Procedural content generation isn’t just about bits of code that run silently and invisible inside games while players play them. The power of procedural generation, exploring a huge, near-infinite space of content, is also a…
The Saturday Paper – A World Just For You
Which is more important – story or setting? In some games, particularly RPGs, it feels almost impossible to separate one from the other. Setting dictates the where, the when and the how of the game.…
The Artist Is Present
Over the weekend I went to Paris to attend an exhibition being put on by my supervisor, Simon Colton. For the last eleven years he’s been building a piece of software called The Painting Fool – software…
The Saturday Paper: Wherever Whenever
We like to believe that because we play games we understand how players think. This filters into every aspect of game development – imagining how players will react to seeing this, hearing that, being here…
SketchUp, 3D Warehouse and Unity
As I wrote earlier this month, I’m now working on a Unity-powered version of ANGELINA. One of the common themes in the silly things I’ve coded up, as well as a lot of other computationally…
ANGELINA At Goldsmiths
Earlier in the year, I helped my supervisor write an application for funding that would let me work on ANGELINA beyond my PhD funding end date (which was this October). We learned a couple of…
Nobody’s A Critic – ICCC 2013 Talk
Conference talks are a really great way to communicate about your work. You get sound and vision, you can talk naturally about what’s on screen, and the time limit means you don’t go into laborious…
The Saturday Paper: Words, Sounds and Pegasi
One of the most wonderful things about videogames is how they bring together different mediums into one collective effort. Art, music, writing, design as well as programming itself are all hugely creative endeavours in their…
Adam Smith @ Goldsmiths
If you’re coming to this morning’s seminar, where Adam Smith is talking about his research into game design and artificial intelligence – we’re in Room 305 of the New Academic Building. Find the building here!…
The Saturday Paper: Goldilocks And The Three Puzzles
A puzzle, yesterday. With thanks to Gunpoint. Most procedural generators have it pretty easy. Generation techniques for content like dungeon layouts or 3D worlds can’t really fail – they proceed very steadily, laying down content…
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