LogInJohn Walther shared how EA leveraged its procedural features in 2012's Snowboard Supercross.
Houdini has a long history, originally developed from the PRISMS procedural generation software and released 29 years ago, which is pretty wild. Since then, it has been widely used by artists and game developers for creating terrain, VFX, and procedural assets. Its tools can greatly reduce production time while giving maximum flexibility, and many titles now use Houdini, but which was the first one to do so?
Technical Director John Walther looked into it and found that the first game to use Houdini was likely the 2012 entry in the snowboarding series published by EA Sports. Houdini was used to import heightfields and procedurally place trees along the courses, following terrain-masking rules that are standard today. They even incorporated topography data from NASA to shape the terrain.
"The level designers could even control the output in Houdini before exporting it, so I don't know where the myth that procedural "doesn't give you control" comes from because it has never been true. Procedural added a lot to the game. It let the designers make a variety of challenges with handcrafted precision and procedural flexibility. The previous game had 12 tracks, whereas this one had over 150.
Did people even realize SSX 2012 was a procedural game? Probably not because when you play it, it feels thoughtfully constructed. That's the key: when you're thoughtful with your procedural, you get an interesting game and no one notices or cares", commented John.
You can learn more about EA's use of Houdini in the game here. In the comments under John's post, Ben Schrijvers and Julián Rojas Millán shared their own research on Houdini's early uses, with Julián noting that the canceled mid-2000s game Roman Race 6004 A.D. also showed evidence of using Houdini.
Ben Schrijvers
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