A Projection-Based Approach for Real-Time Assessment and Playability Check for Physics-Based Games

Abstract. This paper introduces an authoring tool for physics-based puzzle games that supports game designers through providing visual feedback about the space of interactions. The underlying algorithm accounts for the type and physical prop-erties of the different game components. An area of influence, which identifies the possible space of interaction, is identified for each component. The influence areas of all components in a given design are then merged considering the com-ponents ’ type and the context information. The tool can be used offline where complete designs are analyzed and the final interactive space is projected, and online where edits in the interactive space are projected on the canvas in realtime permitting continuous assistance for game designers and providing informative feedback about playability.

Refining the paradigm of sketching in AI-based level design

This paper describes computational processes which can simulate how human designers sketch and then iteratively refine their work. The paper uses the concept of a map sketch as an initial, low-resolution and low-fidelity prototype of a game level, and suggests how such map sketches can be refined computationally. Different case studies with map sketches of different genres showcase how refinement can be achieved via increasing the resolution of the game level, increasing the fidelity of the function which evaluates it, or a combination of the two. While these case studies use genetic algorithms to automatically generate levels at different degrees of refinement, the general method described in this paper can be used with most procedural generation methods, as well as for AI-assisted design alongside a human creator.The research was supported, in part, by the FP7 ICT projects C2Learn (project no: 318480) and ILearnRW (project no: 318803), and by the FP7 Marie Curie CIG project Auto- GameDesign (project no: 630665).peer-reviewe