Hey everyone!

I'm pretty new to this forum, so don't know if this is the right place to be posting this. I'm a hobbyist game developer, and have been teaching myself Game Maker for a few years now - with a view to moving over to Unity in the near future.

I've been thinking about how to go about making a 2d sidescrolling procedurally generated endless runner, and have worked out the basic programming logic (move the background rather than the player, have platforms spawn and scroll across the screen etc). I've been playing this endless runner called Turbo Pug recently, and have been trying to work out the programming logic for the platforms. I've posted a video below. Most endless runners I've come across vary the length of their platforms (so, kind of like Canabalt), but Turbo Pug seems to have set sizes/types of platform. I'm unsure whether there are different sprites drawn for each platform 'type' (which seems long and unlikely), or whether the developers have meshed together different combinations of tiles. This still seems really complex to me, but if anyone has any ideas about how this might have been done, that would be really helpful! I'm not asking for anyone to code this for me, just to give me some idea of the logic behind it. Cheers!

Turbo Pug:

Thank you, that makes perfect sense! You've set out a really good method for coding procedural generation, and I think it's within my remit to put something like that together. Although, I'm still unsure whether they used your specific method in Turbo Pug. Most sets of blocks seem to be the same width/appear at the same height every time - and the gaps between them seem to be the same width. If that's the case, do you think they've purely drawn separate sets of sprites (whilst using the procedural generation method you suggested above)?