The importance of variety in Procedural Generation of game content

Variety - the spice of life - the tumeric in the casserole of our days and ways.


Not entirely sure if this whole '3 blogs in one day' is productive or counter-productive.
One perspective would be that any work on a Saturday - of all days, is productive.
One would be incorrect.

Short and sweet - before I get to dinner and subsequently back to Unity.

What aspects of the game will be generated and altered procedurally?
And by procedurally, we'll mean what we'll call 'pointed randomisation'.

A quick bullet list. Please - comment and contribute.

• Level generation. 
• Where you can walk, which directions - which twists and gripping turns, you are taken on.
• Obstacle placement.
• The type of obstacles you encounter.
• The amount of obstacles you encounter.
• The positioning of said objects.
• The scale of these objects.
• Enemy placement
• The type of enemy encountered
• The power of the enemies encountered.
• The appearance of the enemies encountered.
• The location of enemies encountered.
• The quantity of enemies encountered.
• The behavior (speed, jump height, attack type) of enemies encountered.
• Item placement (if items do exist. I assume they will)
• As above.

All this is well and good, but it really only reflects a fairly generic randomisation of levels.

I think - sadly enough - that procedural generation is not the ends, but only a means to get partway to the ends.

I think the most important thing we can have, for this project, is:

• A variety of enemies, obstacles and items
• A rarity rating of each object - to assure that there is that feeling of "Ooooh... Pokemon Johto just started! Will he choose Chikorita? I hope not".
• Varied color and superficial changes - enough to assure that each generated level does not contain every single asset of variation the game engine contains.

Following this structure, I believe we can make a nice-looking, nice-playing game, with a good degree of replay value.

Replay value... there's a subject for a blog - but another time!
Now is the time for work.
Talk is Cheap.