Hi Shawn,
Thanks for pointing out the ambiguity. My original idea for
procedural generation (as it pertains to this contest) was along the
lines of this part of the article:
/"The earliest computer games were severely limited by memory
constraints. This forced content, such as maps, to be generated
algorithmically on the fly: there simply wasn't enough space to store a
large amount of pre-made levels and artwork. Pseudorandom number
generators were often used with predefined seed values in order to
create very large game worlds that appeared premade. For example, The
Sentinel supposedly had 10,000 different levels stored in only 48 or 64
kilobytes. An extreme case was Elite, which was originally planned to
contain a total of 248 (approximately 282 trillion) galaxies with 256
solar systems each. The publisher, however, was afraid that such a
gigantic universe would cause disbelief in players, and eight of these
galaxies were chosen for the final version. Other notable early examples
include the 1985 game Rescue on Fractalus that used fractal technology
to procedurally create in real time the craggy mountains of an alien
planet and River Raid, the 1982 Activision game that used a pseudorandom
number sequence generated by a linear feedback shift register in order
to generate a scrolling maze of obstacles."/
The main content of the game should be algorithmically generated
(imagine if Super Mario Bros. maps were generated on the fly, instead of
designed by hand). I do like the idea of an audio game that uses
pseudo-random number generators (reminds me of that old game "Simon" :-)
-Dafydd
Shawn wrote:
(note, I'm only replying to CLUG-TALK - my mail gets "stuck" if I
address two CLUG lists at once...)
Dafydd, can you give us YOUR definition of Procedural Generation? The
wiki article seems vague. If I go by that article, anything that
evaluates a formula, or takes a number of steps, to determine what
pixel to turn on or what color it should be, any of this would fit the
definition. Or change the word "pixel" to "note" and "color" to
"volume" if you consider an audio approach.
I *think* I have an understanding of what you are asking, but it would
be good to establish a clearer constraint to the project.
Shawn
Dafydd Crosby wrote:
Hello all!
In lieu of a PROG-SIG meeting tonight (since attendance will be
pretty much nil), let's have a fun programming contest that will lead
in to the next PROG-SIG and involves the next CLUG meeting:
Make a fun game that utilizes both procedural generation
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Procedural_generation) and a database
(the crazier the better).
Any programming language is fair-game - it can be as long, short,
high-tech, or low-tech as you want.
The winner of the contest will be decided by popular vote, which will
be at the next PROG-SIG meeting (April 29th). Winner gets a cool
T-shirt and their game gets put on the front page of the CLUG
website. All games will be put up on the CLUG website (with the
author's permission, of course).
This month's upcoming CLUG talk (April 7th) will be about databases:
what they are, how to use them, and which one's are the coolest.
It will also be a good time to show off your game in progress :-D
Happy hacking!
-Dafydd
Shawn wrote:
As near as I know, everyone that has access to Protospace and
regularly takes part in PROGSIG, will be at the COSSFEST meeting...
Soooo.... I think we need to postpone the PROGSIG meeting....
Dafydd Crosby wrote:
Good Hello,
The PROG-SIG meeting is scheduled for today, although I know
many of the usual suspects for PROG-SIG will be planning COSSFest
off-site. Is there going to be anyone with access to Protospace so
that today's PROG-SIG meeting takes place?
-Dafydd
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