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The Possibilities Of Procedural Methods

Wednesday, March 23, 2005

My previous post on generating game content has lead to a couple of interesting comments. However, they made me realise that I didn't convey my message correctly. I said that generating content solves the problem of not having the means to create a lot of content, with the nice side-effect that it allows us to think about games differently. What I meant to say was that generating content allows us to think about games differently, with the nice side-effect that it allows for rich content without a large investment in time or money.

Procedural methods, as Will Wright calls them, are a way to create truly emergent systems. When I described emergent systems in an earlier post, I thought of them exclusively on the level of gameplay. Will Wright's lecture has made me realise that emergence is possible in all aspects of game design.

At this point, I'd love to give you examples of what is possible through procedural methods and how it changes the way we can look at game design. However, I can't. I just don't know yet. I'll keep writing about the subject in the hope that it will help me direct my thoughts. If one of my coding experiments leads to some interesting results, I'll let you know.

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