When creating game content, be it a level, character, animation, or even music, developers often resort to the help of algorithms that simplify or completely free them from routine work. Improving diversity and replayability, simulating the world, game physics, as well as creating completely new (or varying manually created) content, it is capable of all this procedural generation.
In this article I will not delve into the intricacies of programming, but will only tell you what tricks game creators go to to simplify the development processes.
Environment generation
The Elder Scrolls: Arena
One of the first games to use procedural generation to build locations was The Elder Scrolls: Arena. Intending to create a large open world, developers from Bethesda Softworks experimented and wrote algorithms for automatically generating landscapes, dungeons and cities. This allowed them to create an endless number of secondary locations and at the same time free their hands to work on the places of the main quest.
The developers of No Man’s Sky went even further and created a galaxy consisting of 18 quintillion variations of planets. They all have unique flora and fauna and have their own characteristics based on their position in the galaxy and distance to the nearest star. All this sounds interesting, but in reality players complained about the secondary locations and gameplay. As Julian Jensen, one of the developers of The Elder Scrolls: Arena and Dafferfall, says: “You can’t generate absolutely everything, and there’s no point in creating everything by hand, you need to be able to adapt both correctly.”.
City generator in The Sinking https://slotsnogamstop.co.uk/review/betfoxx/ City
Frogwares’ yet-to-be-released game, The Sinking City, uses a city generator. Modules of different types of houses: rich, ruined, commercial or even huts, are connected in different orders and thus a city is created from unique variations of buildings. They then have the option to customize the details manually.
Generation of plot and situations
Unlike locations, artificial intelligence is fickle, unpredictable and, when interacting with the player, can create unique situations. It can be part of a game’s non-prescribed narrative. Thus, developers of open world games such as GTA pay great attention to the artificial intelligence of secondary characters. The task of the GTA V developers was precisely to create behavioral systems for the NPC (what he does when he hears shooting, how he reacts to the player, how he interacts with other characters), and not situations. By creating a believable simulation of behavior, the developer brings the game world to life and opens up a platform for the player to explore and gain a unique gaming experience. Scripted scenes are prescribed for the main plot.
When creating animation, automation systems are also used, such as Lip Sync. This is when the basic facial expressions and lips are automatically substituted for the characters’ voice. To do this, developers need to animate each individual syllable, and the script will select a sequence based on the voice actor’s voice recording. As with other examples of procedural techniques, this approach is usually used in open world games, and is much inferior in quality to Performance Capture, which is used, for example, in games from Naughty Dog.
Physics in games is different from our world, it works according to its own rules due to engine limitations or for the sake of gameplay. In Ubisoft games, animations recorded using motion capture run parallel to the system inverse kinematics (IK). It selects the correct position of the character’s bones and joints based on the collision of obstacles and objects in the environment. Without this system, arms and legs will pass through objects.
IK RIG makes game physics more realistic
System Ragdolls (Rag Doll), well known to those who played GTA V. Represents the physics of skeletal animation bones tied together using a constraint system that simulates the physics of a real person. In GTA it is activated at the moment of falling or death, but in Gang Beasts all animation and interaction with objects is built on this system.
Adaptive music
In interactive media such as games, what happens on the screen depends on who is interacting with it. It is impossible to write music for absolutely every situation the player will encounter. Therefore, many games use procedural music, namely adaptive soundtrack. The point is to record the necessary instruments, melodies and beats, and mix them depending on the mood of what is happening on the screen. If the player is fighting a horde of orcs, warlike, uplifting orchestral music will play. If you travel around the world, a meditative, calming song will play. Everything should work for the atmosphere. The adaptive soundtrack ensures smooth transitions, which creates the effect of continuity of the composition and this increases the level of immersion. You might have heard it, for example, in No Man’s Sky or Red Dead Redemption.
What will happen in the future?
Nvidia GauGAN technology turns sketches into photorealistic landscapes.
Technologies do not stand still and neural networks and machine learning algorithms will soon be involved in development. So recently Nvidia presented GauGAN technology, which allows you to create photorealistic landscapes from sketches. Or ESRGAN technology, which uses neural networks to improve image clarity by artificially drawing in details. Game fans have already tested it on old games, releasing HD and 4K texture packs.
This article is an adaptation of the script to video. Thanks for reading and I hope the information was useful.