You've been logged out of GDC Vault since the maximum users allowed for this account has been reached. To access Members Only content on GDC Vault, please log out of GDC Vault from the computer which last accessed this account.

Click here to find out about GDC Vault Membership options for more users.

close

Session Name:

Forging The River in "The Flame in The Flood"

Overview:

This presentation will cover the many techniques that went into creating the procedurally-generated river of the "Flame in the Flood", the survival "roguelite" from The Molasses Flood.
In the game, the player undertakes a perilous journey down a swollen river through a post-societal American South. Most of the game takes place on a rickety raft, with the player navigating around obstacles and through treacherous rapids, stopping occasionally to scrounge for food and supplies. The River thus forms the essential backbone of the entire player experience.
This talk will cover the major representations and algorithms used to generate the river, including a simulated-annealing-like optimization algorithm for island and river edge placement, a "cartoon hydrodynamics" scheme for generating and rendering water flow, and their approach to probabilistic resource scheduling. Throughout, the tight relationship between these various procedural generation processes and specific gameplay design goals across multiple timescales of play will be emphasized.

Did you know free users get access to 30% of content from the last 2 years?


Get your team full access to the most up to date GDC content

  • GDC 2016
  • Damian Isla
  • The Molasses Flood
  • free content
  • Design
  • Design
  • Programming
  • Programming