World Generation | The Art and CS behind Generated Game Worlds | A Devlog

One major component I just added to my game is a procedurally generated world map, in the style of Slay the Spire or FTL. I'll be testing out a new (illustrated!) video style, and a balance of devlog mixed with CS and Math based, slightly entertaining rambling. My aim with making this video was to provide an introduction to graph theory, through the lens of game development, while showing the a thought process behind the design, including a few algorithms whose behavior is illustrated, and just the approaches to various problems that came up (the solution to one of those problems involves pathfinding, so you'll find a tutorial on that too). Also, you'll notice my game has undergone some pretty major graphical updates, and I'm working on it! They're definitely not final, but I'm just exploring and trying to find a good aesthetic. As you may be able to tell, I'm not an experienced illustrator, but I'm working on it and this turned out better than I expected, with almost 200 frames of handdrawn illustrations. I'm didn't make custom motion graphics for this video as I felt it would be infeasible for something of this length, but if you'd rather have shorter, but animated videos, let me know in the comments. The production of this video was a pretty huge undertaking, especially while managing undergrad life, so I hope you enjoy it! Thanks for sticking with and supporting me through this game development process. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- As always, check my website for a text summary of this video and other cool things. wintermutedigital.com Resources: https://www.redblobgames.com/pathfinding/a-star/introduction.html - An excellent Introduction to pathfinding. https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/graph-and-its-representations/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graph_drawing Games: Fallout New Vegas (one of my favourites, with lots of mods) FTL Super Mario Bros (emulator) GTAV Risk of Rain Software (all free): Blender for Video Editing Krita for Digital Illustrations Unity for Game Development OBS for Screen Capture ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Music (in order of appearance): Zodiac Structures by NoMBe Four More Weeks by Vans In Japan Hanging Lanterns by Kalaido | (https://open.spotify.com/artist/5LXHT7v9uYGrsyEnL9q9K8) January by kokoro | (https://soundcloud.com/beatsbykokoro) In Orbit by Ambulo | (https://open.spotify.com/artist/6sPQwc6lix6K1Gv64v91Ml) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Timestamps: 00:00 - Intro 2:13 - The Architecture of Game Worlds 3:39 - Linear vs. 2D Maps 5:30 - Graph Theory Intro 6:15 - The Node 7:40 - Node2Code 9:35 - Linking 13:29 - Roomtypes 15:00 - Pathfinding 16:45 - BFS Algorithm 21:00 - Force Directed Graph Drawing 22:00 - Drawing Links 25:00 - Conclusion