Procedural !! is the word.Have you heard it before? Have you heard about Procedural generation?
Yes or No what ever your answer is, But this term blows my mind out and make me curious and to think about it.

So i have done some research on it.

What is Procedural Generation?

Procedural Generation is basically a automatic process that tells the program how to build something like Terrain,Graphics,Levels,textures etc. based on some

mathematical formulas or set of rules or algorithm.

Question arise Does Procedural Generation is different from random generation?

Answer is Yes !! When we add some set of rules or Formulas to control the randomness that make sense,then it becomes procedural generation.
It contain some input data(parameters) that can produce or generate a wide variety or output results.

Procedural Generation is not a new term, It comes into existence in 1970's.When Graphically oriented games were severely limited by Memory constraints.
There are many games in the market using Procedural Generation technique.
Now the question comes : what is the need of using this technique?

1) Usually Game content are Hand Drawn and predictable. We play games, discover all its elements and beat them.
when we play it again, all its content remains the same.
Now a days there's a trend started for dynamic content.dynamic environment,textures, levels etc.
 We are using  procedural generation technique because of infinite replayability. the quasi random nature of procedurally generated content means that the

players always presented with new challenges and experiences Additionally it provide enormous gamut of different scenarios to test their skills on and pushing them

to learn more about the game.
 No man's sky is the best example of this.
 
 Image 1

 
 No man's sky allows players to explore procedurally Generated Open Universe that include over 18 quintillion Unique planets with their own set plants and animals.

Such infinite freedom can be achieved only by this technique.
 
 Image 2

2) As mention above we can produce wide variety of output data using procedural Generation technique.it drastically reduces the cost and file size of the game.

It minimizes the burden of game designers.
A game called RoboBlitz used procedurally generated textures in order reduce file size.

Image 3

Another game name as kkrieger, was popular because of heavy use of procedural technique to make this game short, simple and all the effects were packed into

just 96 Kilobytes.

Image 4

Another best part of this technique is its adaptiveness and can be fit according to the player play style.This helps the game to gather different category of gamers.

which definitely increases the popularity of the game.With this technique we can dynamically adjust any level of difficulty giving the players no limit how far they can

push their skills.

Down side of procedural generation

Procedural generated content never actually fits according to the requirement as compare to the Hand crafted content.
this makes the procedurally generated game content rarely powerful as hand drawn content.

It is expensive it take lot of time and resources to build a quality procedural generation system.If you are building a small game then it cost a lot  as compare to hand drawn content.

Even if a game built in procedurally, Then it very difficult to test that content. At some point of time it can be stressful and hectic to make a bug free game.

Now, How can we built Procedurally Generated content? Well !! I would like to share few softwares that can produce procedural content.

1)FractalNow
FractalNow provides users with tools to generate pictures of various types of fractals quickly and easily.
It is made of both a command line tool, FractalNow, and a graphical tool, QFractalNow.
The graphical tool, based on Qt library, allows users to explore fractals intuitively and generate pictures.
Both tools are entirely multi-threaded and implement advanced algorithms and heuristics that make computation very fast compared to most existing free fractal generators.

Link:-https://sourceforge.net/projects/fractalnow/?source=directory#screenshots

2)World Machine
Powerful and flexible, World Machine combines procedural terrain creation, simulations of nature, and interactive editing to produce realistic looking terrain quickly and easily.

You can build and export high resolution heightfields, textures, and meshes for your game or rendering software.

Link:-http://www.world-machine.com/

3) Filter Forge
Filter Forge allows you to procedurally produce textures.

Link:-https://www.filterforge.com/

4) Substance designer and Substance Painter
Substance Painter is a brand new 3D Painting app with never before seen features and workflow improvements to make the creation of textures for 3D assets easier than ever.

It is acknowledged as the most innovative and user-friendly 3D Painter out there.

Link:-https://www.allegorithmic.com/

Conclusion
I am Curious to see how this technique trends from now onwards. There are enormous opportunities to explore on this and produce infinite outputs to make the content more

dynamic and unique. This will encourage the players to explore more and push their skills upto a limit of NO LIMIT.