Spaceship Generator (github.com)

http://www.chrisfossart.com

I grew up imagining these spaceships becoming reality, and now .. they sort of are .. at least, I can bend and play with spaceships just like them now, albeit .. in Blender .. ;)

http://www.peterelson.co.uk/gallery/category.php?pageNum_pro...

I agree that doing procedural generation properly takes a lot of work, but there's a reason that AAA open-world games like GTAV cost hunderends of millions of dollars to develop.

Many, many other games use modular assets, especially if poly and tri counts are important to keep down for mobile and low power consoles / handhelds.

With a few component models that can be separated and added to a base model, procedural mesh generation can work. But, it is extremely messy when starting out, just due to complexity and the strategy of a significant redesign of assets to be modular, not singular.

Once designers and artists are on-board, and that's half of the battle initially, in getting artists to make modular design for assets instead of single design of flagship or lead assets, then you need to create code to make the game actually work with Frankenstein ships or Frankenstein characters, buildings, etc.

it leads to intriguing art and possibilities.

And working out all of the intricacies of positions, storage, blending, replacement/deformation of modular assets, how to diagnose, test and display problems, modifying or identifying pre generated or fixed module assets in the gui, storing the atomic position and/or physics settings, looking for deformed mesh, hollow mesh/gaps, raytrace problems, wrap uv and deformation, problems with textures, etc. Batch calls, pooling, spawn locations, collision mesh, sic.

And that's just things I could think of from regular assets. Modular mesh, as well as modular textures are usually a no go area, because of the problems with the engine and performance guesswork when problems come up at the last minute. Or the first minutes. Etc.

Most indie games don't have the time to waste on procedural generation unless it's been troubleshooted or tested by designers and coders, or sold as an asset by others.

Buildings are often generated like this in game,

No Man's Sky is perhaps the more popular ur example of how to make procedural generated assets using math functions and geometric texture generation (it's been a long time since I looked at the tech they were supposed to be using under the hood, but i misremember something like fractal/geometric generation of textures to minimize the workload)

but it is still a tech demo of a well understood, but infrequently used tool.

That is, until they release the game.

http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/misconceptions....

In my opinion Atomic Rocket contains the most accurate discussion of hard science fiction I've ever encountered.

    >>> from random import seed
    >>> seed(10)
    >>> seed
    <bound method Random.seed of <random.Random object at 0x24721c0>>
    >>> seed = 50
    >>> seed
    50
    >>> from random import seed
    >>> seed
    <bound method Random.seed of <random.Random object at 0x24721c0>>

    >>> from random import seed
    >>> def f(): return seed(10)
    >>> seed = 50
    >>> f()
    Traceback (most recent call last):
      File "<pyshell#4>", line 1, in <module>
        f()
      File "<pyshell#2>", line 1, in f
        def f(): return seed(10)
    TypeError: 'int' object is not callable
    >>> 

EDIT: Since generate_spaceship is always called with an empty random_seed parameter, this error won't happen when the script is run.

Though daredevildave may have meant environment mapping instead.

Drag the window over to my cinema display, and holy 4fps and crash batman!

I hadn't heard ptex before, it's interesting stuff. Sounds like the reason it isn't in general usage for realtime stuff is the memory overhead: http://sebastiansylvan.com/post/casting-a-critical-eye-on-gp...

In the case of an artist working from scratch the skill is generating UVs that allow the artist to easily paint the texture and provide an even area for each part of the model. Otherwise some areas will be stretched and blurry.

Yes, but human architecture is shaped by forces following from function. (As in Alexander's Pattern Language of Design.) That's why it becomes interesting, because we can relate to how the architecture relates to human needs and perceptions.