Design of Level Content is the use of PCG techniques at the design stage to build game assets such as levels, enemies and weapons. Due to the increasing cost of content design, PCG can supplement human design skills to rapidly populate the environment with randomly generated content, that can then be altered by hand to fit the intended design. Alternately, by rapidly iterating through a number of PCG generated levels, the designer can select a level that closest fits the game requirements. Design of Level Content underpins most sandbox games which contain too much content to have it placed by hand.
Design of Level Content results in a static final game which has a finite amount of content to consume, so PCG purists may not consider such games to be procedurally generated in the strictest sense. However, the same methods used to build the levels use the same PCG techniques, and some of the most popular literature on PCG features games that use this method (Such as Subversion and Darwinia). This method is particularly applicable for low budget, independent and free games due to the cost savings it permits.
A classic example of Design of Level Content in use is generating a heightmap using PCG techniques such as fractals or Perlin noise which then has hand-placed content added to it.
PCG Wiki References
External Links
Design of Level Content defined in The Death of the Level Designer.
Procedural Content is another name for tool - Jason Booth.
