of builidngs to defend), MissionTemplate2 -> Capture one ore more Buildings ("CB3" - number stands for number of buildings to capture), MissionTemplate3 -> guard a unit to reach a specific point on the map ("GU1" - numnber stands for number of units to guard so that they savely reach the destination"). In this case we could have a seed like "DB1CB3GU1". In addtion we could introduce another number that provides the schedule. Example addtional 1 to DB1 tells that it is the first mission objective hence DB11, so in the end we can have mission objectives run simultanously. The seed complexity could become astronomically more complex also if we add story line parts.

Eventually share your seeds online and create your own missions stories by hand. Mission+Story Editor/Creator thinkable.

5. Infinite mode: Play very looong games like in age of empires with new missions continueing after each mission again and again. Adaptive difficulty could also be used. Will need a lua based savegame as due to the complexity of map and scipt manipulation standard savegames will crash the game.

6. Procedural story line (optional): A huge number of text, video, cinematic camera movement scripts and sound fragments put together for an unpredictable story with missions each time. Something I won't ever do on my own.

7. Online coop functionality.

8. Self evolutionary AI procedural mission/story director (never seen that in any videogame ever). Closest is the AI director in Left for Death 2 or FEAR but doesn't have proc contect.

I'm not saying I will ever make all of this or any of this but maybe a barebone version someday. It's all technically possible and without real live I would do it. This is an inspirational post on new things we can still do to push the limits for SAGE modding.

Please share your ideas on what else could be added to this idea complex and what you think about all this. Possibilities are endless.

 

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