Reddit reviews Procedural Generation in Game Design

• Procedural Generation in Game Design
  
• Game Mechanics: Advanced Game Design
  
  The first book has been mentioned before. Dormans, the co-author of the second book, is the developer of Unexplored.
  
  I've read both books and I highly recommend them.

I feel obligated to link to the book on proc gen, co written by the creator of Dwarf Fortress.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1498799191/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_awdb_t1_WXb5BbJ35M53M

It isn’t a coincidence how you feel about it.

This is one of my favorite game design books and it focuses on procgen. It’s edited by the guy who made Dwarf Fortress and most of the authors are practitioners rather than researchers which is a perspective I like.

If this is a topic that interests you I highly recommend Procedural Generation in Game Design by Tanya Short and Tarn Adams. It's a collection is essays by devs about procedural elements and how they interact with and influence design.

I do know of this book.

https://www.amazon.com/Procedural-Generation-Design-Tanya-Short/dp/1498799191

But I don't know how it is. I've actually been meaning to ask about it here one of these days. It has the great Tarn Adams of Dwarf Fortress name on it but I don't know how much of him is actually in it. And I honestly don't put much trust in amazon reviews anymore.

This was recently released: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1138595306/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i0 . Haven't looked at it yet myself, but it's the same author as https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1498799191/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i1 which is quite good.

Thanks! Glad they're helpful to some people, just trying to do stuff that would have been helpful to me starting off. As far as next talks:

Jason and I did chapters in this book, which came out recently: https://www.amazon.com/Procedural-Generation-Design-Tanya-Short/dp/1498799191

We also did a more academic style paper on the sultan history generation system:
http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=3110574

My next talk will probably be on map generation system in general, and maybe the sultan dungeon map generation subsystem in particular. I was thinking roguelike celebration, but it overlaps with my annunal vacation week this year. So maybe next year!

(EDIT: I just discovered "An Architectural Approach to Level Design" by Christopher W. Totten mentionned below and it looks great)

Hello, I don't know any book on "general" level principles (which exist, as any experimented LD can confirm).

Most books focus on specific genres (mostly 3D games) and tiny details about those genres (3d models, textures, sounds, etc.). I don't know any book encompassing various common genres (including 2d platformers, puzzle games) and dealing with common issues: how to introduce new objects, how to teach the player how to use them, how to balance difficulty progression, how to add multiples layer of goals and complexity, approaches to procedural LD...

The closest I've found is this blog: http://critical-gaming.squarespace.com/gamedesign101/

There are many other interesting articles on gamasutra.

This book by Tanya Short is specifically about procedural content generation.

There is also a great chapter on his methods in the book Procedural Game Design.

https://www.amazon.com/Procedural-Generation-Design-Tanya-Short/dp/1498799191/ref=nodl_

This book is excellent and relatively new: https://www.amazon.com/Procedural-Generation-Design-Tanya-Short/dp/1498799191