EPC2023 | Generating Loot River | Miro Straka

This talk will delve into techniques and approaches used for procedural generation in ‘Loot River’, including unsuccessful attempts and mistakes made during development. It should give a comprehensive view of macro and micro systems used in the game - from generating general layout to small variations in level decorations, reasoning behind design decisions in these systems, and the particular challenges of using procedural systems in a game with puzzle mechanics.

[@an_imminence]

14:35 Hold on. In a proc-gen talk, in a proc-gen game, you have identified or rather created a situation where you need hundreds of same-size rooms with a door on both ends and a puzzle in the middle, with a direction baked in. And your solution was 14:50 "labor-intensive work"? What? You could have generated thousands of levels and spawned your character in the bottom door of each and tested whether you found a fun solution - if yes, save that level. Or have a swarm of testers do that. Why in the world did you do all the rooms by hand after constraining the problem so perfectly? 19:59 saves it somewhat. With a level editor this good and the need to ship that to the users, it does make sense to use all that work. At 23:45 I do also want to point you to Oskar Stalbergs talk at SGC21, 6 minutes in, where he concisely explains dual grids and their incredible benefits when generating and drawing tiles. They are an important tool for this exact situation. Thank you for the talk!