Procedural World Generation in Path of Exile

i saw that :P

of which, by the way, is now eternally broken, due to DX9 limits on texture render folders.

I watched the whole thing and it's neat but it's not exactly the new D4 endless dungeon tech that was showcased that truly creates that feeling of endless terrain. I was initially hyped when I saw "Procedural" in the title on the calendar even before ExileCon so I assumed that was actually GGG's answer to D4's engine tech but alas it's basically more of the same. I mean yeah there are lots of great improvements but it's not anything truly different from what we've already seen. There will still be loading screens (which is not a big deal but... just saying) :)

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cgexile wrote:

I watched the whole thing and it's neat but it's not exactly the new D4 endless dungeon tech that was showcased that truly creates that feeling of endless terrain. I was initially hyped when I saw "Procedural" in the title on the calendar even before ExileCon so I assumed that was actually GGG's answer to D4's engine tech but alas it's basically more of the same. I mean yeah there are lots of great improvements but it's not anything truly different from what we've already seen. There will still be loading screens (which is not a big deal but... just saying) :)

So you're saying D4 is planning to give us the old D2 'no loading screens except for Act transitions' back? That sounds ... pretty ambitious, for 2020s graphics. Sounds like the sort of tech I'd trust only ID Software to pull off.

Always nice to watch

First of all, thanks Rhys for being the guy who actually knits the world together.

Secondly, tiles are what you use instead of vector scripts when you want to fill the world with mobs. This isn't Pole Position or Flight Sim. Whatever D4 is using depends on their physics engine, camera engine, etc. which are a great deal different from (and probably a lot more polished than) PoE's.

As for terrain glitches and leap slam, some weirdo computations go on at the borders between tiles, and moreso when you overlap and merge by a significant amount. Passable terrain is usually coded to be "maximal and coherent" and there tends to be a "surface tension" to it like water beading up on a griddle, so you get islets of passable terrain surrounded by no man's land, string-of-beads effects, and things running off into walls.

I've worked with tools that do this and have to manually edit sometimes because it works mathematically, but then you look at it with your eyeball and visions of inaccessible loot and NPCs flash before your eyes.

Even conditionally passable terrain is a no-no for overlays like blight pathing - vault map being the worst offender, but also certain blighted maps having open ground pockets locked away behind waving thickets of mould fuzz. Imagine a golden oil dropping from a pustule and because of tiling crowding, gets bumped into that little pocket...;_;

can someone do a tl;dw? what is gonna be different in comparison to current world generation?

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Dr1MaR wrote:

can someone do a tl;dw? what is gonna be different in comparison to current world generation?

The presentation only goes for about 25 minutes, after which there's a long Q&A segment so it might not be as bad as it seems.

Ultimately the world generation in PoE2 is the same as PoE1 with some new features in use, and perhaps some different priorities on how areas are put together.

The main new features:
- A multi-tile "overlay" feature that can replace certain tile patterns with a pre-defined pattern. This has been used to make more gentle bends in roads, among other things, and appears to be a good way to get larger features into the terrain without compromising randomness.
- Act maps will have a random layout per character, but the direction of the exits from each area will follow the orientation depicted on the map (with some exceptions).
- Tiles with upper geometry that only displays when it's facing the camera, so it doesn't block the view of walkable space. This allows a bit more vertical scale to be displayed in the environment, particularly indoors.

A couple minor features:
- Dynamic footstep sounds, where the sound played is determined by the particular material your character is walking on
- NPCs can move a bit more, including in town instances

This is incredible. I was astounded after hearing this man speak. There is no words I can use to describe how I feel after watching this video, this is just amazing in simple terms. I admire the programmers work and fully support this games development. These programmers are literal gods of technology. Wow...

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Bk老虎 wrote:

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Dr1MaR wrote:

can someone do a tl;dw? what is gonna be different in comparison to current world generation?

The presentation only goes for about 25 minutes, after which there's a long Q&A segment so it might not be as bad as it seems.

Ultimately the world generation in PoE2 is the same as PoE1 with some new features in use, and perhaps some different priorities on how areas are put together.

The main new features:
- A multi-tile "overlay" feature that can replace certain tile patterns with a pre-defined pattern. This has been used to make more gentle bends in roads, among other things, and appears to be a good way to get larger features into the terrain without compromising randomness.
- Act maps will have a random layout per character, but the direction of the exits from each area will follow the orientation depicted on the map (with some exceptions).
- Tiles with upper geometry that only displays when it's facing the camera, so it doesn't block the view of walkable space. This allows a bit more vertical scale to be displayed in the environment, particularly indoors.

A couple minor features:
- Dynamic footstep sounds, where the sound played is determined by the particular material your character is walking on
- NPCs can move a bit more, including in town instances

Cool stuff, thanks. but yeah, seems like it won’t affect the game much more like QoL