Procedural Natural Systems for Game Level Design

Abstract

Due to the increase in magnitude and level of detail of next-gen games, the time required to manually design a game level has increased dramatically. This paper introduces procedural natural systems, a novel approach aimed at reducing the time needed to design large-scale natural phenomena for game levels. The concept of natural systems separates the shape of a natural phenomenon from its footprint, allowing a designer to edit either of them separately. Various procedural techniques are used to combine the shape and footprint of a natural system, as well as to tweak these in real-time in a game world. We conclude that natural systems provide a solid foundation for intuitive, flexible and efficient procedural generation of significant portions of a game level.