Procedural Content Generation

1. Procedural Content Generation Luke Aust

2. What is Procedural Content Generation? • Procedural Content Generation is a generic term referring to content that utilizes an algorithm to create content or data. • This is apparent in many forms of media, though it is arguably mainly focused towards videogames and software utilities. • The entire function and idea behind this form being that it exponentially reduces the content required to create a program.

3. Where is This Technique Practiced? • Currently the only major users of this technique are companies and groups involved in the “Demoscene” and video game companies that wish to exponentially increase their content or provide a unique iteration of the game for each user.

4. Examples of PCG in Video Games • A few good examples of utilization of this technique, in a rather loose form, are “Just Cause” (2006 Avalanche Studios), “The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall” (1996 Bethesda Softworks) and “Elite” (1984 Acornsoft).

5. Just Cause Utilized PCG to create a game world 1012 square kilometres or 250,000 acres in size, whilst using just 8GB of HDD space.

6. Daggerfall Daggerfall: Made use of PCG through a combination of basic allocation algorithms and pseudorandom number generators that operated within set parameters to create a game world roughly the size of the British Isles with a population of unique individuals that rivalled Britain.

7. Elite Elite: Originally “Elite” had reached a target so ambitious that it was set to revolutionize the industry, yet due to marketing finding their target so unbelievable they had to cut down on their content from 248 (approximately 282 trillion) galaxies, each featuring 256 unique solar systems, to just 8 of these galaxies.

8. Explanation of Code • A simple use of Procedural Generation is name generation, a technique that is used to randomly assign names to items or objects, this can be based upon their characteristics or it may not.The objective for Procedural Name Generation in videogames is to limit the amount of effort and disk space taken up by naming random NPCs, items or locations. • Often this is done by creating lists of first names, last names and grouping them in tags, if the procedurally generated character is a male the code will source a name tagged as “male” or possibly “either”.A procedurally generated character that is both a male and a member of a country’s armed forces would have its name sourced from “Male” and a title sourced from “Armed”. • In execution this code is far less simple but the principle is the same; all it does is generate random content.

9. Example of Code

10. Software • .kkreiger (2004 .theprodukkt) • .debris (2009 .theprodukkt) • .werkkzeug 1 (2002 .theprodukkt) • .werkkzeug 3 TE (2007 .theprodukkt) • Dwarf Fortress (2006 Bay 12 Games) • Vega Strike (2008 TVST) All above content is Open Source and Freeware that can not be resold or redistributed for any price, all credit is given to original publishers and contributors who have allowed me to distribute this content.

11. Bibliography • http://pcg.wikidot.com • http://vegastrike.sourceforge.net • http://www.theprodukkt.com/ • http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/ • http://df.magmawiki.com/