Abstract
This paper describes an evolutionary system for the generation of balance maps for board games. The system is designed to work with the original game Siphon, but works as a proof of concept for the usage of such systems to create maps for other board games as well. Four heuristics and a constraint, developed in collaboration with the game designer, are used to evaluate the generated boards, by analyzing properties such as: symmetry, distribution of resources, and points of interest. We show how the system is able to create diverse maps that are able to display balanced qualities.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsNotes
- 1.
BetterSettlers (www.bettersettlers.com), uses an algorithm that provides the fairest distribution of starting setup.
References
Adkins S (2017) The 2017–2022 global game-based learning market. In: Serious Play Conference
Yannakakis GN, Togelius J (2017) Artificial intelligence and games. Springer
Fullerton T (2008) Game design workshop: a playcentric approach to creating innovative games. CRC Press, Boca Raton
Harkey A (2014) Balance
de Mesentier Silva F, Lee S, Togelius J, Nealen A (2017) Ai-based playtesting of contemporary board games. In: Proceedings of the 12th international conference on the foundations of digital games. ACM, p 13
Teuber K (1995) The settlers of catan - game rules and almanac
Barros GA, Togelius J (2015) Balanced civilization map generation based on open data. In: 2015 IEEE congress on evolutionary computation (CEC). IEEE, pp 1482–1489
Hom V, Marks J (2007) Automatic design of balanced board games. In: Proceedings of the AAAI conference on artificial intelligence and interactive digital entertainment (AIIDE), pp 25–30
Mitchell M (1998) An introduction to genetic algorithms. MIT Press, Cambridge
Shiffman D (2012) The nature of code. Free Software Foundation. http://natureofcode.com/book/chapter-9-the-evolution-of-code/. Accessed 12 Apr 2018
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2020 Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this paper
Cite this paper
Nielsen, J.J., Scirea, M. (2020). Balanced Map Generation Using Genetic Algorithms in the Siphon Board-Game. In: Ciancarini, P., Mazzara, M., Messina, A., Sillitti, A., Succi, G. (eds) Proceedings of 6th International Conference in Software Engineering for Defence Applications. SEDA 2018. Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing, vol 925. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-14687-0_20
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-14687-0_20
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-14686-3
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-14687-0
eBook Packages: Intelligent Technologies and RoboticsIntelligent Technologies and Robotics (R0)