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Featured Article Mazes are a classic staple of adventure games… (more) News January 25th, 2010 Two blog posts on The Chronicles Of Doryen dealing with generating biome maps for procedurally generated worlds. December 23rd, 2009 Interview with Flavien Brebion on GameDev.net about his Infinity - The Quest for Earth project. November 27, 2009 Random map generator that generates dungeons out of hand drawn tiles. November 27, 2009 Article on GameSetWatch describing the random level generation in Dungeon Hack. November 10, 2009 Blog post on AI Gamedev covering the procedural level geometry in Left 4 Dead 2. November 6, 2009 Conference runs until November 8, 2009 at CERN, Switzerland on roguelikes. November 5, 2009 Interview with Chris Delay on the development of Subversion. November 2, 2009 Blog post summarising EVE Fanfest announcements about the revamping of their procedurally generated planetary surfaces. October 17, 2009 Current issue of AI Magazine about computational creativity. October 16, 2009 Interview with Torfi Frans Ólafsson on Ten Ton Hammer covering how CCP procedurally generate planets in EVE Online. October 13, 2009 Article on procedural generation in games by Brandon Boyer. October 12, 2009 Symposium on Procedural Content Generation at the UC Santa Cruz campus. October 10, 2009 Article on adaptive games in New Scientist. September 22, 2009 Article on randomness by Greg Costikyan. August 28, 2009 Article by Jim Rossignol on BDLGBLOG, covering a range of attempts at procedural city generation. August 21, 2009 Editorial by Shamus Young at Escapist magazine on procedural content generation in Fuel. August 18, 2009 Seminar at Assembly 2009 on Love and the use of procedural generation within it, is now available for download. August 17, 2009 Keynote by Cevat Yerli notes that Crytek is investing heavily in research into procedural content. August 5, 2009 Article in New Scientist on Mario AI competition organised by Sergey Karakovskiy and Julian Togelius featuring Infinite Mario Bros. July 30, 2009 Thesis proposal slides posted on the subject of "game design as a new domain for automated discovery". July 23, 2009 Paper and example code released for work on procedural noise using sparse gabor convolution. July 21, 2009 Article describing fan/developer discussion related to map randomization in Diablo III on gameriot.com. Screencast demonstrating the generation and customisation of buildings within CityEngine when integrated with the Unity 3D engine. July 20, 2009 Past, present and future of the demoscene article covering in passing the procedurally generated demo Elevated on techradar.com. July 16, 2009 Article on sandbox play on Gamasutra. July 8, 2009 Article on Spelunky in The Escapist. June 29, 2009 Linked to PCG Wiki on reddit.com. May 17, 2009 SDK released for Left4Dead. May 15, 2009 Article on single shard MMOs suggests importance of procedural generation. May 7, 2009 Final blog post out of a series of fourteen by Shamus Young documenting the development of a procedural city project, Pixel City. April 8, 2009 Article on FEIST, a 3D platformer with a 2D side-scrolling view, which contains "procedurally-generated content." April 7, 2009 Interview with Chris Delay on Subversion, a game with procedurally generated cityscapes, and other topics. Kotaku Article on 8BITARHERO, a game where levels are generated by the playing of it. Article on the history of Elite and similar space games. April 3, 2009 Article by Troy Goodfellow on the games Merchant Prince and Machiavelli, including a mention of how randomly generated maps complemented the game mechanics. April 1, 2009 Paper (PDF) by Gillian Smith on a rhythm-based method for procedurally generating levels for 2D platformers. more news

Welcome to the Procedural Content Generation Wiki

The PCG Wiki is a central knowledge-base for everything related to Procedural Content Generation, as well as a detailed directory of games using Procedural Content Generation.

What is Procedural Content Generation?

Procedural content generation (PCG) is the programmatic generation of game content using a random or pseudo-random process that results in an unpredictable range of possible game play spaces. This wiki uses the term procedural content generation as opposed to procedural-generation: the wikipedia definition of procedural generation includes using dynamic as opposed to precomputed light maps, and procedurally generated textures, which while procedural in scope, do not affect game play in a meaningful way. The concept of randomness is also key: procedural content generation should ensure that from a few parameters, a large number of possible types of content can be generated.

What should I do from here?

Have a look around the wiki. Most people visiting here seem to want to check out the lists of PCG games. But you may find you get more of an insight into procedural generation by downloading or trying online some of the freely available PCG software and having a play, or by looking at some of the code examples on the wiki or reading some of the articles this wiki links to. At the very early stages of this wiki, most of the pages on this wiki are link place holders to external websites. But if you feel you can contribute something, feel free to look at the ways to contribute and page editing and creation examples. Then sign up as a member and introduce yourself to the team.

PCG Games

Many games use procedural content generation to increase the length of game play, some of which are free to download and play. The most common category of PCG games is roguelikes, which have a long tradition of using procedural content generation techniques.

The following may help you find out more:

• List of All PCG Games
• Categorized Lists of PCG Games
• Major PCG Games

PCG Game development

If you have some ideas for a new game featuring procedural content generation techniques and would like to give development a go (or are already a seasoned developer) the PCG Wiki is here to help you. A complete list of articles is available, but here are some to get you started:

• Software using Procedural Content Generation
• Algorithms and Code Examples for Procedural Content Generation
• Events featuring Procedural Content Generation
• TIG Source Procedural Content Generation Competition
• The Death of the Level Designer
• Articles about making a PCG game

Contribute

If you'd like to contribute to the PCG Wiki directly, simply create an account, log in and join the site using the menus near the top of the page. Feel very free to edit! We especially need more information added to the games pages and the lists - if you're a developer, consider updating your game's page, and making sure that it (and you) are included in the relevant lists. You can request an article at the forums. You'll also find the todo list, examples and bugs-and-quirks pages useful to introduce yourself to the wiki format and this wiki's way of doing things.

License

All content is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.