--Your thoughts on Random generated levels VS per determined levels --

MillionairApps

Hello

I was reading a few blogs and comments and came across a debate about how bad and lazy it is to have random generated levels in a game. Now I am talking about puzzles here.
So question one:
As a game player, does it bother you that levels are randomly generated, (even though it may look like its all per determined) or do you prefer all planed out so it ranges of from simple to harder ect.

Question two:
As a game developer, in a puzzle game, how do you code your levels? Generated or pre determined?


You see I need a total of 10 000 levels and all are programmed through tables. So I didn't really fancy typing up over 400 000 numbers into to tables more or less actually design so many levels. However I didn't want to take a short cut if a majority feel it has some negative effect on the game if the levels are randomly generated.

Thoughts?

BoomshackBarry

I don't see any problem with randomly generated levels. How would the player even know if your levels are randomly generated? If it saves time and makes no difference to the final game then I say go for it.

Also 10,000 levels? That's one big game!

MillionairApps

@BoomshackBarry
They wouldn't know they are randomly generated unless they happen to compare them to one device. That was my thoughts initially, I guess the main question I should be asking is how to make it range of in difficultly while being generated. But for example, a popular puzzle game, flow free, has all the levels laid out. If they were random generated would you notice a different in progressing through the game?

Maybe I should also say that, these levels are generated on the spot, there is no going back to that level once completed. Therefore everyone is going to be completing different levels in a different order.

Since its a puzzle game, some levels I can complete in a few seconds while some take a few minutes and some can take up to ten minutes, it needs to have a decent amount of levels.
However 10000 + is the amount of levels that a player who gets the lowest score on each level would have to complete to finish the game.
However if you have some skill, advancing through the game is going to involve less levels, however it's going to get harder a lot quicker. It's a very simple game, just sounds big

BoomshackBarry

Ah I see what you mean. I guess there's no easy answer. In my opinion a game that generates levels on the fly is basically a different game from one that uses hand-designed levels - the random generation is a feature of the game rather than a shortcut. You could even use the random levels as a selling point - instead of having only the fixed levels that the developer designed you instead can offer unlimited levels that are always different.

I personally don't see a problem with the random approach. It would be tricky controlling the diffilculty curve though. I guess you'd have to somehow programmatically control the difficulty by implementing an integer of some sorts in to the random generation process, and then by adjusting that integer throughout the game you alter the placement/type/number of puzzle blocks etc used in the random generation process, to adjust the difficulty on a scale found out through testing. Without knowing how your game works though that's a very generalised suggestion.

MillionairApps

@BoomshackBarry

Ahh, now you see what I was originally trying to get out before. They are going to be different just like you said. The idea of the game is to rank in as many points as you can, so by playing on random levels should not really be an issue.
What I was looking for, is if anyone has had any positive or negative experince with this, either as a developer or a game user.
I am willing to go full on into this, but I was hesitating cause I hadn't experince this before on a puzzle base game. And if people knew this was a bad idea because of XYZ then I would look further into it.

The random approach is all set up, as well as the adjusted difficulty, I don't have a problem coding in GS. Although thank you for taking the time to throw in some ideas and thoughts

BoomshackBarry

Gotcha. I don't have any experience with these issues personally so hopefully someody else who does can chime in! Good luck

SingleSparq

If random is considered a negative, turn it into a positive. Tout the fact that they are randomly genrated so it's always a 'surprise' you can spin almost anything into a good thing in your favour.