Procedural generation
Depending on the implementation, advantages of procedural generation can include smaller file sizes, larger amounts of content, and randomness for less predictable gameplay.
Soldier of Fortune from Raven Software uses simple routines to detail enemy models, while its sequel featured a randomly generated level mode.
Tunnels & Trolls, published by Flying Buffalo,[5] was designed primarily around solitary play and used similar procedural generation for its dungeons.
An extreme case was Elite, which was originally planned to contain a total of 248 (approximately 282 trillion) galaxies with 256 solar systems each.
[9] Other notable early examples include the 1985 game Rescue on Fractalus (that used fractals 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).
It is entirely contained in a 96 kilobyte executable for Microsoft Windows that generates hundreds of megabytes of 3D and texture data when run.
"[12] Naked Sky's RoboBlitz used procedural generation to maximize content in a less than 50 MB downloadable file for Xbox Live Arcade.
This often leads to loot having a rarity quality applied to reflect when the procedural generation system has produced an item with better-than-average attributes.
Elite: Dangerous, through using the 400 billion known stars of the Milky Way Galaxy as its world basis, uses procedural generation to simulate the planets in these solar systems.
Outerra Anteworld is a video game in development that uses procedural generation and real world data to create a virtual replica of planet Earth in true scale.
No Man's Sky, by using procedural generation, is the largest video game in history, featuring a universe of 18 quintillion planets across entire galaxies, which can be explored in flight or on foot.
MASSIVE is a high-end computer animation and artificial intelligence software package used for generating crowd-related visual effects for film and television.
It was developed to create fighting armies of hundreds of thousands of soldiers for Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings films automatically.
