oblige!

[gggmork]

I already have no life but now I'm gonna have -1 life. I only just now heard of this (I couldn't get slige to work easily)- some of the best gameplay and levels I've played and all randomly generated!

I think, if you like tougher maps, the best way is to make a whole episode, selecting 'hordes' of enemies and 'less' ammo and health, then play the LATER levels with a pistol start :)
(if the algorithm does indeed make the later levels incrementally harder which seemed to from what I've played so far).
It's also like a random mapping idea generator.

[Creaphis]

Hm. When I play Doom, I want to see levels that humans have put together. I would find playing Oblige levels to be an extremely empty experience. But if it works for you, great.

[40oz]

thanks for the info buddy *thumbs up*

[Death-Destiny]

I do indeed like playing computer generated maps, as they often have pretty decent gameplay. However, Human-made maps have aethetic elements and personal choices in terms of monster placement and such that make them special. Of course, random-made maps are fun too, don't get me wrong, but I prefer man-made maps.

I think it would be cool if way in the future a random-map generator was written that was so sophisicated that it could generate scores of incredible architecture, detailing, and texturing as well as amazing enemy/thing placement and intelligent use of linedef actions... so good that you couldn't tell the map was random. Unfortunately, I guess that would make mapping from scratch by humans obsolete, wouldn't it. The next-gen mapping community would be defined by who could manipulate the map generator's perameters most skillfully and creatively. An interesting thought, though kind of creepy/disturbing, isn't it. =S

[Creaphis]

You may not realize it, but you're hitting upon some philosophical and aesthetic issues that have sprung up this century. Certain genres of composition and visual art have been perfectly replicated by programs and robots. So, what is art, in that case? Not to mention the classic problems of artificial intelligence.

[40oz]

I know what he means, especially after playing much oblige megawads, the maps do intend to all look the same but with different prefabs and texture choices. Oblige does not choose which prefabs would look best where, but instead picks one at random, and puts it in any place that makes the room still able to be navigated through.

Humans obviously have a better sense of imagining what should go where. They can predict how some gameplay elements will go, for example putting a couple barrels on the side of a hallway where some hell barons will run to get you. Or placing crates just barely close enough so that the player can leap across them to get to a secret. A human maybe more likely to design architecture that "makes sense" Like for example, someone making a pool of water that is damaging, that has an electric cord sparking over top of it.

Automatic Generators will only do what it was designed to be capable of, but humans have an ability to want to design something that hasn't been done before. I doubt generators will ever successfully be capable of that.

[Death-Destiny]

JohnnyRancid said:

Automatic Generators will only do what it was designed to be capable of, but humans have an ability to want to design something that hasn't been done before. I doubt generators will ever successfully be capable of that.

I'm sure generators will be able to at some point, even if it's quite far off. Back in the day, people would laugh at you if you suggested that people could fly to the moon in some sort of futuristic vehicle, but today we have space stations and everything and don't give it a second thought.

[Mik57]

And one of these days, OBLIGE wont even need humans to set seeds on it, it'll just seed itself. (sounds weird) And since it doesn't need humans to use it anymore, it will rise up and KILL US ALL!!!!! AAAAHHHHHH!!!!!

[Creaphis]

Or it'll just play its own levels.

[Colusio]

Hey if you use obhack (http://www.doomworld.com/vb/doom-editing/41760-oblige-with-bugfixes-and-tweaks-available/)
you can choose swarms which has twice the amount of monsters compared to oblige hordes. Other improvements include starting maps with shotgun/rl if you want and to ability to generate very small maps.

[Mechadon]

Creaphis said:

Or it'll just play its own levels.

OBLIGE will make the Doom community obsolete. *gasp*

[Creaphis]

Mechadon said:

OBLIGE will make the Doom community obsolete. *gasp*

Ha ha, too late!

Just kiddin'

[gggmork]

Some of the levels generated with obhack's swarms/ less health/ less ammo are frustratingly fantastic. Or its fun to use hordes/less health/less ammo and play fast/aggressive instead of trying to tediously get max kills. If you play a new level each time you win or die, its just pure moment to moment raw gameplay where level memorization plays NO role in your success and you constantly run into unique suprise predicaments. Humble little pinky demons made this extremely difficult predicament in this one map I was playing heh heh. I rarely get lost in these maps either as I often do in hand crafted maps. I'm not putting down hand crafted maps though.

[andrewj]

Generated maps versus hand-made maps (or music etc) I think can be like the difference between looking at the Mandelbrot set, which is beautiful in one way, and looking at a great painting which is beautiful in another (more human) way.

Oblige rarely creates anything terribly interesting or beautiful, yet, but a good example is Aardappel's map to the 10 sector contest which was a very interesting design (for the first 5 minutes anyway) generated from a simple algorithm.

[CodenniumRed]

On a similar note, we can have a randomly generated map to use its layout as a BASE for something hand-crafted. We add in details and modify it in DooM Builder. Than we use XWE to put in some plasma zombies and alternate music tracks (say MAP01 uses the Unholy Cathedral track) and we have a potential winner.

[jobro]

Oh you beat me on this one. Yeah oblige may create empty looking maps, but then again it is, as I at least see it, a tool to create some basic maps for postprocessing. So I personaly like the idea of having a complete mission generated for you. So what if the levels are empty? That is your task as a human to collaborate with Oblige to make the levels your style.

[Creaphis]

I don't know about that, guys. I find gggmork's statement interesting - that these maps give us the chance to play without memorization as a factor - but I don't think randomly generated maps can really be put to good use in any other way. There's a pretty hard limit to how good a randomly-generated map can be, and an OBLIGE map with added music, monsters and detail still sounds pretty uninteresting to me. Compelling architecture and unique gameplay can't be randomly generated.

[magicsofa]

I don't think it's necessarily bad to use generated maps as a base...

...but, like, are you kidding me? Would any of you really want to do this? A new oblige map simply exhibits the program's ability to make decisions which are inherently NOT random. Randomness implies a lack of correlation. In a way, oblige is an anti-random generator. The purpose of the program is to restrict itself based on what has already been constructed, not to come up with something original. Perhaps the first room is of a pseudo-random size and shape, but the program -will- make a room that is connected, and another, and so on. The program -will- choose thing placement based on pre-defined settings as well as what the player has and what has appeared already.

A level generator is just trying to mock real mappers' decision making. I suppose that sprucing up the generated map could be a good exercise in sprucing things up, or improving upon existing features. But I don't see any merit in trying to make a real-live level out of a generated one. I don't think anything is more important than the basic layout and gameplay.

That said, random levels can be mad fun!

[Nemark]

<Look out! Noob question!>

Which random-map generator is better? Slige or Oblige? What are the pros and cons of each?

[deathbringer]

SLIGE is good if you like lots and lots of stairs, and tiny rooms containing one monster trapped inside.

OBLIGE is good if you like lots and lots of cubes, and odd areas of slime and quite a few lifts.

Overall i prefer OBLIGE levels but probably because i havent played as many. Back in the day i used to play through whole megawads of SLIGE but i don't think i've ever even finished an OBLIGE map. I have an episode sitting in my doom folder that i'll carry on with one day, though

[Kira]

I'll never use generated maps as a base of work in my projects because I'll miss the feeling of reward when finishing.
But in other hand it can be funny to create competitions around one generated map as base to edit (It have been done one time I believe).

[CodenniumRed]

It should be done again. Have a map with a good layout, than modify the areas so much that it looks like it was professionally made from scratch. Of course in the WAD file if it were a competition, each person wiuld have MAP 01 with the final level, and MAP 02 with the original, 90-degree-walled-almost-no-themed level.

In fact if I did this I would still end up creating entire areas from scratch and inserting them where the default sections were.

[Colusio]

Indeed it has been done, more info here:
http://www.doomworld.com/vb/wads-mods/40790-yay-tuning-contest/

I didn't find obhacks small and tiny levels interesting but the huge ones are.
I prefer to replay a level ten, twenty times if necessary instead of doing a nomonster run or god run. Of course that's also a way of memorizing a map.

[40oz]

ah jeez I want to reply to every post I've seen so far!!

but Coldfusio beat me in saying that there was once a competition that everyone would a specific oblige map that was generated, and they all had to add detail to it to make it good.

Oh you beat me on this one. Yeah oblige may create empty looking maps,

Personally I think exactly the opposite. Oblige creates maps that seem sooo cluttered with stuff it's near impossible to make something using oblige as a base.

There's a pretty hard limit to how good a randomly-generated map can be, and an OBLIGE map with added music, monsters and detail still sounds pretty uninteresting to me. Compelling architecture and unique gameplay can't be randomly generated.

I wouldn't say compelling architecture 'cant' be generated. Oblige obviously isn't absolutely random because it uses a large number of prefabs. I think the combination of certain prefabs and the way they are arranged can make a decent substitute, and often helps me to get ideas in mapping. I often will use flaws in map generators such as Oblige and slige as a guide to making better maps. Sometimes I will notice a pretty good looking room, and start imagining some things that would make it look better. I can then use that imagined idea to make a map later on.

SLIGE is good if you like lots and lots of stairs, and tiny rooms containing one monster trapped inside.

OBLIGE is good if you like lots and lots of cubes, and odd areas of slime and quite a few lifts.

This is a pretty poor description of Oblige and Slige.

Slige generates a series of rectangle shaped rooms connected by hallways in a linear pattern that are generally pretty basic looking. All maps fall under 4 basic themes, Military base, Wood, Marble, and Brick. Sometimes they will feature things such as sky-lights and windows and computers on walls and stuff. Maps are almost entirely indoors, sometimes with a little outdoor patio for you to walk out on. Items and monsters are randomly dotted around the maps with no pattern to it whatsoever, but there is often enough, if not a surplus of resources to play with. Slige doesn't use much variety in monsters because Pain Elementals, Arachnatrons, Hell Barons, Archviles Mancubi, Cyberdemons, and Spider Masterminds are considered boss monsters, and will only be used for boss battle arenas, which show up in generated maps very rarely.

Oblige is a little more up-to-date map generator, it's mostly a compilation of sectors on a 64x64 grid. Features indoor and outdoor maps. Maps are often very non-linear and feature many height differences. There are a lot of prefabs (Premade map objects) that are dotted around the maps to give them a little more of a human-made look. Items and monsters are distributed generally the same as slige, except it uses a larger variety of monsters. Maps in mapsets get progressively harder(stronger weapons, stronger monsters, fewer medikits). Maps look a lot more filled in due to many platforms, elevators, catwalks, and caged monsters. There are many varying map themes compared to Slige. Oblige also features more options to making specific maps. You can decide to have few monsters or many monsters, lots of health or little health. Tons of ammo or scarce ammo. Huge maps or tiny maps.

[Colusio]

I would like to see some prefrab traps in oblige but I realize it's an impossible or rather bad idea to implement. But I don't like monster placement in oblige it's always sergants, imps, former humans and demons at the start.