Oblivion: Full spectrum content, from hand-generated to procedural
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2 April 2006
Revised 4 April 2006
by Mike Rozak
Several months back I played Fable: The Lost Chapters, and wrote up the aspects of Fable that I thought were well designed and unique. I just finished playing through part of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion and thought I'd do the same. This is not a review, but an analysis of what works from a design perspective.
Hand-generated vs. procedural content
Ever since Will Wright demoed Spore, developers have been all hyped up about procedural content, claiming that it will save the world (along with Java, multimedia, and pet rocks). While I use procedural content in my own game, I do so with the understanding that procedural content has limitations. Most importantly, procedural content can quickly become repetitive and boring.
Oblivion uses procedural content, but doesn't rely solely upon it. This is where Oblivion excels: Oblivion has a great balance of procedural content, hand-generated content, and in-between procedurally-aided content.
Some definitions follow:
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Procedural content is content where the computer does most of the "creation". This includes randomly generated mazes, wandering monsters, fractal terrain generation, forest creation, etc.
If you want to see examples of procedurally generated content, look at Rogue or Diablo. They are CRPGs that have randomly generated dungeons with randomly placed monsters and randomly generated loot.
The main advantage of procedural content is that (a) it's cheap to produce, and (b) there is an infinite amount of content, making for an infinitely-large world.
Unfortunately, procedural content tends to get boring after a short while. (For most people, at least; Some players can't get enough procedural content.)
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Hand-generated content is detailed content created by a human.
Adventure games like Myst are excellent examples of hand-generated content (except for some of the textures, which are sometimes procedural). Every object and character is placed in the world for a reason that ultimately strengthens a larger goal, such as the game's plot.
Hand-generated content is endowed with meaning and builds on the premise of the game. Theoretically, hand-generated content is more desirable than procedural content, except for a few major problems...
Hand-generated content is very expensive. Consequently, games that exclusively use hand-generated content are small and concise, like poems, short stories, or movies. The landscape in Myst is probably less than 1% of the landmass of Oblivion, but it's a concentrated 1%.
Hand-generated content is also very "fragile"; if a player does something that the author didn't expect, the hand-generated content either won't allow it, or will break.
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In between is procedurally-assisted content. This is content that is procedural in nature, but which is guided by a human author. Terrain editors and dungeons designed from tiles are examples of procedurally assisted content.
CRPGs often rely heavily on procedurally assisted content, as I'll describe below.
The advantages and disadvantages of a procedurally-assisted design fall between a pure procedural and a pure hand-generated world. The content has meaning, but the smaller details of the world (which are procedurally generated) are largely meaningless and don't emphasise the game's plot/premise as much as they could. Of course, the content is cheaper so there's more of it, allowing for larger worlds than pure hand-generated worlds.
Realistically, there's a whole spectrum of hand-generation vs. procedural content: (This spectrum metaphor is important for later on.)
Hand-generated
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Procedurally
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assisted
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Procedural
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How Oblivion handles hand-generated and procedural content
Oblivion has a mix of hand-generated, procedurally assisted, and procedural content. Importantly, it has a well-balanced mix of content.
Here is a brief description about how Oblivion's world is generated (given my understanding and perception of it):
Procedurally assisted
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The world's topography is roughly painted by an author. Procedural algorithms, such as rainfall erosion, are applied to the author's topography, producing gullies and streams.
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Hand-generated
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The forest type (evergreen, deciduous, grasslands, etc.) is painted on the topography by the author.
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Procedural
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Individual trees, shrubs, and grasses are procedurally placed at run-time.
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Hand-generated
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Monster encounter sites are placed by hand, but in a somewhat random pattern. Monsters tend to be near dungeon entrances and roads, but there is no compelling reason for the monster to be in that exact location.
For example: Many bandit camps are placed in valleys near the road. Realistically, a bandit camp would be on a sheltered hill near the road so the bandits could climb the trees and overlook the road. Or, the camp would be in the valley near a hill, but the bandits would spend all their time on the hill.
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Procedural
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The specific monster that appears at a site is determined by the player's level, although the author does choose the type of monster (goblinoid vs. demonic vs. animal).
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Hand-generated
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Dungeon entrances are hand placed, but their appearance is based on a stock set of entrances. Dungeons are evenly scattered around the world, but little attention seems to be paid to the reasons why dungeon X is in location Y.
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Procedural
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Some dungeons, such as the Oblivion gates, are randomly placed throughout the world.
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Procedurally assisted
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Dungeons are created by hand using a set of "tiles". The dungeon layouts appear haphazard to me, and not as carefully laid out as they could be. I suspect the haphazard layouts come from a combination of tile limitations and because the designers don't have enough time to perfect the layouts.
To contrast Oblivion's layouts with another CRPG: Neverwinter Nights' dungeons have specific store rooms for food (for the monsters), design elements that Oblivion lacks. Many of Oblivion's dungeons don't even have a boss monster or other obvious end-point.
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Hand-generated
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Dungeon monsters and loot are placed by hand, but somewhat haphazardly.
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Procedural
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The specific monster and loot that appears at a site is determined by the player's level, although the author does choose the type of monster (goblinoid vs. demonic vs. undead).
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Hand-generated
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Cities are placed by hand, and their external appearance (always walled to reduce polygon counts) is custom to the city.
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Hand-generated
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City streets and buildings are placed by hand, using predefined building models that are repeated though-out the city.
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Procedurally assisted
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Most NPCs are placed by hand, although guards are more procedural. NPC appearance is hand-selected using sliders that modify a basic model.
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Hand-generated
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NPC actions are controlled by AI. The NPC's AI goals are chosen by the author.
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Procedural
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The minute-to-minute details of what the NPC does is left up to the AI.
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Hand-generated
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Quests are hand-generated, and reasonably detailed and creative. (Quests in WoW and EQII, are hand-generated and not as creative, with more of yellow/green colour because they could almost be procedurally generated.)
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Hand-generated
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The main quest, returning an emperor's son to power, is tightly controlled and very detailed.
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The colour spectrum applied to NPCs
Here's example of the spectrum with regards to NPCs:
Hand-generated
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These are high-quality NPCs that the player will meet again and again throughout the game. The player is supposed to develop strong emotions about the NPC.
In Oblivion, the major NPCs appear in the main quest, such as the Emperor's illegitimate son, Martin. Martin is a priest with a chequered past (which I haven't discovered yet) that doesn't know he is royalty. He's uncertain how to handle his new role as emperor... basically, someone the player is going to like.
In the Myst series, almost all the characters are hand-generated "red". Of course, the number of characters in each Myst game can be counted on one hand.
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Hand-generated
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Orange NPCs are supposed to leave an emotional mark, but will only be encountered once or twice.
In one mage's guild chapter in Oblivion, the head of the chapter asks the player to find a guild member who has "disappeared". Meanwhile, the chapter's head continues to practice low-level magic like summoning imps. Talking to the other members of the guild reveals that they don't respect their current chapter leader because she's not skilled enough. It turns out that the wizard who has gone missing turned himself invisible as a joke, knowing that the leader was incapable of casting the appropriate spells to find him and then turn him visible.
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Procedurally assisted
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This NPC is the standard MMORPG NPC. He has a name and an uninteresting quest to hand out, like "Bring me some butter beer and I'll give you 10 gold." While the player knows that the NPC likes butter beer, there's not much personality there.
It wouldn't be difficult to randomly assign every NPC a favourite food/beverage and automatically hand out similar quests. There's very little work for an author to do.
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Procedurally assisted
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This NPC only has a name and a job. He is nothing more than a human-looking vending machine.
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Procedural
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Blue NPCs have names, wander around, and might deliver a rumour. When killed, they are automatically respawned.
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Procedural
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Violet NPCs don't even have a name. They have no purpose except as scenery (much like procedural trees) or monsters to be killed. When killed, they are automatically respawned.
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A world with only red and orange NPCs sounds enticing until you realise that due to production costs, the world would only have a handful of NPCs. Ultimately, this unpopulated world feels very empty. Myst is a perfect example.
A world with only yellow and green NPCs has many more NPCs because they're cheaper to implement. It feels populated, although still a bit sparse. The NPCs are fairly uninteresting though. Most MMORPG cities resemble this.
If a world were only populated by blue and purple NPCs then there would be a hoards of them, but they'd be universally pointless. MMORPG wilderness and dungeons are typically populated by blue/violet monsters.
Oblivion has NPCs from all colours of the spectrum, although it would be nice to see more blue and violet NPCs wandering around the cities so the cities looked busy.
Mixing the colours of the spectrum produces white
If you look at the colours I've use to label Oblivion's content, you'll notice that they come from every colour of the spectrum. This makes Oblivion's combined colour, white-ish.
If I were to create the same table for any of the Myst games, the colours would be almost all red. Diablo and Rogue would be almost entirely blue or violet. Most MMORPGs rely heavily on yellow and green.
The advantage of being white is that it's a bit of everything. My perception of Oblivion (so far) is that it's a huge world (a result of procedurally generated content) with splashes of meaning/plot interspersed (from the hand-generated content). Myst feels less like a world because it's so small (which is one reason Myst takes place on an island). MMORPGs feel large, but they are devoid of meaning (because there isn't much red hand-generated content).
Notice that MMORPG NPCs are chromatically between finely hand-crafted and procedural NPCs. However, being in the middle (yellow or green) is not the same is being white. MMORPG cities are places to go and shop ,or to get quests from the NPC vending machines. They don't contain NPCs that players will care about, nor are there random NPCs wandering around to make the city look busy.
White is important. In my opinion, Oblivion is a better game than any of the Myst series or any MMORPG I've tried, mainly because it is "well rounded"... aka: It has all the colours of the spectrum. I suspect that games which manage to include a range of content, from hand-generated to procedural, will ultimately be better games.
To use a medieval analogy appropriate to Oblivion, a quality sword must be forged with both hard and soft steel. A blade entirely of hard steel will be very sharp but will easily break. A blade entirely of soft steel won't break, but it will not cut well. A compromise of a sword that's uniformly medium-hardness isn't a terribly good weapon either. The proper combination of hard and soft steel is critical.
Another way of looking at this
When developing an avatar game, you have the option of spending money on content creators (hand-generated content), programmers (procedural content), and/or procedurally-assisted content (content creation tools that make content creation a breeze, involving both programmers and content creators.)
As per my earlier discussion, the "content" produced by content creators feels and behaves differently than the "content" produced by procedural content or procedurally-assisted content.
Individual players will prefer the different types of content based on their individual personalities and their current mood. For example:
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If I want to be part of the large story in Oblivion, I follow the main quest and help the Emperor's son. This is hand-generated content.
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However, if I'm feeling railroaded (one side effect of hand-created content), then I might work on quests specific to the mage's guild or the blades. These quests are less restrictive (and less detailed) than the main quest. Notice that the guild quests cover different personality types, as I discussed in the storylines writeup. The Fighter's guild is for players that like doing the same thing over and over (swinging a sword). The Mage's guild provides players with different approaches to a problem (magic). The Blades is about being heroic. The Thieves' guild is about sneaking and being bad. The brotherhood is about being evil.
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If I'm still feeling too restricted, I can partake in the hundred (or so) independent quests, like rescuing a merchant's daughter from a cult. Most of these quests are procedurally assisted in nature.
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Or, I can just wander around and pick flowers, kill monsters, break into houses, or trade goods. All of this is procedurally assisted or pure procedural content.
Contrast this to a game like Myst, where if I don't want to partake in the main plot, my only option is to stop playing. Or a MMORPG, where there is no larger story worth mentioning, leaving the experience of killing hoards of orcs somewhat meaningless.
p.s. - One major gripe about Oblivion
Morrowind, Oblivion's predecessor, had one major problem: Given that your character was level N, many of the dungeons you'd wander into would either be too tough (designed for level N+5 or higher), or too easy (level N-5 or lower). Consequently, most dungeons would require a speedy exit because the dungeon was way too difficult, or the dungeon was a piece of cake. Consequently, there was rarely any challenge; most dungeons were either too hard to even contemplate, or way too easy.
Oblivion fixed this problem, but with an equally bad solution. (I admit that there might not be a good solution.) Almost all dungeons automatically adjust their difficulty level to suit the player's character level. This is good in that all dungeons are now challenging, but...
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One of the cardinal rules about choices is broken: If a player encounters two doors, the doors should have different outcomes.
In terms of Oblivion's dungeons, any dungeon I choose will be equally challenging. (In Morrowind, my choice of dungeon A or dungeon B resulting in different difficulties.) Not only do the dungeons fail to vary in difficulty, but the dungeons are constructed out of a handful of four tile sets, so they all look the same. And, each dungeon has monsters from one of three themes: goblinoid, demonic, and undead. To put it simply, there are only twelve dungeons in Oblivion, resulting from a matrix of four tile sets times three monster sets. Since the tile sets are (mostly) eye candy, there are really only three different dungeons.
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Another rule about CRPG design is that players should initially find that individual orcs (or whatever monster) are difficult to defeat. Later on in the game, they should encounter orcs again, but hoards of them. As the player wades through the masses of orcs and easily dispatches them, the player realises how powerful he has become. Oblivion's auto-adjusting dungeons prevent this.
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