ABSTRACT
Humans are natural pattern-finding machines, and a procedural generation algorithm is often a pattern-creating machine. A common pitfall for beginners to procedural generation, even ones who do plenty of research in procedural techniques and design, is to think that procedural content, a replacement for content creation, is also a replacement for content design. The island generation in Sky Rogue, namely, the spawning and placement of enemies, is an example of this iterative process and gradual discovery of constraints on generated content. Sky Rogue is an action flight simulator where most of the gameplay occurs on a series of small, procedurally generated islands or island chains. Image of Sky Rogue was an attempt to model the level-driven topology of classic roguelikes, a "dungeon in the sky", but adapt it to a flight simulator where there are no corridors, rooms, or walls to provide obstacles to the dungeon's exit.
