Procedurally Generated Content

The game development is usually a complicated task, especially if we need to generate worlds as big as some of them.

That is why the Procedurally Generated Content has appeared and saves us a lot of work.

What things can create the Procedurally Generated Content

Can help you generate landscapes, creatures and some even entire planets. They can easily create living worlds.

Thanks to this, No man’s sky was born, a game that is a procedurally generated universe. It is said to have 18 quintillion planets to explore.

That amount would be impossible to reach, but Hello Games managed to create it in only 3 years thanks to this type of algorithms.

The problematic of using Procedurally Generated Content

Since now the algorithm makes the maps for us, we will lose control of them. We will no longer get unique maps.

It is also common to find errors in the generation of maps or other objects using procedural generation. Such is the case of No man’s sky which at launch contained many map generation bugs and some creature generation did not make sense.

What things procedural generation does not add

Obviously not all the work is done with this algorithm there are many elements to be created individually such as vegetation, monsters or buildings. Sometimes map patterns are created and then randomly repeated.

Minecraft for example generates rivers, caves and mountains from blocks, but these always follow a repeating pattern that creates almost an infinite world.

Source: xataka