[MUD-Dev] Procedural content (was Re: [Sweng-gamedev] Patent 4, 734, 690) (fwd)

[Hulbert, Leland]

Not sure how to attribute a forwarded message... anyway.

Travis Nixon wrote a whole lot of good arguments for generated
content vs. hand made content.  He's got a point, and I'm firmly on
the side of generated content myself.  I see it as a little more
than an either/or choice, though.  We at least two in-between
options:

The Assembly Line: Generate content in a standard fashion, but have
touch up done by human designers.  Travis touched on this with his
mention that certain areas may be customized in a generated content
world.  I think it will be just as viable if not more so if every
piece of content is customized, but off a generated base.  This may
be enough to enable a small development team to compete with a
larger team that is going the full hand-modeled route.

The Prop Room: Eventually, we have to reach a point where last years
models are just as visually stunning as this year's models.  We
aren't there yet.  But at some point, the difference is going to be
too small to notice, and not worth re-building from scratch.  Same
will eventually happen for mob AI, assuming at least similar genre
of products.  Unfortunately, this gives the advantage right back to
the big development houses, who own the models from last year.  It
would be beneficial to the smaller houses if some third party
developed a warehouse of this kind of resource for sale.
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