Abstract
This paper describes an alternative approach for videogame procedural content generation focused on providing authors direct control on what gameplay ensues from the generated content. An architecture is proposed that allows designers to define, beforehand, target gameplay indicators, and then generates content for an existing base-design that achieves those same indicators in actual gameplay sessions with human players. Besides providing a description of this architecture, a trial intent on giving evidence of the approach’s feasibility is presented. This experiment used an altered version of ‘Infinite Mario Bros.’ level generator, built to evolve design parameters so as to achieve 3 target gameplay indicators. Employing a Genetic Algorithm in generation of new parameter values, and using 25 players to test the end results, the platform was able to generate parameters that achieved, with precision, the values for those indicators. This result provides evidence of the approach’s feasibility, hinting at its potential use for real-life design processes.
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 subscriptionsPreview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Drachen, A., Canossap, A.: Towards gameplay analysis via gameplay metrics. In: Proceedings of the 13th International MindTrek Conference: Everyday Life in the Ubiquitous Era, MindTrek 2009, pp. 202–209. ACM, New York (2009) ISBN 978-1-60558-633-5, doi: http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1621841.1621878
Gladwell, M.: Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking. Little, Brown and Company (2005)
Gombrich, E.H.: The story of art. Phaidon (2009)
Hassenzahl, M.: User experience and experience design. In: Soegaard, M., Dam, R.F. (eds.) Encyclopedia of Human-Computer Interaction. Interaction-Design.org (2011)
Haupt, R.L., Haupt, S.E.: Practical genetic algorithms, 2nd edn. John Wiley & Sons, Inc. (2004)
Kim, J.H., Gunn, D.V., Schuh, E., Phillips, B., Pagulayan, R.J., Wixon, D.R.: Tracking real-time user experience (true): A comprehensive instrumentation solution for complex systems. In: Computer Human Interaction, pp. 443–452 (2008), doi:10.1145/1357054.1357126
Kujala, S.: User involvement: A review of the benefits and challenges. Behaviour & Information Technology 22(1), 1–16 (2003), http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01449290301782
Pedersen, C., Togelius, J., Yannakakis, G.N.: Modeling player experience for content creation. IEEE Transactions on Computational Intelligence and AI in Games 2(1), 54–67 (2010) ISSN 1943-068X, doi:10.1109/TCIAIG.2010.2043950
Pedersen, C., Togelius, J., Yannakakis, G.N.: Modeling player experience in super mario bros. In: Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Computational Intelligence and Games, CIG 2009, pp. 132–139. IEEE Press, Piscataway (2009) ISBN 978-1-4244-4814-2, http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1719293.1719323
Shaker, N., Yannakakis, G.N., Togelius, J.: Towards Automatic Personalized Content Generation for Platform Games. In: Proceedings of the AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Interactive Digital Entertainment, AIIDE. AAAI Press (October 2010)
Steen, M., Kuijt-Evers, L., Klok, J.: Early user involvement in research and design projects – A review of methods and practices. In: 23rd EGOS Colloquium (European Group for Organizational Studies) (2007)
Yannakakis, G., Hallam, J.: A generic approach for generating interesting interactive pac-man opponents. In: Proceedings of the IEEE Symposium on Computational Intelligence and Games, pp. 94–101 (2005)
Yannakakis, G.N., Hallam, J.: Evolving opponents for interesting interactive computer games. In: Simulation of Adaptive Behavior (2004)
Yannakakis, G.N., Hallam, J.: Towards optimizing entertainment in computer games. Appl. Artif. Intell. 21, 933–971 (2007) ISSN 0883-9514, http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1392651.1392653 , doi:10.1080/08839510701527580
Yannakakis, G.N., Togelius, J.: Experience-driven procedural content generation. IEEE Transactions on Affective Computing 99(PrePrints) (2011) ISSN 1949-3045, http://doi.ieeecomputersociety.org/10.1109/T-AFFC.2011.6
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2013 Springer International Publishing Switzerland
About this paper
Cite this paper
Craveirinha, R., Santos, L., Roque, L. (2013). An Author-Centric Approach to Procedural Content Generation. In: Reidsma, D., Katayose, H., Nijholt, A. (eds) Advances in Computer Entertainment. ACE 2013. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 8253. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-03161-3_2
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-03161-3_2
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-03160-6
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-03161-3
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)