richtaur

Procedurally generated content seems to be all the rage these days. It can be a useful tool for extending content and increasing replayability, but at the slight cost of players losing relative comparisons. When the level design is always different, it can be difficult to compare player skill levels.

In [this browser-based alpha](http://cryptrun.lostdecadegames.com/), procedural generation is deterministic, backed by a simple linear congruential generator. Each time a dungeon is generated, the seed value for the pseudorandom number generator is cached. When a player’s game is over, a URL is displayed that has the seed and score information encoded within. This makes for a very small amount of data that can easily fit within HTTP GET limitations. When the challenger's game is over, the two scores are compared, and comparative skill levels can be determined.