Slightly related to a recent post.
I understand procedural generation in video games is basically an instruction set to tell the computer to run through to get the same result every time so that it doesn’t load a whole level each time, it builds the level based on a set of parameters.
How is this different than just loading a built level? Isn’t that what a normal script of code is in any other game? Is an instruction set to tell the computer to load the level?
Is it just the difference between one being done by a programmer and one done by a level designer/artist? They both need assets already designed and made to work right?
In: 30
>I understand procedural generation in video games is basically an instruction set to tell the computer to run through to get the same result every time so that it doesn’t load a whole level each time, it builds the level based on a set of parameters.
Not always, it can also be a tool to save a lot of developpement time and storage space.
For exemple many open world games use some procedural tools to generate the environments. There’s no point in having an environment artist place each blade of grass and store their position in memory.
It’s much faster to have the artist engineer the landscape by areas defined by procedural generations (here are grass, here are rocky grass, here are grass and bushes, here is a forest, etc.). The artist can then fine tune and hand craft meaningfull areas and let the computer plant the blades of grass.
It also mean that the enduser will only have to store those areas and algorithms to generate those geass fields rather than having the full environment stored in excruciating detail.
Here’s some links to conferences at the GDC about stuff like that :
– [Procedural grass in Ghost of Tsushima](https://youtu.be/Ibe1JBF5i5Y)
– [Procedural placement in Horizon Zero Dawn](https://youtu.be/Ibe1JBF5i5Y)
Latest Answers