Tom Francis - Generating boring levels for fresh experiences in Heat Signature

When making Heat Signature, our procedural spaceship infiltration game, I found that we didn't need to generate interesting levels to generate interesting experiences. I'll run through the very basic way our level generation works and why, then explain how we approached the game design to ensure it could throw out fresh experiences even when the levels themselves were boring.

[@ShaunCheah]

The bolding of the word "trash" on the final slide is such an excellent visual gag; I'd just like to make known that it was spotted and appreciated.

[@PJutch]

Actually I'd love to see a game with very confusing layouts generated) Anyway, great talk!

[@RannekoPlays]

I like how conceptually extensible this system is. Adding a couple of new cards results in many new possible combinations.
Also do you think it would have been interesting to have rare "throwback" ships that used the older generation system for specific triggers like the ones used to eliminate faction bases? It would that the cost of maintaining multiple ship layout generators outweighed the benefits?

[@adt4864]

6:37 I don't know how recent this speech is, but in the latest version, player characters do have innate traits. They're not really game changers so it's not that important anyway