I had a really good time presenting my work and talking about generative and procedural game design at DotBrighton yesterday, and, as promised I’ve uploaded the slides from the talk here as a pdf. If you have got any questions of suggestions based on the content of the talk or the slides then please leave [...]
At last, AVSeq is available to the world. Its been quite a interested (and frustrating) process, getting it ready for both platforms, with demos and installers (the installer making process was particularly irritating). Its available from www.big-robot.com and of course there are demos for each platform you can try out. It feels good to get [...]
If anyone is around in Brighton on the 25th Jan, Im going to be doing a talk at DotBrighton. Its probably going to be generally about using procedural and generative methods in making games. (Unity based for the most part). The blurb is below.. Procedural / Generative / Modular – grow yourself a game (Unity) [...]
Ok, So I know that many people have been writing about Dark Souls recently, and Im not sure I can add too much to the excellent article Skyrim and Dark Souls by Rich Stanton, but I have just finished my first playthrough (I doubt i will have time for NG+) and wanted to record a [...]
The paper I delivered at DIGRA 5 in Hilversum, NL is now available online through their digital library. Direct link to the paper here. Pattern Recognition: Gameplay as negotiating procedural form Abstract: This paper will examine the relationship of pattern recognition and Gestalt principles to procedural form in gameplay. It will identify key features of [...]
I’ve managed to get the generative audio aspect of In Ruins working now. Thanks to Jonny Pilcher for the piano and drone work. So to demonstrate the whole package I decided to record some test footage. Everythign you see in the video is generated procedurally. I was tempted to just spam the regeneration key to [...]
I’ve modified the roguelike dungeon generator from teh previous post into a system that builds procedural castle-like structures. It basically fills in the gaps of the dungeon style layout with various tower block items. The system then randomly swops out a number of hard cube edges with customised ‘broken’ ones. It also optimises the mesh [...]
Tinkering with a new bit of procedural code. This time its a version of a roguelike dungeon generator. I used a fairly standard set of functions/rules with the usual varying parameters of room size/corridor branching etc. (Im pretty sure i based mostof it on the d20 approach – but the site seems to have vanished). [...]
I just did a quick autopilot recording of the infinite terrain engine Ive been working on (see previous posts). You can check out the video here, or on youtube. You can also see more flickr images here.
Here’s a little compilation of gameplay clips from the current version of avseq. You can check out the video here, or on youtube. You can also see more flickr images here.
This is an exact duplication of a post I just made over on Big Robot, there is also a lot more stuff over there, including videos of hulking stone monoliths and more details of the games we are working on. Go take a look.. The time has come to reveal a little more of how [...]
Last year I worked with Lovebytes in sheffield to set up a schools digital creativity project called flutter. It was such a sucess that we were asked to repeat the process, but this time along a different theme, “Dinosaurs” – RAAaah!. This time I used Unity for the software development, but the actual process was [...]
Random screenshots from a little sightseeing run in the latest iteration of my infinite terrain engine. Shows a variety of forms and a few postprocessing effects that are triggered by regional emitters.
In the process of producing my current procedural terrain/world engine I’ve been examining a number of key games that focus on atmospheric terrain as a key design feature. I am a firm believer in notion of landscape as antagonist or exposition. I am generally dismayed at the poor quality of storytelling in most AAA games. [...]
I’ve been extending the Voxel wrapping framework from the previous post or two into a more fully fledged procedural terrain system. I wanted to get a reasonable sense of scale and distance, but I didn’t want to cripple the framework with too much crazy LOD code. Inititally I did implement a LOD scheme , where [...]
Avseq was an abstract cound sequencing game I produced as part of my PHD research. It was installed at the Phoenix Square arts cinema in Leicester, earlier last summer (2010). While I received flattering feedback from most people who saw the installation, I was (unsuprisingly) disappointed by the reticence of most people to actively engage [...]
Still pursuing different methods of generating planetary/sculptural forms I realised that my previous cubic-sphere approach was incapable of producing caves or overhangs. I could of course add additional layers at overlapping altitudes etc, but how would i generate the actual data for these. With more than a few layers the calculations could get prohibitive and [...]
There are a few notable analogues in the literary tradition that reflect or use generative processes in their fiction. Ballard, Aldiss and Murukami all employ dreamlike ‘remixes’ of the world and language in their texts. But ‘Solaris’ by Stanislaw Lem is fascinating in the extent to which the author documents the emergent properties a morphogenic [...]
The talk I gave last summer for the ‘World of Love’ independent games day at Channel 4 is now available courtesy of the organisers Mudlark. You can check it out on vimeo here. It was a great event and they are curently lining up another one for this year. My talk as usual straddled the [...]
I recently replayed spore in order to review is for my research. Aside from my critical opinion of the game itself (perhaps more on this later) I was particularly intrigued by the procedurally generated worlds that feature most prominently in the ‘space stage’. Having already examined the various methods of generating planetary type spheres (tesellation, [...]
I thought the time was right to announce my part in a new game development project. Big Robot is a company founded by my friend Jim Rossignol of RPS fame. After dealing with a number of different media projects it is currently working in collaboration with Channel4 to produce an educational strategy game. Ive been [...]
In summer I attended the World of Love conference in London at Channel 4. The following day I took part in the associated gamejam. My talk on Friday was roughly about the indie development model as an example for student productions, but also the importance of visual style and context as a framework for extending [...]
So, Ive been playing Monster Hunter Tri on the Wii. Its the only game that has really had me ‘playing it offline’ since WoW. When I end up with a little downtime during work I find myself checking gear combinations, video strategy and crafting charts on the web. Like WoW it has a progressive gearing [...]