Evolve Me (ProcJam 2016) 

Evolutionary algorithms are a staple of AI-life; and here’s one by Petter Bergmar in Unity for ProcJam 2016. The interesting thing about this one is the barriers that the creatures are initially incapable of jumping over. Many AI-life sims are strictly 2D, so the specific niche that these creatures evolve to fill is pretty unique.

Doguelike

From ProcJam 2016 comes this twist on roguelike dungeon crawling and Progress Quest.

Doguelike, by Jérôme and LucieRoyGraph, is an idle game--that is, it mostly plays itself. Unlike Progress Quest, but like a couple of other roguelikes, you do have a bit of input into what happens, via choosing which stats to level up.

Also unlike Progress Quest, the doge is exploring a complete generated dungeon, simulated in the usual detail. Which makes it much more interesting to watch in the moment-to-moment space.

I’m pretty terrible at keeping this shiba inu alive for too long, but maybe you’ll have better luck.

Silent Crossing (ProcJam 2016)

Framing is important. The context of the survival-horror framing pushes Lycaon’s procedural town generator from a basic pixelated-town generator to one that has a definite sense of place.

This is a principle worth remembering: framing adds another layer of information. It’s one more way to inject meaning and purpose into these chaotic generators. The survival horror framing is particularly appropriate: it excuses any weirdness in the generation as a part of the horror.

Between the atmosphere and the layout of the towns, Silent Crossing reminds me of Pathologic.

Procedural HyperCity

Which is mostly, as its creator Matthew Smith has said, a demo. But its a nice demonstration of creating city geometry, started during ProcJam 2016.

And, much as I’d like to see this expanded into a whole experience, I also have to say that I like little generators that make a thing, or create a sense of place.

Planetoids

From ProcJam 2016. By Tom Betts, of course.

This is a different approach to planet generation, compared to the more usual height-map based generators. I’m not quite sure which technique is being used here. Watching the generation it looks rather like WaveFunctionCollapse, in that it renders in bit by bit, but in what appears to be a more linear way. Some voxel-rendered 3D noise function? Metaballs? Marching Cubes? Whatever it is, it produces some quirky and unique planets.

Fidelium Automata

An interactive cellular automaton god-sim.

I’m fond of cellular automata and artificial life, and this ProcJam project is all about that. As a cellular automaton, it is a good example of emergent complexity: simple rules, complicated result.

While there’s no conclusion I encountered, it does work as an example of adding interactivity to the artificial life simulation. I think there’s some genetic inheritance going on with the fusion ability, though it’s not always clear what the advantage is for using it. Still, it’s fun to play with.

Personal Archipelago

Of all the ProcJam 2016 projects, this one is probably the closest one to mine, at least in form: it makes islands too. But it was made in the Pico8 fantasy console emulator, which makes its low-fi voxel output particularly impressive.

The seasons are a particularly clever way of turning the limitations of the console into a strength. The changing colors directly reflect the underlying architecture of the implementation, in a way that a more conventional generator wouldn’t have the data to take advantage of as easily. Sometimes less is more.

The Exhibition of Babel

Meandering through the ProcJam submissions, this one by Marcos Donnantuoni caught my eye. It is an infinite art exhibition of procedurally generated paintings.

I’m a known sucker for things inspired by “The Library of Babel”, and in this case I was also reminded of Strangethink’s virtual art galleries. The choice between human order and divine disorder also touches on a recurring theme around here.