Randomization in A Valley Without Wind

Just how much of the game is random and how much procedurally generated? Find out in the latest developer diary from Arcen Games which was a Q&A format.

Question from leekster: I was just curios how much of the game is procedurally generated? Is it in the vein of Dwarf Fortress, where all of it is random? I understand monsters can’t be random due to all the animations and textures. But are spells randomly generated? Thanks for your help.

Answer from Chris [Park of Arcen Games]: Well, this is a really good question, but also a really complicated one to answer.  I could answer you with a lot of technical details, or I could try to answer the spirit of your question.  I suppose I’ll try to do a bit of both.

Dwarf Fortress As Your Example
First, to clarify, though: Dwarf Fortress is not nearly "completely random" as you imply.  This isn’t a criticism of that game, but I think that if I’m going to be able to answer you we have to define our terms a bit here.  I’ve only played a little bit of DF, but for the most part I find that it has lots of pieces, but and high randomization with how those pieces fit together, but the overall algorithms are anything but random.

For instance, in DF all the various ground types are predefined -- Sandy Clay, layers with Aquifers, and dozens of others.  So far as I know, all the enemy and dwarf types are also predefined -- but boy are there are a lot of them.  In terms of the world map regions, those are also defined by the designer, but plentiful.  They are "random," but not truly so -- you get clumpings of regions, you get islands, you get rivers, etc.  This is randomized algorithmic, not pure random.  You don’t get things like a water tile next to a lava tile next to a grassy tile next to a snow tile; things are randomized only in the bounds where they make some kind of sense.

So in a lot of senses, DF is not very random at all -- I would argue that 80% of the game isn’t random at all.  This is also true of AI War, which is also known for being pretty random, if not so plentiful in its pieces as DF.  But that other 20% that IS randomized is what makes the game feel "completely random."  That’s a really important distinction.

AVWW Is Mostly Like That
Now, to answer the spirit of your question: from what I have seen of DF, I would say that AVWW will have a similar degree of randomization overall.  AVWW will also have a similar or greater degree of randomization to AI War.  The tricky thing about this sort of algorithmic randomization, though, is that it requires a ton of input in order to generate a lot of randomized output.  AI War has had about two and a half years to build up, and DF has had... I want to say seven years, but I’m not positive.  Maybe as little as three.

At any rate, earlier in their life cycles, both DF and AI War felt "less random," even though they were just as random, because they had less content.  If you have three things to choose from at random, that doesn’t seem very random even if it is.  If you have three million things, it would seem very random to choose between such items even if it’s not random at all, or only partly random.

AVWW, of course, won’t ship with three of anything -- nor with three million.  My hope is to have dozens or hundreds of each type of thing in the game at 1.0, though, so that there’s a high degree of "this feels random" that we can then continue to build on with free DLC and paid expansions as we have with AI War in the two years since it came out.  My expectation is that AVWW will feel considerably more random and content-ful at 1.0 than most games on the market, but that it will truly start becoming crazy post-release, assuming players are interested in that.

To read the whole developer diary hit the Games by Design blog.