I’m not sure how I started down this rabbit hole.

I remember getting the odd Z80 assembly book in, even the odd ZX Spectrum specific assembly books.

Then thinking it would be cool to try and write a fractal music program in Z80 assembly as my goal to achieve. Tracking down and printing out the Byte article that inspired Jeff Minter on fractal music, plus a maths book with a chapter on the subject.

Whilst looking at the Byte stuff I also downloaded and printed off one or two Byte articles on Conways Game of Life for a bit of light reading. I’ve always been interested by this branch of cellular automata. Whilst teaching one year I showed students how to code it in C#.

Next thing I know a thought had entered my head about using procedural generation to create a tile map for a game.

I remembered I had the kindle version of Procedural generation in game design and thought I’d get the physical version to read in the bath.

There is even a chapter in this book on procedurally generated music. So a link to the fractal music that got me looking down this rabbit hole. But I’ll look at the similarities and differences in another post.

Next thing I know I’ve ordered Yu’s book on his game Spelunky because it’s mentioned in one of the early chapters.

Then I thought I’d pull the trigger on one or two other books on the subject.

The Rust one although about a language I don’t know or intend to learn. Does apparently have some good stuff on generating a dungeon. So I can use the code in this book like pseudo code.

The procedural storytelling sounded interesting and a natural follow on once I get to it.

I thought the One-week Dungeons although not a “technical” book would be interesting to give some insights into developing a roguelike game.

The light reading list:

• Craddock, D.L. (2022) One-week Dungeons: diaries of a seven-day Roguelike challenge. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press, Taylor & Francis Group.

• Short, T.X. and Adams, T. (eds) (2017) Procedural generation in game design. Boca Raton London New York: CRC Press, Taylor & Francis Group.

• Short, T.X. and Adams, T. (eds) (2019) Procedural storytelling in game design. Second edition. Boca Raton London New York: CRC Press, Taylor & Francis Group.

• Wolverson, H. (2021) Hands-On Rust. 1st ed. La Vergne: Pragmatic Programmers, LLC, The.

• Yu, D. (2016) Spelunky. Los Angeles, CA: Boss Fight Books.

I’m sure there will be other books added at some point but this is enough for now.