Project info
- Developer Sam Gallacher
- Showcase year 2021
- Programme Computer Game Applications Development
Synopsis
The produced game, Procedural Theft Auto, is a proof-of-concept game that strongly mirrors the Grand Theft Auto game series. It uses procedural generation techniques to dynamically produce the city, missions and vehicles that are unique to each playthrough.
The project was undertaken to evaluate how procedural generation techniques can be used to advance video games for both developers and players. The techniques can be used to produce content dynamically and at scale, something that is practically impossible to create by hand. This saves a significant amount of time for developers and provides a greater amount of gameplay experiences for players.
Motivation
GTA is definitely my favorite game series, but I've always felt the scale and amount of work needed to be put into such a game is out of reach for smaller devs. I think there's also an opportunity to experiment with the archetype and try out something new. For instance, I love how replayable games like Minecraft are - you simply enter a string of text for a seed and get placed into a totally unique experience. So the motivation was to take the replayability aspect of Minecraft and try to see if it could be applied to games like GTA or not, saving time for developers in process!
Credits
“Evaluating Procedural Generation Techniques For Game Cities” is a 2021 Digital Graduate Show project by Sam Gallacher, a Computer Game Applications Development student at Abertay University.
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