Mission Procedural Generation

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide Gameplay Feedback
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So I had an idea of what could improve this game. I don’t know if it’s possible with the current map setup, but we have several missions that take place on the same map tile and feature the same areas frequently. Why can’t the route and objective be procedurally generated? Each mission consists of a start point, middle point, and endpoint. Why can’t the start point, middle point, and endpoint be randomized?

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We’ve already seen areas of maps reused, and we’ve already seen boxes in the way of routes they don’t want us to go along with doors closed off, etc. It would take work, sure, but each new route could be added as they went. They wouldn’t need to do it all at once. Right now we have, what? two missions per map? Those two missions could be procedurally generated to have a different beginning, middle, and end so that two missions become eight possible permutations.

Maybe even optional, more difficult routes for extra bonuses? Maybe a route that adds an extra middle objective to the match?

I understand that the stories of each mission are important and the middles tie in with the end in some way, but frankly I think I would prefer mission variety to a well-connected mission story. With a bit of extra work, any middle objective could be tied into the end objective.

What are other people’s thoughts?

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Sounds great, doesn’t work. With DTs spaghetti-code, we will be lucky if we ever get proper mission selection and something that resembles crafting.

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One can dream :slight_smile:

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Sounds great, doesn’t work.

The balance will be a goddamn nightmare. People will find out which map routes are the easiest and most efficient and then crying about “why is it randomized, why can’t we choose path” becomes the next step.

It’s one of the ideas where in a perfect world it would be great, but getting there will be way more difficult. Level design has way more thought into it than most realize. Even when making a map work in reverse.

I mean, lets take the sand map, can’t remember the name.
The “mid” point in that map for both missions is the “housing” area that’s quite tall. One direction you move up and in the other direction you move down.

What if the randomize decides you start from the direction where you enter the area from the top, then it gives you the ending like it was the relay mission (where you are supposed to climb the place).
You now have a path where you just skip the entire area since you don’t have to either descend or climb up which is the majority of that set-piece.

That area is also the toughest place in my experience, that’s usually where missions are determined if they fail or not. You now have a clear best path and the most efficient. Same works if you come from the relay mission and you just go to the right on the lower level. If you hug that wall after jumping down you don’t have to fight anything while making your way for the door.

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lol what, a lot of horde games have alternate routes and I’ve NEVER heard this complaint once.

It would be a net benefit to the game to have
alternate routes.

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The random mission availability was already a great idea and a great hit, can’t wait to see them random generated too.

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This game has “alternate routes”, which is missions… depending on your definition of alternate routes.
Randomizing start, mid and end point is vastly different than “alternate routes” depending on context. Alternate routes is alternate because they usually have the same start and end point. Otherwise it’s not an alternate route but a different journey all together.
I don’t have much to go on by your statement tbh. I at least gave an example which demonstrates the problem I voiced based on OP’s explanation of how it would work.

Care to tell me what I said is wrong, given the example, with more than just “lol no”?

I don’t think it’s impossible, but I also don’t think it’s easy to add more and more to current maps if it wasn’t designed with that in mind to begin with. And if you design with that in mind from the start the map creation process would take much longer than normal maps or even the maps we already have.

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You said it doesn’t work, except that’s already the games design philosophy. (And one that’s been used for years by the genre, albeit not always in the exact same way.) The only difference is there isn’t a random middle point with alternating routes to go through. Each mission has a unique start and end point that connect to the same middle points used in other missions of the same zone. Fatshark has gone out of their way to mention that they designed the zones so with modular crossovers points so they can make new maps faster. The only major difference in what OP asked for from what’s there now is alternate corridors between the beginnings middle and ends. Not a big difference from what we already have.

So, yeah, lol no to you shooting it down out of hand.

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Works in Deep Rock Galactic.

Rock and stone brutah!!!

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Once again dodging my example of problems. Care to explain how it isn’t a problem?
Randomizing the path means an entire mid-section will be skipped, which i’ve layed out clearly.

I know why Fatshark have designed maps as they have… and I think that’s good because in theory that should make faster maps… But that’s not with routes being RANDOMIZED, that’s with routes being predetermined by using the same pieces. You are taking a statement and design philosophy out of context and shove it into something it wasn’t designed for.

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I get your original point, but I think fatshark could control exits and entries to add a stairwell here, an elevator there to make it connect logically to their already modular maps. Honestly when i saw their design philosophy was to make maps modular so they could crank out new missions faster, I thought procedural generation was going to be part of it at launch. I was sad when that wasn’t the case, but not super surprised.

Just to clarify, in my vision, the route from point A to point B would be the same given that point A and B are the same. So only three things would be procedural: start, middle, and end. Every time you traveled from start C to middle D, you would take the same route, but the route would be different (but could meet up at some point) if you started at start B and went to middle D. I think that’s realistic.

While going through the map, box pile 6 appears on B-D, C-D, and D-D, but not A-D. That box pile blocks off the path that A-D would normally be taking to arrive at D. In other words, the routes are still proscribed to an extent.

Does that make sense?

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lol okay

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Thank you! More to go with.

I think I understand. However, that to me sounds very similar to how it already is.
Lets go back to my example. Relay Mission and the Raid Vault (I think it’s called?).

Lets say sA is coming in from the top, the raid mission. And sB is the relay mission coming from the bottom. Where mC is the building complex I mentioned. eD is relay end from the top and eE is the raid end from the bottom

From one direction you have sA-mC, while in the other mission you have sB-mC.
That’s all well and good, however, the problem comes when you add the end. eD and eE.

If you get sA-mC-eD you essentially get sA-eD because you enter at the top and exit at the top. Same problem comes if you get sB-mC-eE, it becomes sB-eE because you skip the midpiece. Sure this can be fixed by going in and blocking off so if you get sA-mC-eD you have to go down the scaffolding a bit and then climb back up and vice versa for sB-mC-eE. That’s also similar to what we have, because they already are blocked off depending on the mission you get.

It also means you have to go through each configuration and change every piece to make sure that route works and doesn’t accidentally result in certain pieces that can be skipped. That would defeat the purpose of having randomizations.
This also grows the more pieces they add and the more combinations, the more they have to go through all pieces and make sure they fit.

That’s where my gripe is, because the maps aren’t designed with randomization in mind. It’s designed with pieces being reused in different set paths. And that’s a detail that’s crucial. If we entered mid pieces and exited them at the same locations you could randomize everything in any order and it would work, but that would also make those pieces exactly the same (though you can add randomization within that piece as well, with boxes as you mentioned)

If we talk numbers your example is 64 different configs, by adding one more start, mid and end that becomes 125 and if they have different entrances and exists you have to go over and tweak each one. That’s assuming we add an entrance and exit for each one of them of course.

I don’t dislike your idea. And honestly, they can probably do that if they want with future maps but they have to design them differently so they can add more paths without breaking the current pieces and without having to go in and make design exceptions for each permutation. I’m not arguing that it’s impossible and no game can do this sort of thing. That’s absurd, I just don’t see the current maps working with it.

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It’s a great idea. Each map is already broken into chunks that are defined by things like air locks, elevators, and drops. I think the graph idea is the way to go, each vertices is a map chunk, and each edge is a way to transition between the 2 chunks.

It should go well beyond 3 chunks though. Some chunks would just be for travel, but others could be event rooms or boss arenas etc. Not trying to steal from DRG, but when generating a map, you could easily include the map length into it. A short mission could have a path of length 4 or 5, and a long mission could be of length 8 or 9.

I think there’s one part you’re missing though, each map chunk needs a graph too. When you enter from Entrance A, you need to know what exits are valid to choose from. You don’t want a situation where the entrance and exit are right next to each other. Some but not all Exits should be linked to Entrance A.

So for each biome, there would be a graph of map chunks that describes how players can transition from one chunk to another. Each map chunk also needs a graph to describe which entrances are allowed to connect to each exit.

I would stay away from branching paths though. It would definitely not work if one branch had a drop, but it would also be annoying for PUGs if no one can agree as to which way to go.

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Wasnt In Chaos Wastes, map “rooms” where randomized?

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Not all mids have to be valid for all possible configurations. If we removed mC from the possible paths from sA-eD, then that would solve that particular issue. Alternatively, if it were just on the top floor, you could block off the lower floors and have a different sort of alternative objective on the top floor of mC.

The key to my idea, and the only way it could really work, is with reusability. If they wanted to add a new start point, they could connect it up with another route midway through, reusing the end of the route but still making it feel fresh. This also solves the issue you brought up with having multiple entrances/exits to a mid area. If you connect them up before the room, and divert them after the room, that solves the problem.

If the middle objective handled the last half of each starting route, and the first half of each ending route, you would only need to create a half route to each middle upon creating a new start or end. If you have 4 middle objectives, that’s 4 total routes for every start, and 4 total routes for every end. If you add a new start, you still only need 4 routes. If you add more middle objectives, you can build new routes over time. They wouldn’t need to be turned on for EVERY start or end right away.

Game design/map design doesn’t need to be perfect. I’m sure there’s a way to create an illusion of random to keep things fresh even with the current map setup. If they did it this way, it would drastically increase replayability. Lots of work up front for a huge payout, but less work to add more onto it in the future. You’d get a LOT more maps and permutations out of this for a lot less work than manually making each new map/route like they’re doing currently.

I feel like some sort of randomization is essential for the game’s longevity. If they added a chaos wastes style mode to this game I think that would solve my issue.

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I can think of 2 games that have attempted this:

On one end of the scale, Warframe maps are all generated by tiles in a tileset, with specific objective or story tiles per tileset. It suffers the problem where if you’ve seen all the tiles, rearranging them doesn’t really add much to the experience anymore. It helped that they kept on releasing new tilesets, so there’s that option.

Then Inquisitor Martyr, the maps are very obviously spliced together from premade sections (heck, there are seams here and there where it wasn’t fully connecting) but something went wrong with their map generation and now every single map is premade with the random missions picking from a pool of premade maps. Story, seasonal mission and crusade maps are always the same.

I’d just be happy if they went the L4D and Vermintide style of rearranging walls, fences and doors so that sometimes you had to go on a different path. Currently the only thing that really does that are daemonhosts and looking for books. Patrols are too quiet and have too large of a detection range to sneak past 95% of the time.

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I don’t think OP is advocating for 100% random maps. An over simplified example would be a 3x3 grid. (0,0), (0,1), (0,2), (1,0), (1,1), (1,2), (2,0), (2,1), (2,2). Each cell in the grid would have 2, 3, or 4 places to transition to an adjacent cell. Ex cell (0,0) could have an airlock that leads to (0,1), and an elevator to (1,0).

When a map is generated, it would pick 3 cells that are adjacent. For example you would start in (1,0), then travel to (1,1) do an event, then travel to (2,1) to exit. For the effort to make 9 intricate map chunks, you get 44 paths of length 3. If you make about twice as many maps and get a 4x4, you get 96 unique paths of length 3. I don’t want to do the math, but if you have paths of length 4, or 5 or whatever, you have a massive number of unique, but not random maps to go through.

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Lets not forget that having the option to buy exact amount of space dollars for an armor set is immeasurably complex
By that measure having rng map chunks is just fantasy land

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One can dream. But Meat Shield is right. It’s not about 100% RNG maps. You lose a LOT of environmental storytelling with that. I just think that it’d be really cool to have different routes blocked off each time I play to switch things up a bit.

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