in case it's not clear: procedural generation is a... | Eniko

Eniko | Kitsune Tails out now!'s posts Post Back to profile

in case it's not clear: procedural generation is a term used in game design whereby a human-authored algorithm takes a random seed value (a big random number like 123908516 for example) and deterministically generates game content from that. this does not involve training a neural network, these algorithms are painstakingly crafted by hand to create the desired output, do not require anyone else's content to make, and this technique is over 40 years old

it's used in games like nethack (1987) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NetHack, elite (1984) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elite_(video_game), minecraft (2011), dwarf fortress (2006) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dwarf_Fortress, rimworld (2018) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RimWorld and many, many more

the fact that people are conflating procedural generation in game design which has a long and treasured history with "AI" slop is fucking tragic

Like 18 September at 13:57 | Open on peoplemaking.games

14 comments

Tenacious B (twoot.site edition)

@eniko The Deep Rock Galactic people recently posted an explanation of their cave generation which goes reasonably deep and shows pretty nicely how much human input is needed there.

In short: They do hand-made rooms and modify them, and take into account the mission type, biome and a bunch of other stuff.

(edit: link directly to post)

18 September at 14:01 | Open on twoot.site

Mg. Jepyang 🧝‍♀️ :heart_sp_bi:

@bean @jiub @eniko sorry, i’m just giggling about going reasonably deep into cave generation

18 September at 16:07 | Open on wandering.shop

Sin Vega

@eniko using a random number generator twice and multiplying the result vs flying a private jet to thousands of people who've generated a number, one by one, then copying the most common two and multiplying them

18 September at 14:10 | Open on mas.to

BogusMeatFactory

@eniko I can not stress enough how AI as a term has completely disrupted the industry entirely. What used to be how we defined npc and enemy behavior in a game is now used in a completely different way. Now anything generated by a computer is considered "AI", even though, as you said, it's something very specifically crafted. We defined it's rules and behaviors. We made the equations.

18 September at 14:19 | Open on dosgame.club

Kay Ohtie

@eniko reminded of kkrieger which IIRC is procedurally generated for being one of those tiny filesize FPS games? I'd always heard it as such when I first learned about it 20 years ago

18 September at 15:20 | Open on blimps.xyz

Chris Johnson

@eniko that technique was used in Moria circa 1978 on the PLATO educational computer system, too. So yeah, not “AI”.

18 September at 15:41 | Open on phpc.social

Jessie Nabein :neofox_peek_owo:

@eniko Noita uses it to with many many fun outputs https://noitagame.com/

18 September at 15:47 | Open on wetdry.world

Shawn "Fruan" Poulsen

@eniko it’s all human crafted game content; it just uses a stochastic compression algorithm

18 September at 15:53 | Open on kind.social

mirabilos

@eniko procedural generation is actual generation, while GenAI dies not generate anything, it just remixes the input and auto-completes its sludge into the output.