Modern Trends in the Automatic Generation of Content for Video Games

Attractive and realistic content has always played a crucial role in the penetration and popularity of digital games, virtual environments, and other multimedia applications. Procedural content generation enables the automatization of production of any type of game content including not only landscapes and narratives but also game mechanics and generation of whole games. The article offers a comparative analysis of the approaches to automatic generation of content for video games proposed in last five years. It suggests a new typology of the use of procedurally generated game content comprising of categories structured in three groups: content nature, generation process, and game dependence. Together with two other taxonomies – one of content type and the other of methods for content generation – this typology is used for comparing and discussing some specific approaches to procedural content generation in three promising research directions based on applying personalization and adaptation, descriptive languages, and semantic specifications

nuwar: A prototype sketch-based strategy game

Abstract Today's military strategy games provide unrealistic interfaces for players to interact with their units: Commanders don't use mice and menus, they sketch. Developing strategy games currently involves grafting AI capabilities on top of a separate simulation engine, with new hand-crafted strategies for each game. We are experimenting with a novel approach for solving both problems. We started with nuSketch Battlespace, a knowledge-rich sketch understanding system developed for military users, and built a game engine, nuWar, on top of it. nuWar is a prototype two-player tactical war game which can be played either hot-seat or over a network. nuWar uses sketching as the primary way for players to express their intent to their subordinate commanders. The underlying ontology used by nuSketch Battlespace is used in both the simulation engine and in the bots which serve as subordinate commanders. We describe the architecture of nuWar, focusing on how it uses sketching, how the simulation engine is built upon the rich representational facilities of nuSketch Battlespace, and how the bots work. We discuss the tradeoffs we have found in this approach so far, and describe our plans for future work

Adapting In-Game Agent Behavior by Observation of Players Using Learning Behavior Trees

In this paper we describe Learning Behavior Trees, an extension of the popular game AI scripting technique. Behavior Trees provide an effective way for expert designers to describe complex, in-game agent behaviors. Scripted AI captures human intuition about the structure of behavioral decisions, but suffers from brittleness and lack of the natural variation seen in human players. Learning Behavior Trees are designed by a human designer, but then are trained by observation of players performing the same role, to introduce human-like variation to the decision structure. We show that, using this model, a single hand-designed Behavior Tree can cover a wide variety of player behavior variations in a simplified Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game

Developing serious games for cultural heritage: a state-of-the-art review

Although the widespread use of gaming for leisure purposes has been well documented, the use of games to support cultural heritage purposes, such as historical teaching and learning, or for enhancing museum visits, has been less well considered. The state-of-the-art in serious game technology is identical to that of the state-of-the-art in entertainment games technology. As a result, the field of serious heritage games concerns itself with recent advances in computer games, real-time computer graphics, virtual and augmented reality and artificial intelligence. On the other hand, the main strengths of serious gaming applications may be generalised as being in the areas of communication, visual expression of information, collaboration mechanisms, interactivity and entertainment. In this report, we will focus on the state-of-the-art with respect to the theories, methods and technologies used in serious heritage games. We provide an overview of existing literature of relevance to the domain, discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the described methods and point out unsolved problems and challenges. In addition, several case studies illustrating the application of methods and technologies used in cultural heritage are presented

Selecting a Virtual World Platform for Learning

Like any infrastructure technology, Virtual World (VW) platforms provide affordances that facilitate some activities and hinder others. Although it is theoretically possible for a VW platform to support all types of activities, designers make choices that lead technologies to be more or less suited for different learning objectives. Virtual World platforms’ capabilities can be characterized in terms of the extent to which they are multiple or special purpose and the degree to which they support incorporation of few or many knowledge resources. Matching these capabilities with a framework for characterizing instructional approach and learning objectives provides a basis for selecting, piloting, and advocating use of particular VW platforms in specific educational contexts

Serious Games in Cultural Heritage

Although the widespread use of gaming for leisure purposes has been well documented, the use of games to support cultural heritage purposes, such as historical teaching and learning, or for enhancing museum visits, has been less well considered. The state-of-the-art in serious game technology is identical to that of the state-of-the-art in entertainment games technology. As a result the field of serious heritage games concerns itself with recent advances in computer games, real-time computer graphics, virtual and augmented reality and artificial intelligence. On the other hand, the main strengths of serious gaming applications may be generalised as being in the areas of communication, visual expression of information, collaboration mechanisms, interactivity and entertainment. In this report, we will focus on the state-of-the-art with respect to the theories, methods and technologies used in serious heritage games. We provide an overview of existing literature of relevance to the domain, discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the described methods and point out unsolved problems and challenges. In addition, several case studies illustrating the application of methods and technologies used in cultural heritage are presented

Quantifiable isovist and graph-based measures for automatic evaluation of different area types in virtual terrain generation

© 2013 IEEE. This article describes a set of proposed measures for characterizing areas within a virtual terrain in terms of their attributes and their relationships with other areas for incorporating game designers\u27 intent in gameplay requirement-based terrain generation. Examples of such gameplay elements include vantage point, strongholds, chokepoints and hidden areas. Our measures are constructed on characteristics of an isovist, that is, the volume of visible space at a local area and the connectivity of areas within the terrain. The calculation of these measures is detailed, in particular we introduce two new ways to accurately and efficiently calculate the 3D isovist volume. Unlike previous research that has mainly focused on aesthetic-based terrain generation, the proposed measures address a gap in gameplay requirement-based terrain generation-the need for a flexible mechanism to automatically parameterise specified areas and their associated relationships, capturing semantic knowledge relating to high level user intent associated with specific gameplay elements within the virtual terrain. We demonstrate applications of using the measures in an evolutionary process to automatically generate terrains that include specific gameplay elements as defined by a game designer. This is significant as this shows that the measures can characterize different gameplay elements and allow gameplay elements consistent with the designers\u27 intents to be generated and positioned in a virtual terrain without the need to specify low-level details at a model or logic level, hence leading to higher productivity and lower cost

Quantifiable isovist and graph-based measures for automatic evaluation of different area types in virtual terrain generation

© 2013 IEEE. This article describes a set of proposed measures for characterizing areas within a virtual terrain in terms of their attributes and their relationships with other areas for incorporating game designers\u27 intent in gameplay requirement-based terrain generation. Examples of such gameplay elements include vantage point, strongholds, chokepoints and hidden areas. Our measures are constructed on characteristics of an isovist, that is, the volume of visible space at a local area and the connectivity of areas within the terrain. The calculation of these measures is detailed, in particular we introduce two new ways to accurately and efficiently calculate the 3D isovist volume. Unlike previous research that has mainly focused on aesthetic-based terrain generation, the proposed measures address a gap in gameplay requirement-based terrain generation-the need for a flexible mechanism to automatically parameterise specified areas and their associated relationships, capturing semantic knowledge relating to high level user intent associated with specific gameplay elements within the virtual terrain. We demonstrate applications of using the measures in an evolutionary process to automatically generate terrains that include specific gameplay elements as defined by a game designer. This is significant as this shows that the measures can characterize different gameplay elements and allow gameplay elements consistent with the designers\u27 intents to be generated and positioned in a virtual terrain without the need to specify low-level details at a model or logic level, hence leading to higher productivity and lower cost

Serious Game Design Principles: The Impact of Game Design on Learning Outcomes

This dissertation examines the research question How do video game design principles affect learning outcomes in serious games? This research first develops a theoretical foundation concerning the meaning of the terms game and serious game . This conceptual clarification is broken down into analytic propositions, which state that games have participants, rules, goals and challenges, and synthetic propositions, which state that the games should be intrinsically compelling, provide meaningful choices, and be self encapsulated. Based on these synthetic propositions, three hypotheses were developed. The hypotheses are that games with an enhanced aesthetic presentation, more meaningful choices, or provide player competition will elicit higher learning outcomes than identical games without these factors. These hypotheses were tested via a quantitative experiment involving 172 undergraduate students in the Old Dominion University Chemistry Department. The students were asked to play a chemistry-oriented serious game entitled Element Solitaire©, which was created by the research author. The students were randomly given different treatments of the Element Solitaire© game to play, and the difference between their learning outcomes were compared. The experimental results demonstrated that the aesthetic presentation of a game can have a significant impact upon the learning outcome. The experiment was not able to discern significant effects from the choice or competition conditions, but further examination of the experimental data did reveal some insight into these aspects of serious game design. Choices need to provide the player with options that have a sufficient value that they will be considered and the application of competition within games needs to be judiciously implemented to promote a positive affect for all players. The results of the theoretical foundations and empirical evidence were then combined with additional theoretical research to develop a set of design principles and a proposed serious game development process. These guidelines were researched and examined via the design and development process of several serious game prototypes and the examination of a large body of existing serious games. The end result is a practical procedure that is rooted in theory and quantitative experimentation