u/_Elix__

this kindoff looked like a pc when i first saw it (the first picture). i love the theme tho

thats true. while this has been an unconcious issue ive looked these concepts up and the "games" that came the it the nearest looked all the same for some reason and still it felt like they still have to much handcraft to be the maximum you could get. it feels odd how impossible it is to build a game with barely any human gamedesigning and precisely concipated algorithms.

imagine a single big formula that defines a genuine good game with the advantage of being endlessly varied. its the same as if youd compress a real game to its absolute max and a singular digit changed would make an fps game to a 2d lifesim or pure chaos.

it gets more clear how impossible than more it gets spoken out but at the same time it feels like an opportunity

sharing with casual players. most great connections i have are with those that havent had broader experience with more abstract or nonmainstreamy titles. techy interested people are hard to find and i have a hard time finding them.

with fun i also mean fun as a casual player. you could make a simple number generator fun with a bit of fantasy and so do these projects need alot of abstract thinking loosening from standards most games provide. and most testers that firstly got interested already prefered to close the program because the description didnt match what theyve interpreted. you cannot specify the games plot or anything when nothing in there is guranteed to happen

when the text tells the concept the result differs strongly from the fantasy or expectations on how things work that the player has. i also thought about shifting it to a game where the players fantasy adds whats missing but i dont know where to start there

you could have these procedual formulas be the gameplay in specific genres

C_n+1 = n +1 is a simple "generator" that turns every simple calculator into an incremental game.

you could alter the formula to C_n+1 = n+rng() so the increment alters

you could alter the formula to C_n+1 = n+simplex_noise(x,y) with x and y being the position manipulatable with wasd so you increment while walking to the optimal spot

you could even do C_n+1 = n+simplex_noise(x,y) * m

with m being the players level which gets reduced or increased by an input of the player converted into signed decimals.

this could be again expanded with generators that introduce enemys for levelfarms etc.

this idea is weirdly or impossibly translatable to some genres but even in the ones its possible its hard to make it work like a game and not being so abstract that its not fun to play. i havent seen any bigger scale examples of this advertised as games and i also fail to achieve this

these games have content and the content gets arranged randomly.

i miss formulated that sentence a bit, i meant if the procgen makes up the content it doesnt feel like a game but an experiment or simulation. these games have premade content that gets differently arranged.

thats the issue, it seems impossible to have the procgen be the content for a game

ive never seen rng as a secondary thing but the main focus. ive started every project with a random() line. if id handcraft the game by myself and then replace it step by step with the math id have a similar result

The appeal of endless content is the fun in exploring and the knowledge that the game will never fail in providing more stuff to do.

theres no problem in making the progression more interesting with more complex characterrules etc but with everything being unique and new nothing is unique and new. me as a player used to play all the games under this category because i knew if theres someone that would put an end into the game it would be me and not the credits rolling

itch.io is generally the best option imo. gog is a bit bigger but you have to get approved there and i never tried it

what if the procgen moves to the foreground, how would that translate into a game.

games that rely on procgen as main thing arent really games i feel like

ive tried to build my own identity directly into the formulas so it lifts up from all the noise stuff. didnt work out well, i might be missing out on something else. if not ill try the approach of direct flavouring

the appeal is that theres endless stuff to see. this phrase is in my opinion not fairly used because in most cases it refers to games with the same stuff differently arranged. the game rarely provided you took keep stuff. there were general stats in some. in 1 game i had the system that with each "win" the generator unlocks a bit more so you get from 1000 different layouts and 20 different enemies to 2000 and 40 enemies. also some precrafted challanges that just change 1 value which changes everything.

ill list some games i made so theres rather less confusion:
a troll platformer where each small section of an obstacle would trick the player just because the generator is unpredictable. there were records and allthat but the appeal was just the thing that there are infinite possible levels with infinite ways of the game to trick you.

an observer game just built around a landscape that is endlessly complex. the appeal is that you always see something new

a minigame collection about a guy that mixes an enormous amount of criterias into a short minigame. you could be climbing a pillar dodgeing big wasps trying to get some sort of jewel to dodgeing rocks falling from the sky and finding a trapdoor under all this mess. this was a more restricted game with preset criterias but the appeal still was to see what each combination results in

a labgame where you could inject endless many syringes onto a testsubject which just alter values to turn him into all sorts of things. the appeal is again seeing what results when you do this or that

a "roguelite" without bosses or anything. theres the world that evolves around you. you get stronger by picking up various random weapons and the world also gets stronger and more complex until you die and restart. the world is not restrictive and goes endlessly in all directions.

an escaperoom where the keys locks and secrets are again fully randomized. there were structures you could search from which had different restrictions. the normal one were just rooms floors and locks, sewers had hazards, bridges etc, haunted had floors and entities while shroom had civilisations and merchants. you could also combine them. it was one of the few projects i decently played.

this was a project i repeated remaking because it was the reason i got into gamedeving anyway. in the peak of granny and all these horror escapegames i thought, this is cool concept but its always the same keys and exits. so i made my own to realise the quality not matching. many years later i still have issues making infinity work as a game.

most of these games were just about all the stuff you can see, mostly with the motivation of playing another game, realising how less there is to see. the games i like the most are the ones with the cool concepts but the ones with the most hours are the ones that achieve the endless content by a big community.

this is another viewing angle i just noticed of. these games fail in that aspect because the main aspect about these games is the platforming, or the fights. so players expect good platforming and good fighting, not infinite platforming. most endless runner have a set of great layouts that get better at just increasing the difficulty by speed. if youd substitude obstacles with cool random things the platforming gets worse but the variety and interesting stuff to see gets much better.

"why something like mountains or trees needs a specific rule set for its generation". i used these procgens mainly for the fun but also for its trait to give "always new stuff". I already have seen enough trees or mountains or 10 digits of random stuff. There could be a generator that creates the most abstract creatures youve ever seen that are also interesting to mess around with but again, whats the point. with stuff always being the same i dont mean "that pile of data is the same as that one" but "that dragonlike statue with spiralspringy wings is the same as a painting with known shapes that have been built with the most obscure things imaginable". if a normal game had 1 such thing somewhere it would be a highlight but if the same thing with endlessly different purposes is everywhere it loses the magic. its less cool to see some sort of alien with the weirdest traits if you have seen 1000 other aliens that have the same thing in common: theyre all they same even tho youve never seen anything like this before.

if i had minecraft and id make everything more nonbroken random the world would have more possibilities, there would be more to do, but at some point you dont even know how everything works and nothing makes anymore sense. the only way i seem to get it work is making the game all about observing the world. but the game shouldve been a racing game, it shouldve been a card game. it shouldve been a game about the rules just being the genre and a couple rules that make it special and the formulas to make it even more special. there was this one big thing which similarly describes the issue. some company made an ai trained on generating literal minecraft. it was minecraft but nothing made sense. you could do a 360 and the world looks completly different, items spawn out of nowhere, now you are in the nether, now you have triple the health, what is this dimension what do i do with it?

About your first question, i shouldve made it more clear: It was a problem i had for a long time and im trying to reach out for other experiences with this similar problem, how they handled it, how they wouldve handled it, if im missing out on any techniques or if this is just a fantasy and i should go back to handcrafting the levels myself to stay in the gamedev scene.

i mostly start creating a prototype with the most minimal needed completly focusing on the gameconcept. until thats done i focus on expanding on the idea and adding the content. most games already start with some sort of randomizer before even the first player. On paper the games would be awesome but from revision after revision it seems impossible to get the randomness not making these runs impossible or just "too random to be playable". most games that have generation as a main sellingpoint feel still restrictive. you can take most roguelikes/lites for example. the binding of isaac using strict floor plans and spelunky generates from presets.

With having math as a starting point the development progress gets messy since each change alters gameplay by a mile and having full control over it feels impossible. the only solution is to not think at scales of nonmathy games but then it turns to just mathdemos or experiments, but not games.

i havent seen anything that has exploited this concept to the fullest potential except some simulations that you try for mabye 5-10 minutes and get bored. to fix that i have to do direct leveldesign etc which feels like a step back.

The goal was to make these games enjoyable to share etc. and im thinking of some solution so i dont have to sacrifice fun in making for fun in playing. possibly getting both

there are many games that dont contain any story. theyre appeal are mostly in their addictive gameplay which i cant substitude with the fun i have creating these complex generators

the games ive been making were demos of the concepts i had. the problem was that i couldnt get the m to be "real games"

ironically i use my deck of cards more for practicing shuffle concepts than actually playing with them. but i get your point