Realm of the Mad God

It’s a hardcore bullet-hell shooter, an indie permadeath MMO, and it makes use of procedural generation. This procedural generation, as a matter of fact, which evolved into Amit’s polygonal map generation, which we’ve talked about before.

Originally built in 30 days as part of TIGSource’s Assemblee competition, Realm of the Mad God would go on to be a successful MMO. 

In the current version of the game, there are 20 procedurally generated maps, with the list updated every few months. Each server stays on a map until Oryx pulls all of the players on the server to fight him, after which Oryx destroys the world and loads in a new map from the list. 

Although the maps can vary quite a bit, they all conform to a basic structure of low-level beaches rising to the high-level mountain godlands. Roads and rivers are positioned as navigational aids, acting as clues to the underlying structure of the part of the map where the player currently is. The generation is procedural but structured, not random and chaotic. In a game where encountering high-level enemies can cause permadeath, that kind of situational information is important.