Procedural Generation

Joystiq brings us a report from SXSW, a digital media conference, this morning on a panel that included a couple Borderlands devs. They discuss weapon creation in the game.

Gearbox is using procedural generation to create hundreds of thousands of guns in Borderlands and tons of other items. A Shacknews E3 impressions article implies that Gearbox might be using the process to create tons of enemies as well.

We’ve already discussed how Borderlands differentiates its many, many guns but haven’t talked too much about the programming that makes this possible.

Gearbox is using a process called procedural generation. To put it simply, Gearbox doesn’t make the guns.  They make the rules that tell a computer how to make the guns.

The process is a little hard to visualize for a non-programmer like me. That’s why I found a blog post from amateur game designer Supergork helpful: Algorithm for Procedurally Generating 2d Sidescrolling Platformer Levels (say that five times fast and try not to fall asleep.)

650,000 guns. That’s the most recent count of the number of guns in Borderlands. Each with a unique appearance and effect.

So how is Gearbox making all these guns?