This thesis is concerned with  procedural generation in a genre of games where it is not very common; 2D  physics-based  puzzle  games.  I  will  explore which  different  methods  of  procedural  generation that  will  work  with  this  kind  of  game,  if  any.  If there  is  an  easy  way  to  implement  procedural generation  it  could cut down on the game designers work  load  significantly,  which  would  allow  more content to be produced at a higher pace.

Procedural Content Generation (PCG) has become more common in usage in game development nowadays, with the motivation of finding new ways to make games replayable, new ways for games to be played or for generating content during development. This paper explores the question how often Procedural Generation is used in practice and furthermore how often it is used by different game genres and how they use PCG in their particular games. This paper will try to answer these questions through both an industry review, discovering which games have used Procedural Generation and also through a literature study to find out what kind of research has been done within the area ofPCG and how Game Developers could utilize that in the future. The findings were that even if the usage of PCG differentiated between genres, certain areas like Level Generationand entity instancating were more commonly using Procedural Generation compared with others such as Puzzle generation, Plot generation and Dynamic Systems. The literature study gave a perspective that there are plenty of research done within PCG on how to create new, different and unique ways to generate content, but it is usually in forms of prototypes and not ready to be used in games yet.This gives the conclusion that game genres use Procedural Generation to maximize the user experience with what the game wants out from that genre or use it to make game development more efficient. However, certain genres such as Adventure-games and Role-playing-games could benefit from having PCG for parts of the games where it is not used today which means there is still room for potentially using Procedural Generation. But with that also comes a discussion about what areas of PCG can be improved to meet the needs of the developers and make them more willing to use PCG on areas where it is not currently used.

This thesis focuses on creating an application for procedural generation and visualisation of a volumetric terrain using the OpenGL library. The terrain is considered to be mostly static, however with a possibility of modification of individual voxels. The project seeks a compromise between rendering performance and the aesthetics. The design is led in a way so that it could be further used as a foundation for a game. An emphasis is put on accelerating used methods on the GPU.

This thesis deals with the procedural generation of building models based on a given pattern. The community project OpenStreetMap is used for obtaining datasets that create the buildings platform patterns. A brief survey of classifiers and formal grammars for modeling is introduced. Designing an estate classifier and algorithm for building generation is practical aspect of this thesis, including the algorithm implementation. 3D output meshes are rendered using OpenGL in real-time.

The goal of this thesis was to propose algorithms for procedural generation of realistic three-dimensional tree models and implement them as a library. This library uses a set of 92 mostly numerical parameters as an input and enables to export generated model into 3DS or OBJ file. It's an objective library, written in C++ language and designed mainly for MS Windows platform. Proposed algorithms are able to generate specific biologic species of broadleaf and coniferous trees.

Procedural content generation is present in many games today. However, little has been written about generating combat encounters in role playing video games (RPG). In these games the player's combat ability varies greatly from person to person and there are many different enemies that could be spawned for the player to fight. These factors make generation of combat encounters difficult. In this thesis we create a small game in which we implement a new algorithm for generating combat encounters. We then distribute this game to the general public. From the data we gather we conclude that this algorithm is at least as good at generating combat encounters as the author of the thesis and that it is a good starting point for further research.

Procedural level generation is a novel area of research within the field of computer graphics and game development. However, current research and implementations of procedural generation for cooperative games is sparse. Further study is required to validate the use of automatic level creation and to test additional methods of optimization for cooperative games. Additionally, despite many recent developments, many areas within the field of virtual reality remain underexplored. We propose a mathematically defined total cost function for controlling a procedural level generation algorithm for cooperative virtual reality games. This cost term controls an algorithm which gradually improves a generated solution over a series of iterations, bringing it to an optimal state. We present here two games with procedurally created levels and gameplay elements using this mathematical total cost function, as well as proposed experiments to validate the effectiveness of this content in encouraging cooperation and potential use cases for this technology.

As virtual reality and interaction possibilities in game technology evolve and become more user-friendly, accessible and cheaper, this technology suddenly gets useful in occupational areas that traditionally have not used them, one being urban planning. By using a game engine and a virtual neighborhood that utilizes procedural generation the user has the option of having a cost-effective, replicable environment with great control from the user.  According to the Broken Windows Theory small differences in appearance can have a big impact on how an urban neighborhood will be perceived. Therefore it would be interesting to investigate how the perception of street scenes is affected by the different aesthetic properties of dirt, graffiti, broken windows, building height and greenery (trees and bushes). By implementing a virtual neighborhood that utilizes procedural generation the basic structure of the neighborhood can stay the same, while separately adjusting the specific properties that are being evaluated. Through surveys and interviews the results show that every one of the chosen properties are very significant except for building height. Generally the more trees that were present, the more safe the neighborhood felt, and the order of significance of dirt, graffiti and broken windows differed between the two evaluation methods. / Då virtual reality och interaktionsmöjligheterna inom spelteknologi utvecklas och blir mer användarvänliga, mer tillgängliga och billigare, blir denna teknik plötsligt användbar inom yrkesområden som traditionellt sett inte har använt dem, där ett exempel är stadsplanering. Genom att använda en spelmotor och en virtuell stadsdel som utnyttjar procedural generation får användaren en kostnadseffektiv, replikerbar miljö med stor kontroll från användaren. Enligt Broken Windows Theory så kan små skillnader i utseende ha en stor inverkan på hur en stadsdel kommer att uppfattas. Därför vore det intressant att undersöka hur synen på virtuella gatscener påverkas av olika estetiska egenskaper som smuts, graffiti, trasiga fönster, bygghöjd, och grönska (träd och buskar). Genom att implementera en virtuell stadsdel som utnyttjar procedural generation kan grundstrukturen vara densamma, medan man separat justerar de specifika egenskaperna som ska utvärderas. Genom enkäter och intervjuer visar resultaten att var och en av de valda egenskaperna är mycket betydande, med undantaget för byggnadshöjd. Generellt så kändes stadsdelen mer säker desto mer träd som fanns, och ordningen av signifikansen för smuts, graffiti, och trasiga fönster skiljde sig mellan enkäterna och intervjuerna.

Machine learning has been widely used in computer games for a long time. This is something that has been proven to create a better experience and well-balanced challenges for players. In 2017, the game engine Unity released the ML-agents toolkit that provides several machine learning algorithms together with examples and a user-friendly development environment for free to the public. This has made it simpler for developers to explore what is possible in the world of machine learning in games. In many cases, a developer has spent a lot of time on a specific place in a game and would like a player to visit that area. The location can also be important for the gameplay, but the developer wants to steer the player there without the player feeling forced. This thesis investigates if it is possible to create a smart agent in a modern game engine like Unity that can affect the route taken by a player through a level. The results show that this is fully possible with a high success rate for a simple environment, but that it requires much time and effort to make it work on an advanced environment with several agents. Experiments with a randomized environment to create an agent that is general and can be used in many situations were also done, but a successful agent could not be produced in this way within the timeframe of the work.

This thesis details the results and conclusions of a project conducted at the game studio FromSoftware in Tokyo, Japan during the autumn of 2008. The aim ofthe project was the design and implementation of a system able to generate 3D graphical representations of road networks.