What Pcg Is / Discussion

This is the discussion related to the wiki page What Pcg Is.

mindset

droid 21 Jun 2009 21:32

I think that the diference between pg and PCG depends not much on the algorithm that designs the content but more on how the content is used once it is generated. For example you could take a conventional game and generate the textures on the fly to reduce filesize or whatever. That would be pg. Or you could generate that same texture, and from that texture shape the map, or use it to allocate resources, or do something that affects gameplay. That would be PCG.

Just my interpretation.

Last edited on 21 Jun 2009 21:33 by droid Show more

Re: mindset

andrewdoull 23 Jun 2009 11:42

I tend to agree. At the time I wrote 'Death', I was concerned about making a distinction - I think that distinction is less important from the point of view of this wiki. In fact, given that about half the membership applications have been from people interested in procedural generation as opposed to procedural content generation, the statements on this page and the main page may be too strongly worded in favour of the content aspect, and not neutral enough.

mindset

droid 25 Jun 2009 20:48

So the line is blurred because any pg algorithm can be used for PCG.

Another reason the line is blurred is that any content affects gameplay. For example, think of how much effort Valve puts into getting the silhouettes of their characters unique, and how their effort that changes only the appearance of the characters makes the game different by allowing players to identify objects faster.

The distinction is still useful and we still focus on PCG, but the only thing this excludes is something like: "making content manually (that is, the hard way) and then finding a way to generate the exact same thing procedurally." In which case it is more of file compression than any thing else.

Which reminds me of the definition of algorithmic information content…

Perhaps I should put in a page on AIC. Will take a bit of research first.