video game Video games, also known as computer games, are electronic games that involves interaction with a user interface or input device such as a joystick, controller, keyboard, or motion sensing device to generate visual feedback. This fee ...

s using procedural world generation, the map seed is a (relatively) short number or text string which is used to procedurally create the game world ("map"). This means that while the seed-unique generated map may be many megabytes in size (often generated incrementally and virtually unlimited in potential size), it is possible to reset to the unmodified map, or the unmodified map can be exchanged between players, just by specifying the map seed. An example of a map seed in ''Minecraft'' is "-2242547518357798464". Map seeds are a type of

random seed A random seed (or seed state, or just seed) is a number (or vector) used to initialize a pseudorandom number generator. For a seed to be used in a pseudorandom number generator, it does not need to be random. Because of the nature of number gene ...

s. Games which use procedural generation and include support for setting the map seed include '' Ark: Survival Evolved'', ''

Minecraft ''Minecraft'' is a sandbox game developed by Mojang Studios. The game was created by Markus "Notch" Persson in the Java (programming language), Java programming language. Following several early private testing versions, it was first made pub ...

'', '' Factorio'', ''

SCP – Containment Breach ''SCP – Containment Breach'' is an indie horror video game developed by Joonas "Regalis" Rikkonen based on fictional stories from the SCP Foundation collaborative writing wiki. The player takes the role of a human test subject, imprisoned in ...

'', and the desktop version of ''

Terraria ''Terraria'' is an action-adventure sandbox game developed by Re-Logic. The game was first released for Windows on May 16, 2011, and has since been ported to several other platforms. The game features exploration, crafting, building, painting ...

''. For ''Minecraft'' especially, there are websites and articles, dedicated to sharing seeds which have been found to generate interesting maps. The map seed only has meaning in the context of the algorithm used to generate the map (that algorithm is often, based on

Perlin noise Perlin noise is a type of gradient noise developed by Ken Perlin. History Ken Perlin developed Perlin noise in 1983 as a result of his frustration with the "machine-like" look of computer-generated imagery (CGI) at the time. He formally descr ...

). So if the map generation algorithm changes, the map generated by a given seed will also change. Such changes are particularly obvious in ''Minecraft'', where they are handled (or rather, not handled) by simply generating any newly explored chunks of an existing map using the new algorithm, leading to obvious and jarring discontinuities after upgrading. Favorable seeds can be used when

speedrunning Speedrunning is the act of playing a video game, or section of a video game, with the goal of completing it as fast as possible. Speedrunning often involves following planned routes, which may incorporate sequence breaking and can exploit gli ...

video games Video games, also known as computer games, are electronic games that involves interaction with a user interface or input device such as a joystick, controller, keyboard, or motion sensing device to generate visual feedback. This feedbac ...

by specifying the map seed manually.

References

{{reflist Procedural generation