Procedural generation - a closer look

The thing about PG is that it ain't new.

Let's go back to 1984, when a now famous game simply called 'Elite' was released. A space trading game, Elite contained eight galaxies, each galaxy housing an astonishing 256 planets to explore and play around in. How did the developers cram in so much on those nowadays-scorned-at 8-bit machines?

Yup. The entire game world was procedurally generated.
And how many developers were involved ? Only two guys.
How long did it take to develop? Two years.

Now, I bet you're asking yourself, 'If Elite was released in 1984, then why has PG taken two decades (maybe even longer) to set the video game industry on fire? Why wasn't it refined and used with games like GTA3 for example?'

To partly answer that, we go back to Elite again. PG also created a few problems there, regarding the placement of some of the galaxies. The inherent complexity of the content generating algorithms also contributes to the lack of major interest towards PG by the industry at large over the years.

But progress, and Moore's Law, and skyrocketing development costs for video games are forcing more and more people to look more closely at PG. And now Will Wright and Spore are marching to it's tune.

That's about it for now. Be back soon with a look at some of Spore's gameplay mechanics. In the meantime check out these two links for further info -

Games that Never Age - a very interesting introduction to PG, complete with screenshots of examples.

Ascii Dreams - a really amazing technical write-up with lots of links.

See ya soon!