Reverse Engineering Procedural Generation Algorithms in the Normal Mine of Stardew Valley

Procedural content generation is the most important concept today in modern game design by giving players a way to feel new environments every time, followed by algorithms that generate the content rather than fixed-designed layouts for a certain part of the game. This paper talks about a reverse engineering study of the normal mine, not the Skull cavern mine (floors 1 to 120) in the game Stardew Valley. Replicating the ore spawn by series of game play test to validation it against publicly available decompiled source code of the game Stardew Valley, this research shows how the mine generates ore and what type of ores that are being generated and mostly focus on ore spawning probability and depth of the floor for ore type will be spawned, as these systems directly influence player gameplay by selecting what floor fits their ore needs and their progression into the game. The results demonstrate that the mine uses layered probability algorithms with their depth, ensuring that the game is balanced with randomness and fairness. This study helps students academically to understand the procedural generation in farming sim games and demonstrates a way to clone other ore generation while giving a methodology for algorithm analysis in commercial software.