cross-posted from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/145864
Procedural generation is an interesting topic to me, as it forgoes traditional level design in favor of a bunch of formulas, rules, and random elements to make varied replayable gameplay.
One of my favorite procgen games is Dwarf Fortress, and how it creates a fully realized world with lore and history, and then places both fortress and adventures as relatively small stories in said world.
Also Deep rock galactic is great in varying its caves, from normal tunnels to massive caverns that you can only traverse using ziplines and platforms
Any other interesting procgen games?
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Nethack, Elite, Captive, Elder Scrolls, Magic Carpet, Simcity 2000 (reticulating splines)… oh, and a little game called Minecraft.
Procedural generation is common. The way Dwarf Fortress does it where the rules and game elements change is nearly unique. Pretty much just that and Nethack, AFAIK, which is why Dwarf Fortress stuck with Nethack-style ASCII so long.
In terms of elder scrolls procedural generation, hasn’t that only been the case for daggerfall?
The first two games, Arena and Daggerfall, were both procedurally generated on the fly.
Later games have been more of a “procedurally generate the game geography using perlin noise, freeze it, then paint the valleys, roads and cities onto it” approach. Not dynamic generation but not handcrafted from scratch.
Faster than Light may be up your alley. I’ve put countless hours into it and there’s still hidden paths I have yet to encounter.
No Man’s Sky
Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead
If you’re looking for something in the same vein as Dwarf Fortress, there’s Rimworld. It’s the game I hit 1000 hrs played the fastest, thanks to the ridiculous amount of mods available on the workshop.
A few games including Caves of Qud uses Wave Function Collapse on their landscape and environment population. It’s an interesting technique that’s only just getting more traction in games.
This is a good repo of info on how it works and uses. https://github.com/mxgmn/WaveFunctionCollapse
Rust
If you’re interested in contemplating your life and questioning your own sanity because you can’t fucking play a game, you should try Dead Cells. It’s amazing trust me.
Plus one for Dead Cells, I play a lot of platformers and metroidvanias, but Dead Cells messes me up like no other game.
