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?
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A guy named Kevin Perlin invented “Perlin Noise” back in 1983. It actually got an Academy award!
Let’s say you have an 1,000 x 1,000 image. It is easy to program a computer to assign a random color to each pixel. The problem is that doesn’t look very natural it just looks like noise. Perlin noise can fill that image in with something that while random looks like it came from nature. It essentially looks like clouds or smoke in its simplest form.
It can also generate this noise in a spherical shape so imagine a ball covered in clouds. It looks like a planet! Now imagine that instead of using the value of each pixel for color you use it for elevation. Now you have mountains, valleys, etc. Put a water layer in at a specific altitude and now you have oceans.
The most basic Perlin Noise function is also surprisingly small.
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