PGGC 2: Theme selection

This is the theme selection thread for the second edition of the PGGC (procedurally generated graphics contest).

The main idea is to create an application which procedurally (with a semi-random algorithm) builds an image or scene (static or animated) which fits the selected theme.

You can read the whole set of rules here and see the entries for the first contest here.

Click on the option that you want to vote for; it will redirect you to a page where you can cast your vote for that theme.

Time left.

Maybe you should say what PGGC is for people who don’t know anything about it.

Edited the OP.

‘Outer Space’ could be kind of interesting. Planets, galaxies, nebulas, stars, asteroids, George Jetson, and all that jazz that’s out there.

theme suggestion:- smoke

The volcanic area sounds good too.

Water is something worth experimenting with- we attribute a lot to water. Fish is the most common. Ice is another one. We could go so far to say civilisation… The list goes on.

Cities and outer space are good. Both are quite open though so it might be worth saving for when more people know/enter the contest.

I’ll throw vehicles or just ‘mechanical’ in to the mix. Looking forward to it :)

You know, we could try something vague like ‘factories’. Factories- they produce things, but it will be up to us to decide what their use is. What is their purpose? Save humanity? Make space shuttles to escape from the apocalypse? What do they use to make their products? Rabbits? Oil? Humans?

I’ll suggest Evolution just like I did for GiTD. I can see it now, Gen1 is generated, then Gen2 is generated based on Gen1 and so on.

• Ruins
• Horizon

I like the mechanical one. Afterall, I’ve already won the space one. :P

I like Volcanic Area or Cities.

Deception

Inception

Originally posted by DannyDaNinja:

Inception

How about, instead of a SCENE, we do a single object?

Zombie
Robot
Ninja
Alien
Car
Spaceship
Weapon
Armor

the list goes on.

I’m personally looking forward to doing a whole scene. I’d be pretty disappointed if it were brought down to one object. Though both could easily be built with randomization, I think the randomization edge plays a little better with a scene than a single object. I would, however, take any of those single objects and throw groups of them randomly into a SCENE that called for them! (cars and zombies in the city, aliens and zombies in space, robots and zombies in the mechanical scene)

Well, scenes aren’t any better or worse then objects. I’m just saying procedurally generated GRAPHICS contest doesn’t mean it has to be scenes.

Also, objects are far more game-usable most of the time. Procedurally generated armor + Dungeon crawling RPG = win. Procedurally generated zombies would be cool too. etc.

I agree with Mario; a single object is a bit… err.. dissappointing.
But still, I’ll add your suggestions to the list. If people want that, we’ll go with it.

E: This isn’t necessarily meant for games; the point is to abuse all of what Flash offers regarding graphics manipulation.

Regardless, most of the people entering are game developers. Being able to use your product is an added bonus.

Islands perhaps. It could kinda tie in with some of the others… or not, depending on how many features you’d want to add. I, personally, could see someone making a scene of alien ninja zombies driving their armored spaceship cars (to protect from the active smoking volcanoes) through the ruined, underground city to get to the mechanical robot factory to install weapons on their latest models all on an island surrounded by water with a beautiful view of outer space over the horizon.

For now, I think it’d be limited to a single theme, unless more than one get the first place with the same ammount of votes, then a mix of the winner themes could be an option.

For future events, I’d like to test a different method which I’ve seen in other contests. It consists of having two or three different categories to vote from, then the entrants have to make something that fits all of them.

ie, Zombie nurses + Puzzle + Less than 30 kb.

Of course, it’d have to be adapted to fit the contest, and we would have to go carefully with that, because while it opens the door to some really interesting concepts, the more the conditions, the less the freedom the developer has, so we’d have to find an intermediate point where the theme and mechanics are specific enough, yet the programmer has the freedom to do pretty much anything he wants with it.

Another thing to consider is the ammount of time it’d take to cover so much aspects.

Make it interesting: life form

Even more interesting: stuff

Voting will start tomorrow, if you have any more suggestions, speak now, or forever hold your peace.