Procedural Content Generation Compendium

[MMather]

I have a whole bunch of links to various articles on the subject of Procedural Content creation in games. I call this a "compendium" because I will be adding in more stuff later, in addition to the large amount of info I'm posting in the first post. Before we get to that, I should probably explain just what that means.

Procedural Content in game terms is basically what the programmer tells the computer to come up with according to preset, and sometimes randomized parameters. In Diablo and WoW, monsters drop loot. That loot isn't the same every time, and can vary wildly. That's an example of procedurally generated content. Likewise, in the Diablo series the layout of the dungeons is different each time. The graphics are crafted by the artists, but how they're put together is determined by the engine.

Procedural generation is about defining a strict set of rules that produce a semi-predictable outcome. When you roll a regular six-sided die, you know it will come up with a result between 1 and 6, and you don't know for certain which number (unless you're cheating), but you do know it won't come up "J" or "Chrysanthemum". What the values for 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, & 6 do and when to roll are also part of the procedure.

Wikipedia article on Procedural generation.

Wikipedia article on Roguelikes, the original procedurally generated games.

The Procedural Content Generation Wiki is a pretty good wiki dedicated to the subject.

The Civilisation series and spin-offs feature procedurally generated terrain so that each new game has a completely different world (in terms of what is placed where).

Left4Dead is a zombie survival horror shooter that couldn't be less like a Roguelike, except that the placement of the zombies is determined by a "director" who procedurally determines where and when all the action takes place.

Spore is almost entirely procedurally generated, from the layout of the universe to the music.

The upcoming Left4Dead 2 will feature procedurally determined weather (the director will make it rain or shine based on the "mood"), a greater selection of randomly-placed weapons to find in each campaign, randomized paths through the levels, and other improvements to the Director.

Weblogs:

ASCII Dreams is a weblog chronicling a particular guy's Roguelike project.

Tales of the Rampant Coyote is a weblog focusing on indie computer RPGs.

Twenty Sided is mostly a general weblog about video games and tabletop RPGs, but he's also a professional software engineer who dabbles in procedural environment creation. Check out the Projects category of posts.

Squidi's Devlog is a little short, but contains an interesting series on procedural content, and there's quite a lot of interesting reading material on his 300 Mechanics page.


Procedural content also occurs in analog games as well as digital ones.

Dungeons & Dragons is the most obvious example. It's the source of the term "role-playing game" as well as common semi-random content procedures such as random encounters, random loot drops, randomized character statistics and so on.

Warhammer Quest is also another good example. A couple years before Diablo came out, WQ had randomized dungeon layouts thanks to pairing cardboard dungeon tiles with a deck of cards that could be shuffled and dealt as the game progressed to determine the layout of those cardboard tiles. Encounters and loot were also drawn from a deck of cards, and no Game Master was required, though there was a rules expansion that allowed WQ to be run as a full RPG like D&D.

Magic: The Gathering and all trading card games (like Yu Gi Oh and Pokemon TCG) are procedural by definition because the designers allow players to assemble the decks, and those decks are then shuffled before dealing. (All games with random elements are procedural to an extent, but TCGs are particularly so.)

The humorous card game Munchkin and it's spin-off Munchkin Quest are similar to TCGs and Warhammer Quest, respectively, in their procedural elements.


Some articles on the subject:

The original Introversion Content is Bad article.

Lost Garden's Content is Bad followup article (with links to many more articles at the end)

ASCII Dreams: The Death of the Level Designer

ASCII Dreams: Unangband Dungeon Generation

Tales of the Rampant Coyote: How To Make a Better RPG With Procedural Content

Twenty Sided: Shamus' Terrain project.

Twenty Sided: Shamus' Procedural Pixel City project.

300 Mechanics: Environment Tree

300 Mechanics: PCG World

300 Mechanics: Infinite Detective


Roguelikes:

Gamasutra article on the history of Rogue.

DoomRL, the Doom roguelike (one of the easiest to get into)

Nethack is probably the most popular and famous Roguelike.

Dwarf Fortress is considered by some to be the "ultimate" Roguelike because it combines aspects of traditional Roguelikes with the ability to manage an underground city of dwarves and procedurally creating a history of the world and civilisations each time you begin a new game. Very steep learning curve, but an extraordinarily deep game.

Spelunky is one of the few platform games created using principles of Roguelikes.

@venture a retro roguelike FPS (coming soon)

Non-Roguelike, Non-commercial:

ROM Check Fail is a deceptively simple looking game that takes random elements of classic 80s games and randomly mixes them with elements of random 80s games as you play. RPS wrote an entertaining article on it.

[dinosaursWILLdie]

Ugh...you said diablo.
I forgot Diablo III was in development and now i'm pining for it again.
Thanks...

[MMather]

A video of Shamus young's Pixel City in action: