Book Image

Procedural Content Generation for Unity Game Development

By : Ryan Watkins
Book Image

Procedural Content Generation for Unity Game Development

By: Ryan Watkins

Overview of this book

Procedural Content Generation is a process by which game content is developed using computer algorithms, rather than through the manual efforts of game developers. This book teaches readers how to develop algorithms for procedural generation that they can use in their own games. These concepts are put into practice using C# and Unity is used as the game development engine. This book provides the fundamentals of learning and continued learning using PCG. You'll discover the theory of PCG and the mighty Pseudo Random Number Generator. Random numbers such as die rolls and card drafting provide the chance factor that makes games fun and supplies spontaneity. This book also takes you through the full development of a 2D game. Starting with level generation, you'll learn how PCG can make the game environment for you. You'll move into item generation and learn the different techniques to procedurally create game items. Thereafter, you'll be guided through the more abstract PCG areas such as scaling difficulty to the player and even generating music! The book helps you set up systems within your games where algorithms create computationally generated levels, art assets, quests, stories, characters, and weapons; these can substantially reduce the burden of manually creating every aspect of the game. Finally, you'll get to try out your new PCG skills on 3D terrain generation.
Table of Contents (18 chapters)
Procedural Content Generation for Unity Game Development
Credits
Disclaimer
About the Author
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Chapter 8. Generating Music

In this chapter, we are finishing up our Roguelike game with the final addition of music. There is still plenty of polishing we can do to the game, such as adding stories or quests, other game sounds, and opening/closing screens. However, the extras can be left to you to finish with your newly acquired knowledge of PCG.

Music is one of the more theoretical subjects we can attempt to procedurally generate. We need general knowledge of how to procedurally generate content and we also need knowledge of music theory so that we can construct a coherent melody. Don't worry, though; we will go through the steps that will give us the information that we need to tackle this task. Here's what you will learn in this chapter:

  • Simple music theory

  • Create an algorithm from a new theory

  • Modularizing code when working with a new subject

Those of you who have a background in music might already have the knowledge needed to complete this chapter. However, for those who do not, we will...