Jason Grinblat - Markov by Candlelight

Markov by Candlelight: Jason experiments with designing an infinite library in Caves of Qud where players can peruse procedurally-generated books for meaningful game lore.
Jason is a game designer, writer, programmer, and eater of spätzle for Freehold Games, who made Sproggiwood and Caves of Qud.
www.freeholdgames.com
store.steampowered.com/app/333640
/ ptychomancer

[@Joeyboots80]

Great presentation! Fascinating subject. :)

[@Mearrin69]

In my Steam review of Qud I mentioned Gamma World and A Canticle for Leibowitz. This is why the latter. ;) Great video.

[@nycoshouse]

why not generate the world map randomly ?

[@lucentdepths643]

Very interesting video, love this sort of playing but... in the video... you mention there being 18000 maps on the surface.... You say its 18 x 25 tiles on the world map, which is 450 tiles. Each world map tile is a 3x3 grid of map screens - 9 maps 450 x 9 = 4050 What am I missing lol

[@tomc5176]

Underground

[@micahberg6546]

pretty sure it’s 25 by like 85

[@Ashe1001]

He misspoke, it's _80_ by 25.

[@marksmod]

You need to scrap Markov Chains for this project. You yourself point out the biggest problems of using it and the only aspect that gives integrity to the Books in the World of CoQ is basically hard-coded. I'm not saying that there isn't some kind of procedurally generated algorithm which could be used effectively, just that there isn't an easy solution for this one. Either have immutable books or go full out. I bet many players would not mind the books being grammatically incorrect, if it means that what is described in them is based on stuff which affects the specific instance of the game they are playing.

[@user-cn4qb7nr2m]

Yeah, it is funny and all, but it totally ruins immersion. For some players it isn`t a big deal: some are playing for "intellectual challenge", some just having fun with procedural stuff, but lots of players care very much about overall consistency and atmosphere.. This feature would ruin game for them.

[@garaktartv3647]

dont play it then ?

[@user-cn4qb7nr2m]

@@garaktartv3647 oh, great, didn't think of that, thx

[@TheJPGW]

i can assure you, it's pretty consistent.

[@user-cn4qb7nr2m]

@@TheJPGW What do you mean? If you read any book, it is obviously gibberish and you immediately know that it is algorithmic, suspension of disbelief is broken and your day is ruined. btw, he removed the "feature" I think.

[@libenhagos9335]

​@user-cn4qb7nr2m no they still produce books this way, and it's definitely a novel way to generate ramdom books. There are also pre-written books. Personally I think they should go the elder scrolls route and crowd source some books from their community.

[@Numenorean921]

dwarf fortress does this kind of thing way better.

[@willorn]

true