grep ‐‐week 48

The theme this week is: back to normal.

The Extremely Strange World of Infinite Dungeon Video Games
@atlasobscura
The headline doesn’t really pay off in this article that turns out to mostly be about promoting some guy’s art project (which looks really cool btw).  Otherwise it kind of just briefly describes what is a roguelike game to someone who has never heard of such a thing — which is actually an interesting problem.  I found myself wondering if such a person would understand anything this person is writing about, or if it’s all gobbeldygook.

How do you plan for extraordinary moments in procedural design?
@twitch
Moon Hunters expansion gameplay with running commentary with the developers.  They make a point I’ve seen a few times recently — when your generator generates some sort of odd area, you should take the effort to craft loot or fun moments or easter eggs to stick there;  these are the little touches that allow players to fall in love with your game.

Studying gameplay progression on runners
@gamasutra
It’s kind of useful to break down procedural runners at a high level when considering your own algorithms; for instance they mention using pseudo-randomness to guarantee their pacing wasn’t sometimes broken with bad generation.

Generating the world of Sunless Skies
@gamasutra
A breakdown of the game’s level generation design.

Sceelix Web Engine Alpha Demo
@sceelix
This appeared in my inbox this week, a browser-based demo of the Sceelix procedural engine.