A wiki for randomly-generated cool stuff

Ever wanted to know how some computer games randomly create scenarios, landscapes and the like? Bookmark the Procedural Generation Wiki, a fledgling home for the mindbending programming concepts that make it possible.

It's all about creating the rules but letting a computer do all the work, then watching like a baffled god as unexpected wonders evolve before one's eyes. There's everthing from visual art generated on-the-go, to entire worlds modeled with landscapes, climates and histories. It let 1984's Elite contain an universe to explore in only 32kb of RAM; next year's Spore will bottle similar magic for a new generation of gamers.

Created by Roguelike developer Andrew Doull, the wiki's only got a few articles so far, including a bumper list of games that use procedural techniques and Doull's six-part article, The Death of the Level Designer. Doull laments the lack of cellular automata-based content. Hear Hear! Sick of fractals, I once made a CA-based terrain generator.

What they want... [ASCII Dreams]

[#1 posted by zuzu , May 17, 2008 10:08 PM]

Procedural synthesis is where it's at, precisely because of the declarative programming model of "creating the rules but letting a computer do all the work". Check out .kkrieger

[#2 posted by Andrew Doull , May 17, 2008 10:55 PM]

Thanks for the link guys. Contributors welcome: unfortunately, a useful wiki is one of those things you can't procedurally produce.

[#3 posted by mdhatter , May 18, 2008 1:15 AM]

Rogue rules, but Nethack is better.

[#4 posted by Bill Higgins-- Beam Jockey , May 19, 2008 5:12 AM]

There's a great chapter on "Elite" (a space-conquering game for the BBC Acorn circa 1984) in Francis Spufford's book The Backroom Boys: The Secret Return of the British Boffin , and you can read a version of it here.

[#5 posted by picklefactory , May 19, 2008 8:42 AM]

Dwarf Fortress, the game pictured in the screenshot above (this is the 'world' view) makes NetHack look like Pong.

Plenty more details at Bay 12 games' website.

[#6 posted by PKMousie , May 23, 2008 7:53 PM]

What??? Diablo/Diablo II's page is empty? They're not even listed under 'Major' PCG Games?

Having written a ton of the random level generator for D2, I am somewhat incensed.