Working on a Thesis for wind tunnel flow visualization with pressure sensitive paints and reconstructed 3D has had me thinking about the role of of organic procedural generation in interactivity. Without a specific game goal except change, simple physical rules and subcomponments can be assembled by the player in a kinetic interface (i.e. on that moves and evolves in an animated fashion, conserving energy and momentum in an intuitive, physical way).
Jenova Chen’s Masters thesis flOw is a perfect and now classic example of interactive procedural generation. Check it out, and read the instructions,
The mechanics of the execution can be composed of:
- Mouse follower algorithm with segment trailing
- animation loops for atomic components (individual “cells”)
- collision behavior for each cell (i.e. mouth component with any other cell)
- Rendering of current depth level and lower level (separated by guassian blur)
- organism behavior rules (i.e. chase food, random walk)
The exploration aspect of the game is very interesting:
- how will my organism evolve as it eats and interacts?
- How will the variety of new cellular components and oranisms change as I explore deeper?
Often these two aspects of an interactive are found together – exploration and growth through environmental interaction. This is effectively a plot line, in this case procedurally generated, meaning no two game sessions will be exactly the same – this makes replay value high.
