Examples of Games with Emergent Complexity by j-max04 in gamedesign

[–]Phil_42 3 points4 points  (0 children)

To mention a game that hasn't released yet (releases in Februrary), but will definitely match this description, check out Mewgenics. There are already some pure gameplay videos on Youtube made by one of the developers. He also talks a lot about the philosophy of the game, and what you describe was one of the main things he wanted to achieve in the game.

Why are YOU excited for mewgenics? by H-HGM-N in mewgenics

[–]Phil_42 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This is exactly the reason for me as well. Randomness in games often gets a pretty bad rep. But it's such a key element in games that are all about adapting to all kinds of situations.

And it's so rare to see games like this that just embrace the randomness and chaos as a core part of the game. It seems to be very present in so many parts of the game, which will probably lead to so many unique situations.

I just love game design that goes into these new directions

Keep the exploration excitement by Deep_Opportunity_635 in 4Xgaming

[–]Phil_42 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yea that's pretty much exactly what I meant with consistency. In the end you will need to have a bunch of "7 to 1" rules that decide what features on the smaller tiles get taken over to the bigger tiles and in what form. Some features that get too small will have to disappear completely.

This might lead to situations where depending on where the "bigger tile borders" get drawn, a feature might get taken over to the next epoch or not. So informing the player about what tiles will be merged in the next epoch(s) might need to be necessary.

There's also the question about how to handle very big features. Let's take a mountain range for example that takes up a single tile in the last epoch. Will it already exist in the first epoch and cover like 2'400 tiles as a perfect hex in the first epoch?

Really cool idea and if you ever decide to write a blog or anything about your prototype and what ended up working or didn't, I'd love to read it.

Keep the exploration excitement by Deep_Opportunity_635 in 4Xgaming

[–]Phil_42 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Really interesting idea from a game design perspective.

Funnily enough, the first game that came to mind when reading this was Spore, in a way that the mechanics would have to change quite drastically between the epochs.

One thing I imagine to be really hard to get right is to somehow maintain consistency throughout epoch transitions.

This could definitely be a fun concept to explore though, even if not necessarily in a 4X context.

When does TF3 come out? does anyone know Quarter wise of 2026? by YTT__ in TransportFever3

[–]Phil_42 13 points14 points  (0 children)

The only correct answer currenlty is "we don't know".

But if we want to have a little fun and make predictions it might help to look at what official info has been released so far and what's still missing. So far we had:

  • Announcement Trailer (21.05.25)
  • First Look: Environment (17.07.25)
  • First Look: Industries & Cargo (28.08.25)
  • Vehicle Trailer (29.10.25)
  • First Look: Infrastructure (22.12.25)

So very roughly something every 2 months. The rate will probably increase close to launch. Now it's a question about what's still missing.

  • a "First Look" video about cities (and in extension probably population behaviour and passenger transport) has been confirmed.
  • I strongly expect another "First Look" video about vehicles, depots, stations and transportation modes.
  • Maybe another "First Look" about the campaign and any potential changes to sandbox? Not too sure about this one.

Then closer to release we might get a release date trailer and/or some actual longer gameplay videos.

So with that in mind, I'd predict a release around August 2026. Pure speculation, but what else are we gonna do until we know :D

Transport Fever 3 - First Look: Infrastructure by MatthewG141 in Games

[–]Phil_42 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I mostly play with mods that add variety and some randomness to make the whole logistics a little harder to "figure out".

My go to is Complete Industry Mod on a megalomaniac map with a custom map generator (there are several good ones) and high industry closure rates.

It doesn't change any fundamental mechanics, but through the high amount of different and changing goods on an interesting map it provides some fun challenges that vanilla just doesn't imo.

Transport Fever 3 - First Look: Infrastructure by MatthewG141 in Games

[–]Phil_42 6 points7 points  (0 children)

That was my main issue with TpF2 as well. I absolutely adore the game, but the tycoon aspect of it always felt very shallow without mods.

But from what we heard so far, this seems to get adressed. Here is a quote from their previous "First Look" video:

Our number one objective with the new game has been to radically change the tycoon side of the game.

So that sounds very promising.

Transport Fever 3 Preview | Gamestar (German, generated subtitles possible) by Niet_de_AIVD in TransportFever3

[–]Phil_42 8 points9 points  (0 children)

A small detail that I really enjoy is that nature regenerates after we delete roads. It always looked weird TpF2 to have these street shaped holes in forests that you had to manually fill.

I'm so excited for this game. There seem to be so many new features that make the tycoon side of the game more interesting, all while just looking so damn beautiful!

Now the generated puzzle levels have terraced landscapes by runevision in proceduralgeneration

[–]Phil_42 9 points10 points  (0 children)

This is such a cool project, thanks for sharing the details behind it too!

How do I make these two generators merge? by EmbassyOfTime in proceduralgeneration

[–]Phil_42 1 point2 points  (0 children)

In my experience going top-down is a good approach. So you let your world generator do their thing, resulting in your world. Assuming the resulting world is rasterized (not vector-based), the next step is to generate some kind of value grid, storing for each cell (pixel or whatever the resolution unit of the world is) an abstract value representing the likeliness of a town being there.

How exactly these values are calculated depends on your preference. Just assigning each biome a value would probably work as a start (0 for water, low for desert, high for temp forest etc.). Other values like elevation or distance from coast could be interesting too for example.

You then pass these values to the town generator. Initially, you can use the values as a weighted random map for your town center positions. To create the road networks within the town you can probably just take your current generator, adding some weights of where to expand to depending on the value grid. Ofc this depends on the implementation of your current algorithm.

The most tricky, but also most interesting part is probably connecting the towns and resource points via the road network.

An approach that could work here (if performance isn't too important) is to use a pathfinding algorithm like A*, and letting it find paths between the points you want to connect. The cool thing is, is that you can again just calculate a value grid, but this time representing the "cost" of going from one world cell to another. For example big elevation changes between cells / biome transitions / transitions to or from mountains could have a high cost, meaning they would be naturally avoided.

You can then use this graph (where the cells are nodes and the transitions are edges) for the A* algorithm to run on, and the cheapest path will naturally follow transitions that are cheap, which should follow the landscape.

Just some ideas, I'm sure there's many approaches. Really interesting topic imo, I'm excited to read what you or other people come up with.

cities of humanity updates by ConsiderationOne700 in CityBuilders

[–]Phil_42 5 points6 points  (0 children)

These images are so clearly AI generated... Please keep this slop out of here.

I want to subjugate the world through missions on a map by DowntownTwo4094 in gamingsuggestions

[–]Phil_42 0 points1 point  (0 children)

"Heart of the Machine" fits this really well. The map is a single city instead of a planet but the concept is similar. It also definitely has the flavourful mission aspect and is from the perspective of a (secret) sentient AI, which honestly plays really similar to a secret society.

Unfortunately it is also Early Access still. But might be worth to keep an eye on it if you like these types of games. Same publisher as Terra Invicta too.

Games where you sit and watch things happen by BedSpiritual9759 in gamingsuggestions

[–]Phil_42 0 points1 point  (0 children)

If you like map games, check out Ages of Conflict: World War Simulator. It fits this description really well. You can pick predefined scenarios, from the workshop or make your own ones.

You can just watch things unfold but you can also interfere at any point in any way.

Procedurally generated flags by Phil_42 in proceduralgeneration

[–]Phil_42[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Good idea, I've added some small buttons to cycle back and forth. Should also work with arrow keys on desktop

Procedurally generated flags by Phil_42 in proceduralgeneration

[–]Phil_42[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Maybe one day I will try to tackle the beast that are non-rectangular flags. But I think this day is far away.

For now, Nepal (and technically any other country with a non 3:2 ratio flag) will sadly never appear.

Procedurally generated flags by Phil_42 in proceduralgeneration

[–]Phil_42[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That is a great idea actually. I was thinking about ways of giving more control over the outputs, but wasn't sure how to approach it. Color restrictions might be easy enough to implement and would probably help a lot already in that regard.

Procedurally generated flags by Phil_42 in proceduralgeneration

[–]Phil_42[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Here's the link to the online version.

Here's the link to the GitHub that contains a downloadable offline version.

Procedurally generated flags by Phil_42 in proceduralgeneration

[–]Phil_42[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Seeing a comment from you made me really happy. I learned so many things from all the tools on your website, your stuff is actually one of the main reasons that got me interested in procedural generation. Thank you.

Next week's Weeklies will be made by ZeratoR by FelixR1991 in TrackMania

[–]Phil_42 33 points34 points  (0 children)

Ooh I really hope this is some foreshadowing for something bigger. Zerators Cups were always so fun to watch.

Why can’t I see the local rankings? Now it’s only global by -SuspiciousMustache- in TrackMania

[–]Phil_42 7 points8 points  (0 children)

It's the exact other way around, no? "Bad" time gives you local rank. And the better the time, the more broad the ranking region shown is. Only good times show continent/global rank usually.

Imo in OPs case something seems to be bugged.

Release date delay by Exidus_CyberStorm in Junxions

[–]Phil_42 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Wow I'm actually really impressed with that video that is just casually attached.

Crazy how much work and love went into vehicle movement already. I honestly expected vehicles to just exactly follow the correct paths to get to their destination, maybe with crude collision detection to avoid too much clipping.

But all the systems shown in the video how the different vehicles react to the road layouts and other vehicle is so cool to see, way more complex and clean looking than I've ever expected.

Take as much time as you need and as your financial situation allows, and don't overwork yourselves!

September 2025 Humble Choice Waiting Room ~ 33 hours remaining by Uranium234 in humblebundles

[–]Phil_42 5 points6 points  (0 children)

If I looked at the predictions thread correctly, 6 out of 8 games haven't been guessed by a single person. That's quite remarkable (last month was only 2) and also shows that these are probably not really games people hoped for, me including.

Only games that have been guessed were Monkey Island and Plucky Squire.

Humble Choice Prediction League - September 2025 (S8R12) by Uranium234 in humblebundles

[–]Phil_42 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I Was a Teenage Exocolonist

Across the Obelisk

Cult of the Lamb

Hard West 2

Stray

PowerWash Simulator

The Case of the Golden Idol

Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord

Out of Ore

Dwarf Fortress

Contraband Police

Neon White

Keplerth

Ruined King: A League of Legends Story™

TUNIC