Book Image

Procedural Content Generation for C++ Game Development

By : Dale Green
Book Image

Procedural Content Generation for C++ Game Development

By: Dale Green

Overview of this book

Procedural generation is a growing trend in game development. It allows developers to create games that are bigger and more dynamic, giving the games a higher level of replayability. Procedural generation isn’t just one technique, it’s a collection of techniques and approaches that are used together to create dynamic systems and objects. C++ is the industry-standard programming language to write computer games. It’s at the heart of most engines, and is incredibly powerful. SFML is an easy-to-use, cross-platform, and open-source multimedia library. Access to computer hardware is broken into succinct modules, making it a great choice if you want to develop cross-platform games with ease. Using C++ and SFML technologies, this book will guide you through the techniques and approaches used to generate content procedurally within game development. Throughout the course of this book, we’ll look at examples of these technologies, starting with setting up a roguelike project using the C++ template. We’ll then move on to using RNG with C++ data types and randomly scattering objects within a game map. We will create simple console examples to implement in a real game by creating unique and randomised game items, dynamic sprites, and effects, and procedurally generating game events. Then we will walk you through generating random game maps. At the end, we will have a retrospective look at the project. By the end of the book, not only will you have a solid understanding of procedural generation, but you’ll also have a working roguelike game that you will have extended using the examples provided.
Table of Contents (19 chapters)
Procedural Content Generation for C++ Game Development
Credits
About the Author
Acknowledgment
About the Reviewer
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

The benefits of procedural level design


The procedural generation of game levels and environments brings with it a myriad of benefits, not only for players but also for developers. It's always good to understand the positives and negatives of a technology before we use it. So, let's take a look at some of the biggest benefits that it brings to games before we implement it.

Replayability

The most obvious benefit of procedurally generated levels is their variety and the replayability that they bring to a game. With each run, the environment changes. This means that players cannot learn the locations of items, enemies, and this keeps the challenge alive and fresh, giving players reasons to play the game again and again.

A reduction in development time

Another benefit that is common in all implementations of procedural generation is the time that it saves in development. In our roguelike game, we're going to have an endless number of unique levels. If we were creating our levels manually this would...