Mike Cook on Moon Hunters and Procedural Space

Mike “ProcJam” Cook gets mentioned here frequently, partially because he does stuff like organize ProcJam and partially because he’s one of the people who talks about the “why” of procedural generation.

Today, it’s the latter that concerns us: In a post on the production blog for his in-progress procedurally-generated cyberpunk hacking game Rogue Process, Mike talks about what he’s learned from Moon Hunters.

Unlike most other procgen game stories, Moon Hunters deliberately tells the same story each time, but, as Mike points out, told in a different way, as if being told by a different storyteller. The mythological cycle repeats itself. At the same time, the different emphasis of the story is gated by which part of the generated space the player chooses to emphasize.

The generator, in effect, becomes a part of the story, almost a character within it. The framing matches the content.

By having different parts of the game locked away behind different gates, Moon Hunters takes what could have been a flat, bald story structure and turns it into something that can be explored in itself.

Mike also talks about how what he’s learn has influenced the design for Rogue Process. I think that creating an underlying structure to the generated content, allowing the player to anticipate some of the generator’s plans, is a very powerful creative principle.

(I’m attempting something a bit like that in my NaNoGenMo novel. We’ll see if I can pull it off within the span of the month.)

http://www.rogueprocess.run/2016/11/22/moon-hunters-procedural-space/