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Practical Procedural Generation for Everyone

youtube

Additive methods

  • Tiles
  • Grammars
    • Recursively make things from other things
    • Tracery and other templating systems (for text)
      • Tracery is a super-simple tool and language to generate text, by GalaxyKate.
    • L-Systems(for geometry)
      • things like content-free art
      • draw a line, pick out an angle separate draw new lines, for each of those pick out an angle, and kind of recursive that way.
      • gammars are all about through this top-down structure.
    • Replacement grammars
      • if you have a dungeon, that's a straight line, and you would like it to not be a straight line, this is your Dorman's work where he made Zelda dungeons by taking a straight line and then perturbing it in different ways, put a door and the key, now if you've got a section that has a key, you can hide that key behind another door, you can recursively apply these.
      • He recently just published his indie game Unexplored which use this technique.
  • Distribution
    • Put down some objects
    • x = random(100), y=random(100)
    • "actual" random looks bad, clumps strangely.
    • "real" distributions are hierarchical and clustered, but also maintain spacing.
    • Options:
      • start with a grid, and offset a bit
        • (less obvious with a hex grid)
      • Use a voronoi diagram with easing
      • do it preperly with a Halton Sequence
      • barnacling, greebling, footing.
  • Parametric
    • So I have 32 different parameters and put those through an algorithm and out pops a little flow
      • you can actually modle this as an N dimensional cube.
      • no man's sky use this to generate creatures.
    • An array of floats representing settings, "morph handles"
      • modellable as points in an N-dimensional cube.
      • any position is a valid artifact!
      • You can do genetic algorithms
        • or user directed walks through the space
        • or "regionize" the space.
  • Interpretive
    • Start with some input
      • Run an algorithm to process data into some other data
      • You have a simple structure: some distribution of points, a skeleton, a connectivity map, a curve or path and want to make it more complex.
    • Examples:
      • Noise(Perlin/simplex)
      • Voronoi/Delaunay
        • triangulate stuff
      • Constructive Solid Geometry Extrusion, revolution
      • Metaballs
      • Fractals, mathematical models of impossible shapes
      • (Hypernom, Miegakure)
        • Low control, high weirdness, not suitable for most games.
  • Simulations
    • Particle trails
      • simulate particle path responding to forces
        • you can use particles to generate those curves, and then decorate them in interesting ways.
      • draw directly
      • OR record path and use for extrusions or distributions (photoshop brushes)
    • Cellular automata
    • Agent-based simulations
    • Physics simulation

For more info about grammars, GDC Tech Toolbox 2016 on youtube tracery.io

For more info about user-controlled parametric design, "Petalz: Search-based Procedural Content Generation for the Casual Gamer"

For more info about the Spore pipeline:

  • Real-time Motion Retargeting to Highly Varied User-Created Morphologies -- Chris Hecker
  • How to Animate a Character You've Never Seen Before

Subtractive methods

  • Saving seeds

    • Seeded random numbers
    • Same seed, Same random
    • Whitelist a catalog of known good content
      • It's faster to verify questionable content than to build a testing function.

  • Generate and test

    • If you can write an algorithm to judge "quality"...
      • throwaway vs ranking/prioritization
      • Test for brokenness/connectivity
    • Beware of false function
      • beware the "fun equation"

  • Computationally exploring the possibility space

    • Also called "search"
      • Brute force search
      • Hill-climbing
        • Genetic algorithms
        • Works best with parametric

  • Constraint-solving

    • You can describe a possibility space and constraints, just find the valid parameters.
    • IK-solving
    • Answer set solving
      • Potassco Clingo
    • Brute force!
      • brute force is ok, just pay attention to exponential growth!