mine creates a series of peaks, I merely did it to show that you can add additional complexity to the generation, I've also added in sand and was going to make the terrain smooth out into finer pixel quality rather than looking polygonal by doing a pass of analysing the two surrounding peaks and changing the peak height (going in reverse to get rid of the big drops at the end) and maybe doing another pass of adding in a peak between each already existing peak. caves would be quite easy by adding in some module MATs, though procedurally generated caves would be a bit harder.

I just thought that it would be better if you could define a few set points, like defining as many layer peaks as you want to create the terrain you want (like a small hill with a sandy dip) and placing circles in the terrain where you want to form caves (overlap a few circles to create a longer cave, can choose radius of circle), for the cave BG you could save a cropped image of the cave and fill it with noise from a background palette, then remove the FG colours.

Just throwing some ideas around I'll probably not implement them, at least any time soon.

Couldn't this issue be solved by Sparkle Magic? (Oh LFOW, see what hell thy hath wrought)

Also for the caves; I imagine it would take different techniques to make sealed, underground caves (like aquifers, minus the water) and caves that have an open entrance to the ground. For the former, is it possible to just randomly place pre-made terrain modules (such as the First Signs cave) depending on how many you want? And for the latter, could it be achieved by setting the terrain generator to occasionally just decrease the minimal/maximal heights at which terrain is generated, creating valleys that could serve as 'caves'? I'm no expert on this, especially since there are more than one of these generators up at the moment, so this is all just theoretical babble.

Certain processes can be emulated with procedural generation, and certain processes... not so much.

Take, for example, Spore.

They used procedural generation to generate movements for creatures that were already made by the player. This is the smart way to do things, as if the procedural process made the actual creature, it would likely look like a sack of crap. The creators of spore realized this, and made many, many creatures and put them on the discs so you had nice, pretty creatures to play with, even if you didn't have an internet connection to trade creatures around.

The same thing applies to Cortex Command.

Gold and rocks are randomly placed on maps that were already made by the player. This is the smart way to do things, as if the random number actually made the map, it would likely look like a sack of crap. The creators realized this, and made many maps and put them in the game so you had nice, pretty maps to play on, even if you didn't have an internet connection to download scenes.


My whole point is that things are good the way they are, though perhaps if enough work was put in it could work, but procedural generation is very overrated.

Procedural Generation doesn't "Look like a sack of Crap" subjectively, all that really matters is that you have a good method of doing said procedural creation, and provide a sufficiently large ruleset to filter out things that look less visually appealing or happen to be less functional.
In short, you were just using the wrong procedure

On spore it would if they had let the computer make all the creatures.

The problem with creating a human-made quality procedure is that in the time it will take you to create that list of rules, a perfectly normal person could easily have created ten times the content, and it's all guaranteed to look good and function correctly.

10 times infinity? I think the main advantage of procedural generation is you won't know what the terrain looks like ahead of time.

Well, alright, it's still got some redeeming qualities for terrain.

Even so, what's different between that and having 50 or so functional maps coupled with having a "random" option?

The maps will be a of a higher quality, and there will be no problems with functionality.
Unless you play all of the time, it will be just as surprising every time you play.

That and for cortex command, one could simply just make different bunker presets for each map.

I agree. A random option should be available, but should not be the default. a large collection of "Planned" maps as well as a "Random" map.

Isn't that the eventually endgoal? Isn't the plan to make CC a game you can play all the time?

As long as people keep making mods you'll get new maps to supplement your collection. So yes, as long as people keep making mods, you will be able to play it all of the time.

I don't think making random terrain would be that great. Would you settle for a random map that you don't like? No, you would keep randomizing it until you got a desired result. It would be easier to have maps already made that you enjoy that you would chose in the first place.
Its personal preference I guess.

But you'll eventually get bored to the same, "perfect" map.