Generative and Possibility Space
This tutorial by Mike Cook is a great introduction to two foundational concepts in procedural generation.
Many generators can produce a lot of possible artifacts--they have large generative spaces. But that doesn’t mean that they can generate all of the possible artifacts--there might be things in the possibility space that we can describe but that the generator can’t create.
Mike Cook discusses those distinctions and what it means for the generators that we build.
These are pretty foundational aspects of generativity--there are other aspects of generativity that also shape our experience of the generated artifacts. For example, even when we have a large generative space, our perceptual space might be much smaller and just look like similar bowls of oatmeal. But, of course, the point of this tutorial is to get you started in thinking about generative spaces. There’s lots to learn about procgen--I’m definitely still learning new things!
http://www.possibilityspace.org/tutorial-generative-possibility-space/