

The Death of the Level Designer: Procedural Content Generation in Games - vgnet
http://roguelikedeveloper.blogspot.com/2008/01/death-of-level-designer-procedural.html

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tmurray
Look at part three of this series:
[http://roguelikedeveloper.blogspot.com/2008/01/death-of-
leve...](http://roguelikedeveloper.blogspot.com/2008/01/death-of-level-
designer-procedural_2464.html)

Considering this article is four years old, a lot of this didn't pan out.
Spore failed to come remotely close to its hype, Borderlands' gun system
turned out to be unpopular (too many guns were completely useless). Diablo 3
uses procedural dungeon generation, just as 1 and 2 did, but with plenty of
predesigned set pieces scattered throughout.

The problem still seems to be that the set of things that you can generate on
the fly and all result in something fun is fairly small. The other interesting
thing is that we're seeing the opposite trend in terms of the growth of user-
created content as a central game component (thanks Minecraft).

Procedural generation will certainly be used to keep games replayable (D3's
dungeon and loot generation, L4D's director AI, etc), but to claim that it
will replace designers in any way is silly.

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ido
I think the higher you go in the level of production (like the AAA games you
mentioned) the harder it gets.

But how about Minecraft, Dwarf Fortress or DCSS?

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jamesaguilar
The effect you're noticing is that it is a lot easier to get variety into
random content when you don't have to provide graphics for it. It's also
easier to make a world feel real (w.r.t. the baseline the game is establishing
via its interface).

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stcredzero
As a matter of fact, I'm in the process of writing an exploration and combat
based space game, with an astronomical number of locations. (Much, much
greater than billions) These locations will also contain procedurally
generated alien technologies that can be incorporated into ship designs,
resulting in emergent ship capabilities and gameplay.

Such a large universe also means that there will always be a frontier for
someone to strike-out into and establish their own industrial
infrastructure/empire. (Once certain thresholds are reached, such factions
become visible in "Hyperspace" to other large factions.)

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chargrilled
Sounds great.. please tell me more.

Any ETA on a beta?

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iends
Would also be interested in more information.

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defdac
Me too.

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gavanwoolery
Programmers tend to argue in favor of procedural generation, artists and
designers against it. But the truth is, it benefits everyone, and does not
necessarily replace anyone. I hate to break it to anyone, but almost _every
single game_ uses procedurally generation, either at runtime or pre-compile
time. Did you use a filter in photoshop to produce that texture? Procedural
generation. Did you perform a lathe operation on that curve? Procedural
generation. Anything that takes a simple user action and produces a new
(potentially complex) result via code is procedural generation. The more you
empower artists and designers, the more they can do. Even if a game is
completely procedurally generated, you need someone to tweak all of the
parameters (material colors, building styles, character attributes, etc).

That bit aside, I am still waiting for a game to do more on the AI/plot/puzzle
side of things in terms of procedural generation. As I have mentioned a few
times before, emergent gameplay is key. Still, there is not one game with
strong mechanics that has successfully employed emergent gameplay (aside from
very basic puzzle/board games).

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mkramlich
I was playing games with "procedural content generation" back in the 80's.
Heck I was making computer games that did it. Sigh. One of the joys/annoyances
of ignorance and new generations is that everything old is suddenly new again.

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gloob
Given that the entire website this article lives on is about roguelikes, and
the author is also the developer of a roguelike (Unangband), I imagine he is
likely aware of the history of randomly generated levels.

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EastCoastLA

      It is interesting that more games have not used this in re-release of older games. I can think off the top of my head 3 games that I want more content to extend the replay-ability.  
      -Mario-Kart with procedural generated race tracks after you beat all the levels and gain all the trophies.   
      -Multi-Player Halo.  An option for one of the random games to have a procedural generated map.  With a player vote at the end of the game.  Top maps added to the rotation.
      -Burnout paradise- Use the city generator to create random games.  Again players vote at the end of the game.  Top maps added to the rotation.
      Bonus-Left for Dead and make it through the random city.

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v0cab
I never saw the point of procedural generation in games like Diablo. Seems to
me something only programmers would be interested in. What would have been
wrong with getting a level designer to do it? Then gamers could talk more
about shared experiences.

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Retric
It adds to replayability by preventing players from memorizing the shortcuts
without making it feel like grinding. Many classic RPG's have a shortest path
that's somewhere between 1/4 and 1/40th the average play-though and once you
get close to it the game becomes a platformer vs. an RPG. But, randomize
locations and you get to relive the hunt the hunt on the next play though. It
also tends to make a wider range of things useful, vs letting people optimize
the effort of finding stuff vs it's usefulness.

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smashing
In other news the set of "The Death of {X}: {Article Topic}" is infinite.

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rollypolly
Notice the publishing date: Monday, 14 January 2008

Getting rid of designers sounds great from the point of view of the guy
footing the development cost of a game. But it doesn't work. It makes for a
very generic gaming experience.

The focus on nowadays is making a designer's job easier so they can be more
productive.

