Procedural Generation in Godot : Learn to Generate Enjoyable Content for Your Games

Learn the tricks of simple procedural generation and how various genres, such as racing simulators, platformers, and roguelikes, can all benefit from these techniques. In this book, you'll learn how to combine hand-crafted content with algorithms to create immersive and beautiful environments. You'll learn how to create a seeding system, so that you can replay great levels with your friends. We'll cover how to create good tilesets, how to use the tilemap editor effectively, and how to inject just the right amount of logic into an otherwise automated machine that is your own personal procedural content generation engine. We will use 2D examples to demonstrate the concepts covered throughout the book. By the time you complete this book, you’ll have a good handle on how to add procedural generation to your games. What You Will Learn Learn to set up the perfect content generation system Master the tools for randomization and repeatability Understand how much content to craft versus how much to generate Who This Book Is For Basic familiarity with the Godot engine and GDScript is essential. While all concepts are explained in the book, it can be overwhelming learning these techniques at the same time as learning the engine. Table of Contents 5 About the Author 9 About the Technical Reviewer 10 Acknowledgments 11 Introduction 12 Chapter 1: Hand-Crafted Content vs. Procedural Content 14 Example: Limbo 14 Procedural Content Generation 16 Example: Oxygen Not Included 16 How Much of Each? 18 Example: Diablo 2 19 Where We Go from Here 22 Chapter 2: Generating with Nodes 23 Setting Up a New Project 23 Loading Experiments 29 Creating Nodes via Script 34 Randomizing Behavior 36 Creating Realism with Randomization 37 Summary 39 Chapter 3: Generating with Tiles 40 Creating Tile Sets 40 Modifying Tiles with Code 44 Using Terrains 46 Using Terrains with Code 50 Summary 51 Chapter 4: Recreating Sokoban 52 Creating Levels 53 Selecting a Level 61 Switching Screens 63 Globals and Other Mischief 68 Drawing Levels 69 Drawing Nodes 74 Moving the Player 78 Avoiding Closed Doors 80 Moving Crates 81 Winning a Level 83 Summary 88 Chapter 5: Designing Levels in Pixel Art 89 Creating Pixel Art 89 Converting Pixel Art to a Grid 90 Flipping Layouts 93 Combining with Nodes and Tile Maps 94 Summary 95 Chapter 6: Creating a Seeding System 96 A New Experiment 97 Generating Easier Seeds 99 Summary 102 Chapter 7: Recreating Bouncy Cars 103 Getting Set Up 104 Creating a Seed Screen 110 Generating Maps 113 Drawing the Map 120 Drawing the Players 124 Calculating Waypoints 130 The Right Way to Do This 131 Moving the Players 133 Warning the Players About Directions 137 Summary 139 Chapter 8: Navigating in Generated Levels 140 Getting Set Up 140 Adding Basic Movement 141 Adding Navigation to Tile Maps 143 Adding Obstacle Nodes 146 Merging Polygons 151 Summary 156 Chapter 9: Collective Nodes in Generated Maps 157 Refreshing Our Memory 157 Selecting the Appropriate Node(s) 160 Summary 161 Chapter 10: Recreating Invasion 162 Getting Set Up 163 Screens 163 Transitions 169 Adding Shaders 172 Planning Room Generation 174 Tile Map 177 Exits 178 Sanctuaries 179 Arrows 179 Spawns 179 The Remaining Nodes 179 Generating One Room 180 Generating Many Rooms 189 Hiding Invalid Arrows and Sanctuaries 196 Moving Around in the Rooms 197 Transitioning to Neighboring Rooms 200 Spawning Survivors 204 Rescuing Survivors 207 Taking Things Further 212 Summary 213 Chapter 11: Paths and Path Followers 214 Defining Paths 214 Moving Along the Path 215 Moving Between Paths 218 Summary 227 Chapter 12: Interaction Systems 228 Managing Interactions 228 How This Could Apply to Invasion 234 Having Conversations 235 Dialog in Invasion 238 Summary 241 Chapter 13: Recreating This War of Mine 242 This War of Mine 242 Getting Set Up 244 Generating Levels 246 Selecting Starting Characters 248 Interacting with Objects in the World 249 Ending the Day 250 Deciding When to End the Game 250 Unlocking New Levels and Characters 250 A Note About Mobile Game Development 251 Taking It One Step at a Time 252 Thank You for Reading This Far 252 Index 253