Why I use Wave Function Collapse to create levels for my game

this was so much work i'm about to (wave function) collapse

sorry I used the terms "element", "cell", and "pixel" interchangeably :c
they all mean the same thing!

SEE THE CODE (utilities, etc. coming soon!)

Oskar Stålberg's visualization tool:

Thanks to Maxim Gumin for the original implementation of WFC:

EDITOR: NeoVim
THEME: gruvbox
RESOURCES:

0:00 Wave Function Collapse
3:29 Code
12:16 Demo
13:16 Extras!

[exxcoxk]

A beginners guide to making your first simple game!
Chapter one: quantum physics

[hndlet]

I've seen one or two videos on wave function collapse before, and it's always been one of my favourite ways to generate terrain. Definitely glad to see one of my favourite YouTubers using it in a real project

[Adam-cnib]

Jdh: "I wanna generate new content without having to do Much Work"
Also Jdh:

[carterisonline]

I absolutely love using WFC as a means of world generation! I've always wanted to do this in my voxel game, but each dimension makes the algorithm exponentially slower.

I'd definitely look into using it with an LOD perspective; stuff like biome meshes can be generated first in low detail and rendered as a placeholder while structures and environment details are generated in the background.

[nixl_]

i remember going down the wave function collapse rabbit hole a while ago, i was surprised at how ingenious it was

[ratio]

i didn't understand a single thing because all of this is way above my level, but i still watched the whole thing because good music and code flashing across screen

People that don't code are being tricked into thinking people code an entire program like this without testing its small pieces a thousand times throughout the process (and at times changing the logic multiple times half-way through haha)

[MasterHero]

jdh Is an Indie GOD Developer. You keep impressing me with each and every single video that comes up.

[ClokworkGremlin]

Wave Function Collapse has actually existed for decades. Age of Empires and Starcraft both used a similar technique in their map tile selection. It just hadn't been named until a couple of years ago.

[sirflimflam]

I spent some time with this algorithm myself. It's deceptively simple once you understand what's going on but man when you start getting into the third dimension the thing bogs down hard. Hard enough that I'd probably advocate for pregenerating many random iterations from it in development instead of generating it during end user gameplay.

[Logan-nzjk]

Your game is really coming together! It looks amazing already and I can’t wait to see what else you have to implement and the furthering of your terrain generation process.

[stuin]

For a second there I thought you were going to say "I need a physics engine and the best way to do that is from scratch. So here's how I implemented quantum mechanics..."

[jasoneve]

I've never seen wave function collapse before, this is so cool!

[petermuller]

I love your style if presentation. Judging from your previous videos I expect you going down this rabbit how and designing your own quantum computer doing wave function collapse on breadboards :P

[BenDol]

Can you do a video explaining why you abandoned the ECS in favor of the standard OO approach? From my understanding you can have both with a Component?

[dvgen]

Very nice. I'm also very onboard with the plant loving robot theme!

[AwesomeGames]

I have no earthly idea what's going on in this video but I still somehow find it interesting. I really love this type of game and seeing the actual work that goes into making it happen makes me even more interested in it. Can't wait to see the finished product.

[porx]

It's nice to see more progress since the serializer stream. I've been looking more into C/C++ since then, but concepts (the C++ thing, not concepts as in "ideas") still confuse me. Looking forward to the next video in two months!

[melonfromthevoid]

THANK YOU FOR CREATING THIS I SPENT WAY TO LONG TRYING TO DO SOMETHING LIKE THIS AND FAILING. this video very well explains a topic that I had trouble with.

[wearr_]

I watched this first when I was incredibly sick, watched it again now and it made just about as much sense