Besides programming, modeling an environment takes a great deal of time.
I don't know about the work time involved, for example, in a WoW dungeon level, or other beautiful city-like, future environment, jungles, fantasy, etc, but this kind of work is made from scratch by artists.
What are the techniques involved in the TorchLight level randomizer, and does other titles have similarities with this ? Is there a family name for such techniques ?
Answer
Roguelikes have been doing this kind of thing since they were invented, and they are the "seed" Torchlight (and Diablo) got their ideas from.
I don't know about Torchlight's specifically, but in general, what you are looking for is called "Procedural Level Generation".
Fuel procedurally generates a zone so bast that it would not fit on the DVD the game comes in. I particularly enjoyed reading Shamus Young's series on it.
Another interesting example of procedurally generated content is Introversion's not-yet-release game, called Subversion. Have a look at Part 12 on that page; it's specially juicy.
Speaking about procedurally generated cities, there's also some middleware around - check out http://www.procedural.com/.
For more games/middleware, check out the Procedural Generation Wikipedia page and the Procedural Generation Wiki.
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