#procgen talks

Dwarf Fortress Design Inspirations - Zach and Tarn Adams

At the recent Roguelike Celebration, there were a lot of talks from developers of many famous Roguelikes. This talk, by the Adams brothers, is their chance to talk about the things that influenced the design of Dwarf Fortress.

Which makes for a deep dive into the history of roguelikes and procedural generation, highlighting a lot of features both famous and obscure that went into the heady mix that is Dwarf Fortress.

Among the mentioned games: Hack, Larn, Starflight, Ragnarok, and a lot of the Adams brothers’ early games.

Happy Recipes for Weird Things

From ProcJam 2014, a short talk by Fernando Ramallo (who is the co-designer for Panoramical, an exploration of procedurally generated musical landscapes). 

His focus is on using procedural generation as a tool for discovery. We can use it to unearth ideas that would never have occurred to us on our own. He also points out that the flexibility of procedural generation means that you can let the player interact with the generator. 

The video is dense with ideas: there’s lot’s more in there. Go watch it!

Designing a Procedurally Generated Game - Dwarf Fortress, Darkest Dungeon, etc

Here’s a talk by a bunch of game developers who use procedural generation in their games. I’ve posted about some of their games before: Dwarf Fortress (Tarn Adams), Crypt of the Necrodancer (Ryan Clark), but they all have interesting things to say.

Procedural generation doesn’t have to stop once the player starts playing the game. In fact, it might be better if it keeps going: interactive procedural generation can set up a feedback loop with the player, enhancing both the player’s experience and the quality of the procedural generation itself.

Procedural Doesn’t Mean Random (2015)

A PROCJAM talk, centering around an important point: interesting procedurally generated content isn’t random, though it makes use of randomness. Lots of talk about No Man’s Sky and some of the philosophies of creating procedurally generated content.