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Tanya X. Short

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Procedural Generation in Game Design 1st Edition, Kindle Edition

by Tanya Short (Editor), Tarn Adams (Editor) Format: Kindle Edition

4.3 61 ratings

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Making a game can be an intensive process, and if not planned accurately can easily run over budget. The use of procedural generation in game design can help with the intricate and multifarious aspects of game development; thus facilitating cost reduction.This form of development enables games to create their play areas, objects and stories based on a set of rules, rather than relying on the developer to handcraft each element individually.Readers will learn to create randomized maps, weave accidental plotlines, and manage complex systems that are prone to unpredictable behavior. Tanya Short’s and Tarn Adams’ Procedural Generation in Game Design offers a wide collection of chapters from various experts that cover the implementation and enactment of procedural generation in games. Designers from a variety of studios provide concrete examples from their games to illustrate the many facets of this emerging sub-discipline.

Key Features:

Introduces the differences between static/traditional game design and procedural game design

Demonstrates how to solve or avoid common problems with procedural game design in a variety of concrete ways

Includes industry leaders’ experiences and lessons from award-winning games

World’s finest guide for how to begin thinking about procedural design

Review

Short, director of KitFox Games, and Adams, the independent co-creator of the popular game Dwarf Fortress, have edited a substantial collection of essays providing concepts and practical application of procedurally generated content and algorithms for game design purposes. Procedural generational the method of creating data via algorithm rather than by handâ€”is a principle developers can harness to allow the game to generate its own content (settings, objects, and stories) using a series of rules. This method can result in considerable savings over the more traditional game design. Unlike Procedural Content Generation in Games (Shaker, Togelius, Nelson, 2016), the material here is authored by independent developers (with one exception from Blizzard Entertainment), so the information is more accessible and actionable. The book should enable game developers evaluating procedural generation for their games to make an informed decision whether or not to use it. Those with a background in computer science or who are already using procedural generation may learn something new from the contributorsâ€™ experiences and methodologies.

--A. Chen, Cogswell College

Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty and professionals.

--This text refers to the hardcover edition.

About the Author

Tanya X. Short is the director of Kitfox Games, the indie game studio behind Moon Hunters and Shattered Planet. Previously, she worked as a designer at Funcom Games on The Secret World and Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures. In her spare time, she acts as the co-director of Pixelles, a non-profit helping more women make games.

Tarn Adams is best known as the developer of Dwarf Fortress since 2002 with his older brother Zach. He learned programming in his childhood, and designed computer games as a hobby until he quit his first year of a mathematics post doctorate at Texas A&M to focus on game development in 2006.

--This text refers to the hardcover edition.

ISBN-13

978-1138743311
Edition

1st
Sticky notes

On Kindle Scribe
Publisher

A K Peters/CRC Press
Publication date

June 12, 2017
Language

English
File size

7716 KB
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Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B071GL6NRD
Publisher ‏ : ‎ A K Peters/CRC Press; 1st edition (June 12, 2017)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ June 12, 2017
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 7716 KB
Simultaneous device usage ‏ : ‎ Up to 4 simultaneous devices, per publisher limits
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
Print length ‏ : ‎ 340 pages
Page numbers source ISBN ‏ : ‎ 1498799191

Best Sellers Rank: #1,044,429 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #338 in Computer Games Programming
- #357 in Computer & Video Game Design
- #737 in Video & Electronic Games

Customer Reviews:
4.3 61 ratings

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4.3 out of 5

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Heather

What it says on the label

Reviewed in the United States on September 4, 2023

Verified Purchase

Excellent read. I want the second volume now.

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Dontlookatme

Great for the variety of applications for PCG that it ...

Reviewed in the United States on December 18, 2017

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Great for the variety of applications for PCG that it covers.

It does warn you early into the book to not expect every problem to be solved instantly by PCG (a fair message) and it doesn't dig into the technical implementation details beyond a surface discussion.

This is NOT a technical recipe book for building a bunch of different PCG systems you can use in games.

Great starting point if you're interested in learning about PCG in other ways than you've already been exposed to.

The variety of authors is very beneficial since each topic has its complex gotchas. It feels as if the authors talking about subjects have grappled firsthand with the problems that you'd face within that topic.

The only minor fault is some of the charts don't line up with where you'd want them to be: 'As seen in Figure N-1' and Figure N-1 would turn out to be on the next page.

6 people found this helpful

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Smarter Daily

You love procedurally generated games? Of course you do, buy this book, read it and make your own.

Reviewed in the United States on January 23, 2018

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AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAmazing. I love this book, I wish I had bought the hardcover because I want to reread this book over 20 times. Procedural Generation is a passion of mine and this combines many techniques I had never thought about. It will not give you "code" don't look at this book and want somebody to give you code, or even answers to your solutions. Procedurally generated content is a discussion not a one size fits all and this book shows many sides to that discussion. I believe they could write 20 more books on this same topic and techniques others have used and I would buy every single one. Thank you!

13 people found this helpful

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Joe Zack

Perfect for game programmers and procedural generation enthusiasts

Reviewed in the United States on July 14, 2017

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I heard about this book on Roguelike Radio and had to get it. I've been following the editors for years and a good chunk of the contributing authors. If you have an interesting in game programming or procedural generation then this is a great book to read. Perfect mix of high and low level concepts.

My only complaint is that I wanted to read essays from Tanya and Tarn too!

8 people found this helpful

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Steff

Great little vignettes into many different aspects of procedurally generated content!

Reviewed in the United States on April 29, 2019

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Great little vignettes into many different aspects of procedurally generated content!

One person found this helpful

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Daniel Gee

This is not really a book that I can suggest ...

Reviewed in the United States on August 26, 2017

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This is not really a book that I can suggest to most people. The first portion is actually not one but a series of essays trying to warn you away from using proc gen, and then finally once they begin to talk about proc gen it's generally given in relatively vague outline terms, not actual code examples. This is "good" in the sense that it doesn't promote a particular language some might say, but people using their language of choice to write a game can generally convert from simple Python or Java or whatever into their own language, so actual code examples would have been much preferred. The fact that each chapter is written by a different author makes the writing style jump all over the place in a way that took quite a bit away from the experience for me.

33 people found this helpful

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Mactorg Steen

Great book. Lots of good little bits of information

Reviewed in the United States on July 31, 2017

Verified Purchase

Great book. Lots of good little bits of information.

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Amazon Customer

Excellent inspiration for all types of procedural generation

Reviewed in the United States on February 27, 2020

This is a collection of essays from experts in the procedural generation world, people who live and love (and fight) procedural generation in many different forms. While this book isn't a practical, down-in-the-code-weeds tutorial, that isn't the point of the book. It is chock-full of ideas, theory and inspiration for game designers and people combining art and code.

I've learned an awful lot from this book despite being keen on procgen for many years. It's given me ideas on how to approach problems myself. i thoroughly recommend it. I keep dipping into different chapters, finding something new each time.

3 people found this helpful

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WNewton

Incoherent

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 10, 2023

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I was looking for single topic books on game design and was recommended this. I instantly bought it when I saw Dwarf Fortess’ Tarn Adams. Who better to write about proc gen from?!

But Tarn isn’t the author but the ‘editor’ (alongside Tanya X Short). My mistake. The book itself is from a series of guest contributors each writing chapters.

This lends the book to feel more like an industry blog than a text book. While these chapters are somewhat logically sorted in to sections, it’s very incoherent.

For example, procedural poetry is given the same amount of space as algorithms. The actual bones of this stuff. In fact the chapter on algorithms is right at the back of the book, many pages after the specifics and intricacies of generating poetry.

What I was hoping for was a cover-to-cover read that flowed something like: Philosophy of proc gen, theory of the fundamentals, practical applications and maybe some worked examples to bring it all together. Instead it’s lived examples, where the authors talk in detail about the specific problems and approaches in their games. It also often assumes knowledge of the game, despite many being obscure indie titles.

For a book so frequently concerned with game coherence and avoiding feeling random, it fails to do it for itself. And often feels like it was written by ChatGPT.

I’ve yet to finish the book. Instead I think it’s best used as reference for specific topics. But realistically I’m more likely to Google or trawl the Gamasutra archive. In fact, it would better if this book were a blog as ultimately that is it’s format.

Mister Zee

A little *small*, isn't it?

Reviewed in India on December 22, 2019

Verified Purchase

For a book that cost three and a half THOUSAND rupees, it turned out to be a very SMALL book in size, that's my first impression of it!! After I've been through it a little more, I'll report back here.

Tingey

Un très bon aperçu des possibilités de la génération procédurale de contenu

Reviewed in France on October 15, 2019

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Lecture très enrichissante. Le fait que les exemples soient basés sur des jeux publiés est un gros plus.

One person found this helpful

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Sam Redfern

Disappointing

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 7, 2019

Verified Purchase

Unfortunately there's far too many filler chapters here, with little to say. Even the good chapters aren't saying anything that you won't find pretty easily on places like Gamasutra. Like other people, I was attracted by the name Tarn Adams on the cover.. but he's only an editor. There's no insights into Dwarf Fortress here.

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