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A Guefte-Leckture in Several Diftinguish'd Actes A Guefte-Leckture - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

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Procedural Content Generation in Video Games A Guefte-Leckture in Several Diftinguish'd Actes A Guefte-Leckture in Several Diftinguish'd Actes Nick Rudzicz (loves fonts) Nick Rudzicz COMP521 Winter 2008 Background The Man: Nick

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Nick Rudzicz COMP521 – Winter 2008

Procedural Content Generation in Video Games

A Guefte-Leckture in Several Diftinguish'd Actes A Guefte-Leckture in Several Diftinguish'd Actes

Nick Rudzicz (loves fonts)

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Nick Rudzicz COMP521 – Winter 2008  The Man: Nick Rudzicz

Background

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Nick Rudzicz COMP521 – Winter 2008  The Man: Nick Rudzicz  The Legend: It's pronounced ''ROO-jich''

Background

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Nick Rudzicz COMP521 – Winter 2008  The Man: Nick Rudzicz  The Legend: It's pronounced ''ROO-jich''  ...the hell? Seeking a Master's degree in Computer

Science in the field of video game awesomeness

Background

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Nick Rudzicz COMP521 – Winter 2008  I am both a giant nerd and a giant geek

Motivation

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Nick Rudzicz COMP521 – Winter 2008  I am both a giant nerd and a giant geek  Nerd: I can read this:

Motivation

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Nick Rudzicz COMP521 – Winter 2008  I am both a giant nerd and a giant geek  Nerd: I can read this:

Motivation

 Geek: The following is the

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Nick Rudzicz COMP521 – Winter 2008  I am both a giant nerd and a giant geek  Nerd: I can read this:

Motivation

 Geek: The following is the

Best.

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Nick Rudzicz COMP521 – Winter 2008  I am both a giant nerd and a giant geek  Nerd: I can read this:

Motivation

 Geek: The following is the

  • Best. Game.
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Nick Rudzicz COMP521 – Winter 2008  I am both a giant nerd and a giant geek  Nerd: I can read this:

Motivation

 Geek: The following is the

  • Best. Game. Ever.
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Nick Rudzicz COMP521 – Winter 2008

Motivation

 I get a kick out of world creation, exploration

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Nick Rudzicz COMP521 – Winter 2008

Motivation

 I get a kick out of world creation, exploration  (Recall your 4 basic gamer types...)

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Nick Rudzicz COMP521 – Winter 2008

Content

 Q: What is content?

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Nick Rudzicz COMP521 – Winter 2008

Content

 Q: What is content?  A: Everything in the game that provides the gamer

w/ sensory input (graphics, music, NPCs, text, etc.)

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Nick Rudzicz COMP521 – Winter 2008

Content

 Q: What is content?  A: Everything in the game that provides the gamer

w/ sensory input (graphics, music, NPCs, text, etc.)

 Content:

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Nick Rudzicz COMP521 – Winter 2008

Content

 Q: Why is content important?

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Nick Rudzicz COMP521 – Winter 2008

Content

 Q: Why is content important?  A: Storage space is expanding, graphical capability

is skyrocketing – and both are getting cheaper.

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Nick Rudzicz COMP521 – Winter 2008

Content

 Q: Why is content important?  A: Storage space is expanding, graphical capability

is skyrocketing – and both are getting cheaper.

 Gamers expect more ''stuff'' in their games!

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Nick Rudzicz COMP521 – Winter 2008

Content

 Q: Why is content important? (cont'd)

 Compare:

1993 2002 2006

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Nick Rudzicz COMP521 – Winter 2008

Content

 Q: What makes content an important business problem?

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Nick Rudzicz COMP521 – Winter 2008

Content

 Q: What makes content an important business problem?  A: It sucks up resources like the Mega Maid in

''Spaceballs''

Game development budget

Content Everything else

Game development time

Content Everything else

* Entirely made-up graphs, but probably not far off

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Nick Rudzicz COMP521 – Winter 2008

Content

 A problem of scale:

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Nick Rudzicz COMP521 – Winter 2008

Content

 A problem of scale:

 Dorval: 20.87km2  GTA:SA: 36km2  TES:Oblivion: 41.439km2  WoW: 207.2km2

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Nick Rudzicz COMP521 – Winter 2008

Content

 A problem of scale:

 Dorval: 20.87km2  GTA:SA: 36km2  TES:Oblivion: 41.439km2  WoW: 207.2km2  Island of Montreal: 500km2  Tolkien's world (Arda): ??? 

How could we possibly build ''realistically-sized'' environments by hand? (And do we want to?)

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Nick Rudzicz COMP521 – Winter 2008

World-building: What and How

 Various levels of environmental content creation:

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Nick Rudzicz COMP521 – Winter 2008

World-building: What and How

 Various levels of environmental content creation:

 Landscape  Vegetation  Cities  Buildings  Objects

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Nick Rudzicz COMP521 – Winter 2008

World-building: What and How

 Various levels of environmental content creation:

 Landscape  Vegetation  Cities  Buildings  Objects

 Forms a nice hierarchy

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Nick Rudzicz COMP521 – Winter 2008

World-building: What and How

 Various levels of environmental content creation:

 Landscape  Vegetation  Cities  Buildings  Objects

 Forms a nice hierarchy  Work has been done on individual levels

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Nick Rudzicz COMP521 – Winter 2008

World-building: What and How

 Levels of content creation:

 Landscape  Vegetation  Cities  Buildings  Objects

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Nick Rudzicz COMP521 – Winter 2008

World-building: What and How

 Landscapes

 Perlin Noise (!), Iterated fault lines, GIS, ...

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Nick Rudzicz COMP521 – Winter 2008

World-building: What and How

 Landscapes

 Perlin Noise (!), Iterated fault lines, GIS, ...  Terragen (+ user input) is very good at this:

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Nick Rudzicz COMP521 – Winter 2008

World-building: What and How

 [Prusinkiewicz 1993] discusses the formation of

rivers using fractals:

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Nick Rudzicz COMP521 – Winter 2008

World-building: What and How

 Levels of content creation:

 Landscape  Vegetation  Cities  Buildings  Objects

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Nick Rudzicz COMP521 – Winter 2008

World-building: What and How

 [Wells 2005] uses cellular automata to simulate a

floral ecosystem

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Nick Rudzicz COMP521 – Winter 2008

World-building: What and How

 [Wells 2005] uses cellular automata to simulate a

floral ecosystem

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Nick Rudzicz COMP521 – Winter 2008

World-building: What and How

 Even individual plants can be procedurally

generated using Lindenmeyer systems (L-Systems)

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Nick Rudzicz COMP521 – Winter 2008

World-building: What and How

 Even individual plants can be procedurally

generated using Lindenmeyer systems (L-Systems)

 String rewriting mechanism, much like a context-free

grammar (or even context sensitive)

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Nick Rudzicz COMP521 – Winter 2008

World-building: What and How

 Even individual plants can be procedurally

generated using Lindenmeyer systems (L-Systems)

 String rewriting mechanism, much like a context-free

grammar (or even context sensitive)

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Nick Rudzicz COMP521 – Winter 2008

World-building: What and How

 Levels of content creation:

 Landscape  Vegetation  Cities  Buildings  Objects

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Nick Rudzicz COMP521 – Winter 2008

World-building: What and How

 [Parish & Mueller 2000] developed CityEngine

 Re-uses L-Systems for branching road networks!

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Nick Rudzicz COMP521 – Winter 2008

World-building: What and How

 [Parish & Mueller 2000] developed CityEngine

 Re-uses L-Systems for branching road networks!  Results are visually phenomenal

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Nick Rudzicz COMP521 – Winter 2008

World-building: What and How

 CityEngine

+

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Nick Rudzicz COMP521 – Winter 2008

World-building: What and How

 CityEngine

+

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Nick Rudzicz COMP521 – Winter 2008

World-building: What and How

 [Glass 2006] uses Voronoi diagrams to generate

''informal settlements''

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Nick Rudzicz COMP521 – Winter 2008

World-building: What and How

 [Glass 2006] uses Voronoi diagrams to generate

''informal settlements''

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Nick Rudzicz COMP521 – Winter 2008

World-building: What and How

 Levels of content creation:

 Landscape  Vegetation  Cities  Buildings  Objects

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Nick Rudzicz COMP521 – Winter 2008

World-building: What and How

 [Wonka 2003] uses a ''shape grammar'' (much like

an L-System) to generate building exteriors

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Nick Rudzicz COMP521 – Winter 2008

World-building: What and How

 [Wonka 2003] uses a ''shape grammar'' (much like

an L-System) to generate building exteriors

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Nick Rudzicz COMP521 – Winter 2008

World-building: What and How

 Levels of content creation:

 Landscape  Vegetation  Cities  Buildings  Objects

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Nick Rudzicz COMP521 – Winter 2008

World-building: What and How

 Very little (if any) work done at this level

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Nick Rudzicz COMP521 – Winter 2008

World-building: What and How

 Very little (if any) work done at this level

 ...which makes this exciting

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Nick Rudzicz COMP521 – Winter 2008

World-building: What and How

 Very little (if any) work done at this level

 ...which makes this exciting

 What would this look like?

 A formal grammar or rule set?

 Object fork {

placedIn{ ''counterDrawer'', 0.5; ''toilet'', 0.0 }; placedOn{ ''table'', 0.5; ...} ... nextTo{ ''plate'', 0.75; ...} }

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Nick Rudzicz COMP521 – Winter 2008

World-building: What and How

 Very little (if any) work done at this level

 ...which makes this exciting

 What would this look like?

 A swarm of interior decorator agents?  Sort of like a backwards riot...

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Nick Rudzicz COMP521 – Winter 2008

Where do I come in?

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Nick Rudzicz COMP521 – Winter 2008

Where do I come in?

 Thesising!

 Word? No. Fun to say? Very yes!

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Nick Rudzicz COMP521 – Winter 2008

Where do I come in?

 Thesising!

 Word? No. Fun to say? Very yes!

 My goal: make a world at the touch of a button

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Nick Rudzicz COMP521 – Winter 2008

Where do I come in?

 Thesising!

 Word? No. Fun to say? Very yes!

 My goal: make a world at the touch of a button

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Nick Rudzicz COMP521 – Winter 2008

Thesis

 Given:

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Nick Rudzicz COMP521 – Winter 2008

Thesis

 Given:

 Nice hierarchy of creation levels (Landscape, vegetation,

cities, etc.)

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Nick Rudzicz COMP521 – Winter 2008

Thesis

 Given:

 Nice hierarchy of creation levels (Landscape, vegetation,

cities, etc.)

 A lot of work already done on individual levels

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Nick Rudzicz COMP521 – Winter 2008

Thesis

 Given:

 Nice hierarchy of creation levels (Landscape, vegetation,

cities, etc.)

 A lot of work already done on individual levels

 We want:

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Nick Rudzicz COMP521 – Winter 2008

Thesis

 Given:

 Nice hierarchy of creation levels (Landscape, vegetation,

cities, etc.)

 A lot of work already done on individual levels

 We want:

 A data framework for the hierarchy

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Nick Rudzicz COMP521 – Winter 2008

Thesis

 Given:

 Nice hierarchy of creation levels (Landscape, vegetation,

cities, etc.)

 A lot of work already done on individual levels

 We want:

 A data framework for the hierarchy  A tool for rapid content creation

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Nick Rudzicz COMP521 – Winter 2008

Thesis

 The platform: Mammoth

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Nick Rudzicz COMP521 – Winter 2008

Thesis

 The platform: Mammoth

 Made at McGill  Has content editor, well-defined map files

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Nick Rudzicz COMP521 – Winter 2008

Thesis

 The data framework

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Nick Rudzicz COMP521 – Winter 2008

Thesis

 The data framework

 Definition of data structures (heightmap, city, building...)  Interaction between objects

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Nick Rudzicz COMP521 – Winter 2008

Thesis

 The data framework

 Definition of data structures (heightmap, city, building...)  Interaction between objects  Software engineering!

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Nick Rudzicz COMP521 – Winter 2008

Thesis

 The data framework

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Nick Rudzicz COMP521 – Winter 2008

Thesis

 The data framework

 MODULAR!

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Nick Rudzicz COMP521 – Winter 2008

Thesis

 The data framework

 MODULAR!  Anyone can

write their

  • wn engines
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Nick Rudzicz COMP521 – Winter 2008

Thesis

 The tool

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Nick Rudzicz COMP521 – Winter 2008

Thesis

 The tool

 Provide an interface to choose modules

 (Cellular automata vs. L-Systems vs. etc...)

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Nick Rudzicz COMP521 – Winter 2008

Thesis

 The tool

 Provide an interface to choose modules

 (Cellular automata vs. L-Systems vs. etc...)

 Data framework defines how modules behave

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Nick Rudzicz COMP521 – Winter 2008

Summary

 Finally!

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Nick Rudzicz COMP521 – Winter 2008

Summary

 Content: scale and detail are growing exponentially!

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Nick Rudzicz COMP521 – Winter 2008

Summary

 Content: scale and detail are growing exponentially!  Work has been done on individual levels

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Nick Rudzicz COMP521 – Winter 2008

Summary

 Content: scale and detail are growing exponentially!  Work has been done on individual levels  Trend toward automated creation tools

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Nick Rudzicz COMP521 – Winter 2008

Teh futures!

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Nick Rudzicz COMP521 – Winter 2008

Teh futures!

 Full, commercial tool allowing plug-in modules

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Nick Rudzicz COMP521 – Winter 2008

Teh futures!

 Full, commercial tool allowing plug-in modules  Games allowing user creation?

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Nick Rudzicz COMP521 – Winter 2008

Teh futures!

 Full, commercial tool allowing plug-in modules  Games allowing user creation?  Automated NPC/storyline generation?

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Nick Rudzicz COMP521 – Winter 2008

Questions?

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Nick Rudzicz COMP521 – Winter 2008

Questions?

What's a content?