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Search-based Procedural Content Generation: A Taxonomy and Survey
, 2011
"... The focus of this survey is on research in applying evolutionary and other metaheuristic search algorithms to automatically generating content for games, both digital and non-digital (such as board games). The term search-based procedural content generation is proposed as the name for this emergin ..."
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Cited by 78 (38 self)
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The focus of this survey is on research in applying evolutionary and other metaheuristic search algorithms to automatically generating content for games, both digital and non-digital (such as board games). The term search-based procedural content generation is proposed as the name for this emerging field, which at present is growing quickly. A taxonomy for procedural content generation is devised, centering on what kind of content is generated, how the content is represented and how the quality/fitness of the content is evaluated; search-based procedural content generation in particular is situated within this taxonomy. This article also contains a survey of all published papers known to the authors in which game content is generated through search or optimisation, and ends with an overview of important open research problems.
Experience-Driven Procedural Content Generation
, 2011
"... Procedural content generation (PCG) is an increasingly important area of technology within modern human-computer interaction (HCI) design. Personalization of user experience via affective and cognitive modeling, coupled with real-time adjustment of the content according to user needs and preference ..."
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Cited by 70 (33 self)
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Procedural content generation (PCG) is an increasingly important area of technology within modern human-computer interaction (HCI) design. Personalization of user experience via affective and cognitive modeling, coupled with real-time adjustment of the content according to user needs and preferences are important steps towards effective and meaningful PCG. Games, Web 2.0, interface and software design are amongst the most popular applications of automated content generation. The paper provides a taxonomy of PCG algorithms and introduces a framework for PCG driven by computational models of user experience. This approach, which we call Experience-Driven Procedural Content Generation (EDPCG), is generic and applicable to various subareas of HCI. We employ games as an indicative example of rich HCI and complex affect elicitation, and demonstrate the approach’s effectiveness via dissimilar successful studies.
Multiobjective Exploration of the StarCraft Map Space
"... Abstract—This paper presents a search-based method for generating maps for the popular real-time strategy (RTS) game StarCraft. We devise a representation of StarCraft maps suitable for evolutionary search, along with a set of fitness functions based on predicted entertainment value of those maps, a ..."
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Cited by 32 (21 self)
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Abstract—This paper presents a search-based method for generating maps for the popular real-time strategy (RTS) game StarCraft. We devise a representation of StarCraft maps suitable for evolutionary search, along with a set of fitness functions based on predicted entertainment value of those maps, as derived from theories of player experience. A multiobjective evolutionary algorithm is then used to evolve complete Star-Craft maps based on the representation and selected fitness functions. The output of this algorithm is a Pareto front approximation visualizing the tradeoff between the several fitness functions used, and where each point on the front represents a viable map. We argue that this method is useful for both automatic and machine-assisted map generation, and in particular that the Pareto fronts are excellent design support tools for human map designers. Keywords: Real-time strategy games, RTS, procedural content generation, evolutionary multiobjective optimization I.
Multi-Faceted Evolution Of Simple Arcade Games
"... ccg.doc.ic.ac.uk Abstract — We present a system for generating complete game designs by evolving rulesets, character layouts and terrain maps in an orchestrated way. In contrast to existing approaches to generate such game components in isolation, our ANGELINA system develops game components in unis ..."
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Cited by 22 (4 self)
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ccg.doc.ic.ac.uk Abstract — We present a system for generating complete game designs by evolving rulesets, character layouts and terrain maps in an orchestrated way. In contrast to existing approaches to generate such game components in isolation, our ANGELINA system develops game components in unison with an appreciation for their interrelatedness. We describe this multi-faceted evolutionary approach, and give some results from a first round of experimentation. I.
1 Crowd-Sourcing the Aesthetics of Platform Games
"... Abstract—What are the aesthetics of platform games and what makes a platform level engaging, challenging and/or frustrating? We attempt to answer such questions through mining a large-set of crowd-sourced gameplay data of a clone of the classic platform game Super Mario Bros. The data consists of 40 ..."
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Cited by 15 (7 self)
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Abstract—What are the aesthetics of platform games and what makes a platform level engaging, challenging and/or frustrating? We attempt to answer such questions through mining a large-set of crowd-sourced gameplay data of a clone of the classic platform game Super Mario Bros. The data consists of 40 short game levels that differ along six key level design parameters. Collectively, these levels are played 1560 times over the Internet and the perceived experience is annotated by experiment participants via self-reported ranking (pairwise preferences). Given the wealth of this crowd-sourced data, as all details about players ’ in-game behaviour are logged, the problem becomes one of extracting meaningful numerical features at the appropriate level of abstraction for the construction of generic computational models of player experience and, thereby, game aesthetics. We explore dissimilar types of features, including direct measurements of event and item frequencies, and features constructed through frequent sequence mining and go through an in-depth analysis of the interrelationship between level content, player’s behavioural patterns and reported experience. Furthermore, the fusion of the extracted features allows us to predict reported player experience with a high accuracy even from short game segments. In addition to advancing our insight on the factors that contribute to platform game aesthetics, the results are useful for the personalisation of game experience via automatic game adaptation. I.
Towards a generic method of evaluating game levels
- In Proceedings of the AAAI Artificial Intelligence for Interactive Digital Entertainment Conference
"... This paper addresses the problem of evaluating the qual-ity of game levels across different games and even gen-res, which is of key importance for making procedural content generation and assisted game design tools more generally applicable. Three game design patterns are identified for having high ..."
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Cited by 15 (11 self)
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This paper addresses the problem of evaluating the qual-ity of game levels across different games and even gen-res, which is of key importance for making procedural content generation and assisted game design tools more generally applicable. Three game design patterns are identified for having high generality while being easily quantifiable: area control, exploration and balance. For-mulas for measuring the extent to which a level includes these concepts are proposed, and evaluation functions are derived for levels in two different game genres: mul-tiplayer strategy game maps and single-player roguelike dungeons. To illustrate the impact of these evaluation functions, and the similarity of impact across domains, sets of levels for each function are generated using a constrained genetic algorithm. The proposed measures can easily be extended to other game genres.
A Generic Approach to Challenge Modeling for the Procedural Creation of Video Game Levels
, 2011
"... This work presents an approach to automatic video game level design consisting of a computational model of player enjoyment and a generative system based on evolutionary com-puting. The model estimates the entertainment value of game levels according to the presence of “rhythm groups,” which are def ..."
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Cited by 14 (0 self)
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This work presents an approach to automatic video game level design consisting of a computational model of player enjoyment and a generative system based on evolutionary com-puting. The model estimates the entertainment value of game levels according to the presence of “rhythm groups,” which are defined as alternating periods of high and low challenge. The generative system represents a novel combination of genetic algorithms and constraint satisfaction methods and uses the model as a fitness function for the generation of fun levels for two different games. This top-down approach improves upon typical bottom-up techniques in providing semantically meaningful parameters such as difficulty and player skill; in giving human designers considerable control over the output of the generative system; and in offering the ability to create levels for different types of games.
Procedural Content Generation for Games: A Survey
, 2012
"... Hundreds of millions of people play computer games every day. For them, game content–from 3D objects to abstract puzzles– plays a major entertainment role. Manual labor has so far ensured that the quality and quantity of game content matched the demands of the playing community, but is facing new sc ..."
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Cited by 14 (1 self)
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Hundreds of millions of people play computer games every day. For them, game content–from 3D objects to abstract puzzles– plays a major entertainment role. Manual labor has so far ensured that the quality and quantity of game content matched the demands of the playing community, but is facing new scalability challenges due to the exponential growth over the last decade of both the gamer population and the production costs. Procedural Content Generation for Games (PCG-G) may address these challenges by automating, or aiding in, game content generation. PCG-G is difficult, since the generator has to create the content, satisfy constraints imposed by the artist, and return interesting instances for gamers. Despite a large body of research focusing on PCG-G, particularly over the past decade, ours is the first comprehensive survey of the field of PCG-G. We first introduce a comprehensive, six-layered taxonomy of game content: bits, space, systems, scenarios, design, and derived. Second, we survey the methods used across the whole field of PCG-G from a large research body. Third, we map PCG-G methods to game content layers; it turns out that many of the methods used to generate game content from one layer can be used to generate content from another. We also survey the use of methods in practice, that is, in commercial or prototype games. Fourth
Toward supporting stories with procedurally generated game worlds
, 2011
"... Abstract—Computer role playing games engage players through interleaved story and open-ended game play. We present an approach to procedurally generating, rendering, and making playable novel games based on a priori unknown story structures. These stories may be authored by humans or by computationa ..."
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Cited by 11 (1 self)
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Abstract—Computer role playing games engage players through interleaved story and open-ended game play. We present an approach to procedurally generating, rendering, and making playable novel games based on a priori unknown story structures. These stories may be authored by humans or by computational story generation systems. Our approach couples player, designer, and algorithm to generate a novel game using preferences for game play style, general design aesthetics, and a novel story structure. Our approach is implemented in GAME FORGE, a system that uses search-based optimization to find and render a novel game world configuration that supports a sequence of plot points plus play style preferences. Additionally, GAME FORGE supports execution of the game through reactive control of game world logic and non-player character behavior. I.
Imitating human playing styles in Super Mario Bros
"... We describe and compare several methods for generating game character controllers that mimic the playing style of a particular human player, or of a population of human players, across video game levels. Similarity in playing style is measured through an evaluation framework, that compares the play ..."
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Cited by 8 (6 self)
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We describe and compare several methods for generating game character controllers that mimic the playing style of a particular human player, or of a population of human players, across video game levels. Similarity in playing style is measured through an evaluation framework, that compares the play trace of one or several human players with the punctuated play trace of an AI player. The methods that are compared are either hand-coded, direct (based on supervised learning) or indirect (based on maximising a similarity measure). We find that a method based on neuroevolution performs best both in terms of the instrumental similarity measure and in phenomenological evaluation by human spectators. A version of the classic platform game “Super Mario Bros ” is used as the testbed game in this study but the methods are applicable to other games that are based on character movement in space.
