Episode the third of Fantastic Pixel Castle’s aptly named Ghost Stories has arrived today, allowing studio boss Greg “Ghostcrawler” Street more space to discuss his upcoming MMORPG, codenamed Project Ghost. And Street is trekking back to what is fast becoming one of his favorite topics: blue zones, which are basically procedurally generated maps.
Street explains that he’s had a hard time conveying to MMORPG players just why blue zones will be awesome; gamers hear the phrase “random maps” and feel cheated, and Street acknowledges that “a map made by the computer without sufficient human intervention can feel soulless.” That isn’t what Ghost’s blue zones will look like, though.
“What is special about Ghost’s blue zones is that each map is different, but they feel handmade. It’s not really that we have stumbled upon some magical algorithm to make non-oatmeal terrain generation. It’s that we have developed a recipe that lets the algorithm deliver on the vision in the designer’s head. If we want to make a dragon’s lair (or more accurately, if the recipe rolls that there should be a dragon on the next map), the recipe determines a good lair for that dragon, maybe adds some villages that have been terrorized by the dragon, adds an objective to kill / steal from / befriend the dragon, and then uses the procedural generation of terrain to fill in the gaps.”
The end result, he hopes, will give players the World of Warcraft Grizzly Hills vibe without the intense (and expensive) Grizzly Hills dev time, and even better, the assets won’t go to waste once you’ve leveled through them.
P.S.: Hey guys, in lieu of a pony, maybe we can get some fresh screenshots or art for the game? 😀