Procedural generation of story-driven maps

In this paper, we present the design and preliminary implementation of a technique for generating maps for story-driven video games. The technique enables a game developer to build a map with cities and towns strategically placed so that they align with constraints specified by the developer, consistent with the story driving the game. These constraints address issues about cities, towns and other objects in the environment, such as number, distance, direction, navigation and placement. The technique also coherently fills the area around the city or town with appropriate terrain to encourage or discourage navigation, whichever is appropriate within the context of the story. Our preliminary implementation can potentially build a boundless array of maps for whole continents and we describe future work that entails construction of worlds in two or three dimensions.