I thought this was about driving

[Ceceli Δ]

And I guess my expectations mislead me. I liked the demo, but it was not at all what I was expecting. It's not like we're in an open road driving around, going in a big adventure, exploring the world almost as if it was Euro Truck or something, and here and there you do some looting and fixing. No. This was more like use your car to drive to that corner, loot this, loot that, now use your car to drive to that other corner, loot this, loot that, now drive your car to that last corner and teleport yourself back to the garage.

I wonder if in the full version of that game we'll be more free to go on big rides and even enjoy a bit of silence instead of the car or whatever the hell keeps talking non-stop.

[noncom]

Originally posted by TG2333:

So first off random generation and procedural generation are not interchangeable, we are talking about procedural generation. And secondly loot is not where the generation stops. The game procedurally generates the whole location using different pre-made pieces. This might not be shared across all maps, like the tutorial map or the final map, but this is how it is for the most part. Loading into the location will give you a different looking map each time.

Hmm, and again this rises some questions. I wonder..

I assume you have the definite knowledge that the game generates most of the maps procedurally, resulting in unpredictable and non-repeating layouts of the whole area, starting from hills, inclines and mountains, end ending with roads, buildings and all the trees/vegetation (correct me if I interpreted you wrongly).

Would you please be so kind to answer:

• According to your description, what is the precise technical difference between random and procedural generation?
  
• According to your estimation, approximately what time does it takes to generate a, say 2x2 km chunk of terrain, with all these details, including the roads, trees, "buildings", and all the other details?
  
• If you were implementing a game like this, but with a continuous world, where you can just drive on such procedurally generated terrain, according to your estimation, roughly what percent of the "detail" would you need to remove to make it run smoothly, and how many CPU threads would you be using?

Bear with me, I had to add "according to your..." to correctly allow you to fully express your take on this, and not saying that I mean getting some wikipedia definitions or very strict numbers.

[TG2333]

Originally posted by Druinthor:

Originally posted by TG2333:

So first off random generation and procedural generation are not interchangeable, we are talking about procedural generation. And secondly loot is not where the generation stops. The game procedurally generates the whole location using different pre-made pieces. This might not be shared across all maps, like the tutorial map or the final map, but this is how it is for the most part. Loading into the location will give you a different looking map each time.

The roads in each map do not change though. Just the random buildings and abnormalities will be different at fixed locations.

I just looked up some interviews and seems to be true that the terrain is fixed. The information I read was incorrect, t's only the points of interests that are procedural. With that said, we'll just wait and see what other variables there are and how the tarkov raid style as a whole plays into the game from start to finish. Because besides the technical stuff it could be gameplay related, map modifiers, raising difficulty, loot, quest design, the enclosing circle, all change when translating from "raids" to open world. And simply it was just a preference by the developers to have it play this way. We'll see.

[TG2333]

Originally posted by noncom:

Originally posted by TG2333:

So first off random generation and procedural generation are not interchangeable, we are talking about procedural generation. And secondly loot is not where the generation stops. The game procedurally generates the whole location using different pre-made pieces. This might not be shared across all maps, like the tutorial map or the final map, but this is how it is for the most part. Loading into the location will give you a different looking map each time.

Hmm, and again this rises some questions. I wonder..

I assume you have the definite knowledge that the game generates most of the maps procedurally, resulting in unpredictable and non-repeating layouts of the whole area, starting from hills, inclines and mountains, end ending with roads, buildings and all the trees/vegetation (correct me if I interpreted you wrongly).

Would you please be so kind to answer:

• According to your description, what is the precise technical difference between random and procedural generation?
  
• According to your estimation, approximately what time does it takes to generate a, say 2x2 km chunk of terrain, with all these details, including the roads, trees, "buildings", and all the other details?
  
• If you were implementing a game like this, but with a continuous world, where you can just drive on such procedurally generated terrain, according to your estimation, roughly what percent of the "detail" would you need to remove to make it run smoothly, and how many CPU threads would you be using?

Bear with me, I had to add "according to your..." to correctly allow you to fully express your take on this, and not saying that I mean getting some wikipedia definitions or very strict numbers.

What is going on with this guy

[noncom]

Originally posted by TG2333:

What is going on with this guy

Well, here we go. Not sure what makes you react like this, really. Somehow you keep implying that something is wrong with me?
I just asked for details about your own claims ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
To me this looks like a normal discussion about such kind of stuff, you know, just a regular talk between pals that I could have at work on any random day.
You see, you make claims, spark my professional interest, I ask to elaborate, but you kinda go into some defense mode or something idk. I was thinking we're just chilling here, discussing stuff, idk.
Imagine you're talking to a fisherman about fish, or to a car mechanic about cars. This kind of stuff. Your reactions though look weird.

[Phyksar]

Originally posted by TG2333:

What is going on with this guy

He's literally gaslighting you to avoid answering to your awkward questions, what a joke! ;D

[Kan3da.]

Same. I expected a road trip and not a series of beer runs.

[Straborvsky]

yeah, I was kinda expecting the long drive in stalker zone. BUT I'm suckers to adventuring game with car regardless the flaw, so my only hope is they fix the optimization during the demo.

[FourMore]

Is it confirmed the rest of the maps are as small as in the demo?

[Kan3da.]

Originally posted by FourMore:

Is it confirmed the rest of the maps are as small as in the demo?

Not really, but i dont expect the loop to change fundamentally. As it is, for me, its more like your pushing a cart from lootdrop to lootdrop. Thats fine for anyone that likes it, but i expected a road trip adventure, and that aint it at all.

Which is a shame for me since the trailer got me hyped to the max and what the game actually is, just isnt for me. I prefer other rougelites in that regard.

[Colonel McShizzle]

Originally posted by Kan3da.:

Originally posted by FourMore:

Is it confirmed the rest of the maps are as small as in the demo?

Not really, but i dont expect the loop to change fundamentally. As it is, for me, its more like your pushing a cart from lootdrop to lootdrop. Thats fine for anyone that likes it, but i expected a road trip adventure, and that aint it at all.

Which is a shame for me since the trailer got me hyped to the max and what the game actually is, just isnt for me. I prefer other rougelites in that regard.

Damn that's a shame. I was thinking it was gonna be a long roadtrip too. Guess I'm gonna have to wait and look at some gameplay after release to see if it's still something I want to try.

[noncom]

Originally posted by Phyksar:

Originally posted by TG2333:

What is going on with this guy

He's literally gaslighting you to avoid answering to your awkward questions, what a joke! ;D

Ahah :D He honestly looked smarter, most of the time. That suited him much better, like more his style, as I feel.

[noncom]

Originally posted by DuX1112:

The controls for The Long Drive are terrible though. Especially if you want to play it with a controller...

Oh this is so much true! They have a lot to work on there, let's hope the rewrite they mentioned is coming one day!

[Alabeo]

It seems like we're right after all, some reviewers already say the game's survival elements and pacing is slow.

I can actually see how they could make this The Long Drive-like game with continous procedural generation.

All the ingridients for player explanations are here, thanks to the lore. My take on this game would be as follows:

You have a garage, you drive to the area, and get teleported. THEN the map starts getting randomly generated. Notice the "zone barriers" where "everything is "unstable", a kind of a 'kill-zone' for the player if they wander off?

Use those barriers, as they also have lore-explanation, to make sure that the generated area doesn't generate too much away from the road itself. Basically generate road itself, some accessible limited terrain on each side of the road, and restrict the player to that.

Make it so on each side of the road, there's randomly-generated patch of terrain with randomly placed trees/buildings/etc, and behind them, there's this kill barrier (unstable zone), to just prevent player from leaving the generated zone. Unlike TLD, all you'd have to do is procedurally generate the road forwards (never backwards), because we don't want player to wander too far. Make height variations, make road quality variations, spawn anomalies at random, depending on how far you are into game, and make them more intense as game progresses and more randomly generated roads you explore. On top of that, spawn random wrecks, fill the randomly placed buildings with random loot and there you go.

Maximum distance of generation could be for example 50 real life kilometers. After that, after we finish, the map is discarded (so it doesn't hog data space on your PC) and you enter another "zone" or "garage" where you can fix car and just go out and start generating map again from random seed, with increasingly dangerous anomalies.

Or even better, use the random generation for the 'in between' areas, where you enter the 'loading zone'. You get out of the garage, drive to a checkpoint, an animation will play and then you're spawned in some zone that's a "start" of the mission. You then have to drive randomly generated distance to your mission objective. On that drive you could save freely, but not once you'd enter the objective area.

This is just me brainstorming, but that's how I imagined this game could be... but as it is now, idk man.

[Leziropav]

teleport? what the hell?

[Nex]

Exclusion Zone with a car as your only lifeline in this driving survival adventure! Scavenge resources, load up your trusty station wagon, and drive like hell to make it through alive.

I guess the store description is false advertising. Go figure.