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

Items


Besides using parameters, another way that model generation compounds is through item generation. If a character is built of armor pieces and uses weapons that are procedurally generated, then each one of those pieces has properties that can be manipulated or modularized. Just like our sword from Chapter 6, Generating Modular Weapons, the item will be made of a certain amount of pieces. However, imagine if each of the pieces was then made of another set of pieces and so on.

Compounding model generation through item generation can create a truly unique experience. However, having to generate that many objects would be costly to our performance due to the amount of time and space it would require. It would also be hard on the player if every single object in the game looked different. People look for patterns.

One option would be to generate an item and then store a reference to that model for later use. By reusing some things, we give the player some patterns to work with. An example...