Earthling
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« on: March 21, 2015, 08:04:08 PM » |
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I hope this is the right place to post this. I was wondering if there are any websites, video series, or textbooks/books, that someone could point me in the direction of that may help with learning procedural generation. I'm pretty clueless where to start right now. I'm a game dev student, and I'd like to spend some time during the summer focused on this. Thanks!
EDIT: Interested in world, level, and city generation.
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« Last Edit: March 22, 2015, 12:10:28 AM by Earthling »
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Cheezmeister
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« Reply #1 on: March 21, 2015, 10:54:36 PM » |
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Procedural generation of what? It's a rather broad space.
I, for instance, am into procedural graphics (shaders, filters, particles) and audio (real-time synthesis and algorithmic composition) but a little less wild about generating levels, terrain, or NPCs.
What excites you?
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Earthling
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« Reply #2 on: March 21, 2015, 11:57:20 PM » |
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Oh, that seems rather obvious to specify. Sorry. Levels and terrain mostly. I've seen some city and building generators that interest me a bit in wanting to know how they're built as well.
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Gunhead
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« Reply #3 on: March 22, 2015, 05:23:44 AM » |
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Don't know any explicit tutorials, but these things are quite simple at a fundamental level and Wikipedia would help you lots. Some keywords that would help you on your quest.
Faultline generation For a flat rectangular bit of terrain draw an imaginary line between two sides, raise one side slightly and lower one side slightly, repeat 'n' times till desired terrain.
Midpoint displacement For a flat rectangular bit of terrain, continually subdivide and raise or slower the middle of your area.
L-Systems Great for trees, but can be used for lots of other things including cities.
Perlin/Simplex Noise These are used for so many things, currently using it to generate glitches on a screen. You can also use them for hightmaps etc. I think Minecraft uses 3D version of this for their levels (could be wrong).
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Klaim
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« Reply #5 on: March 22, 2015, 05:10:40 PM » |
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Maybe try with this free book http://pcgbook.com/Then get into the procedural wiki: http://pcg.wikidot.com/It's the first thing I found when I started searching on the subject by the way.
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jechadwell99
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« Reply #7 on: March 24, 2015, 05:18:28 PM » |
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I'd also recommend having a look at cellular automata. They're quite interesting and can form all sorts of cool patterns.
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Polyflare
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« Reply #8 on: March 26, 2015, 01:13:25 AM » |
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If you're ever interested in graphics proc gen then do make sure to check out ShaderToy! It's a website dedicated to rendering things in WebGL using nothing but a single pixel shader and the amount of things you can do is amazing. I've learned quite a few useful shader tricks from browsing the source of the more advanced ShaderToy shaders.
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bateleur
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« Reply #9 on: March 26, 2015, 02:36:42 AM » |
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A good exercise to start with is writing a (tile based) maze generator.
Step 1: Any arrangement of walls that doesn't leave unreachable empty tiles is OK. Step 2: Output mazes must be non-trivial in the sense that exploring randomly won't get you out easily. Step 3: Start thinking about what makes mazes interesting to solve and output only good ones!
It's a good exercise because it gets you thinking in terms of procedural content not just in terms of structured randomness (like Perlin noise) but also in terms of smart algorithms that produce interesting output.
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