A Study of Procedurally Generated Reproducible Environments

Mathew Carr, BSc. Hons. Dissertation, 2009, Liverpool John Moores University

Comprehensive literature review of origin of computer graphics and visualisation focusing on terrain rendering, and an exploration of procedural 'island' terrain mesh generation, with a software implementation in C++.

Mathew Carr mrdictionary.net Procedural Generation BSc. Hons

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Abstract

The production of the content necessary for computer games is an expensive and longwinded process. Various ‘procedural content generation’ tools exist to provide a large degree of automation to what would otherwise be a time-consuming manual process.

This study identifies a specific, common problem in content generation: the generation of an ‘island’ environment, and conducts a thorough survey into the techniques and tools available to assist.

The research presented is then used to formulate a flexible data processing model which can be applied to produce a solution to the stated problem. The model discussed is implemented in an interactive software prototype (attached).

Keyword List

Procedural content, 3D, terrain, environment mesh, height map, fractals, fractal subdivision, noise.