Constrained surprise search for content generation

In procedural content generation, it is often desirable to create artifacts which not only fulfill certain playability constraints but are also able to surprise the player with unexpected potential uses. This paper applies a divergent evolutionary search method based on surprise to the constrained problem of generating balanced and efficient sets of weapons for the Unreal Tournament III shooter game. The proposed constrained surprise search algorithm ensures that pairs of weapons are sufficiently balanced and effective while also rewarding unexpected uses of these weapons during game simulations with artificial agents. Results in the paper demonstrate that searching for surprise can create functionally diverse weapons which require new gameplay patterns of weapon use in the game.This work has been supported, in part, by the FP7 Marie Curie CIG project AutoGameDesign (project no: 630665) and the Horizon 2020 project CrossCult (project no: 693150).peer-reviewe

Playing With A Career in Ruins : game Design and Virtual Heritage

L'article esboça les diferències entre contextos virtuals convencionals i jocs de computadora, i discuteix que els punts forts específics i debilitats en l'ús de jocs d'ordinador per crear reconstruccions arqueològiques exigeixen una reflexió curosa i ben orientada. Aquests límits inclouen el problema de l'aprenentatge procedimental vs. el prescriptiu, el pensament conceptual, la càrrega cognitiva, la interacció no violenta i l'autenticitat històrica. Es proposen de forma breu possibles solucions que inclouen el desenvolupament de gèneres de jocs de rol, incorporant bioretroalimentació, l'adopció de límits difosos i de localització indeterminable, al·ludint a les creences culturals diferents per mitjà de la física basada en àmbits, i en l'ús de tècniques de joc d'estil detectivesc per ajudar a transmetre coneixements.El siguiente artículo traza las diferencias entre contextos virtuales convencionales y juegos de computador, y discute que los específicos puntos fuertes y debilidades en la utilización de juegos de computador para crear reconstrucciones arqueológicas exigen una reflexión cuidadosa y bien orientada. Estas limitaciones incluyen el problema del aprendizaje procedimental versus el aprendizaje prescriptivo, el pensamiento conceptual, la carga cognitiva, la interacción no violenta y la autenticidad histórica. Se proponen de forma breve posibles soluciones que incluyen el desarrollo de géneros de juegos de rol, incorporando bioretroalimentación, la adopción de límites difusos y de localización indeterminable, aludiendo a las diferentes creencias culturales por medio de la física basada en ámbitos, y el empleo de técnicas de juego de estilo detectivesco para ayudar a transmitir conocimientos prescriptivos (tal como se transmiten en los textos arqueológicos) a una audiencia más amplia.The following paper outlines differences between conventional virtual environments and computer games, and argues the particular strengths and weaknesses of using computer games for creating archaeological reconstructions need to carefully thought out and addressed. Limitations include the problem of procedural versus prescriptive learning, conceptual thinking, cognitive loading, non-violent interaction, and historical authenticity. Several possible solutions are briefly outlined, which include developing role-playing genres, incorporating biofeedback, adopting vague and indeterminable place-like boundaries, alluding to different cultural beliefs through realm-based physics, and emplying detective-style game techniques to help convey prescriptive knowledge (such as conveyed in archaeological texts) to a wider audience

The 2014 General Video Game Playing Competition

This paper presents the framework, rules, games, controllers, and results of the first General Video Game Playing Competition, held at the IEEE Conference on Computational Intelligence and Games in 2014. The competition proposes the challenge of creating controllers for general video game play, where a single agent must be able to play many different games, some of them unknown to the participants at the time of submitting their entries. This test can be seen as an approximation of general artificial intelligence, as the amount of game-dependent heuristics needs to be severely limited. The games employed are stochastic real-time scenarios (where the time budget to provide the next action is measured in milliseconds) with different winning conditions, scoring mechanisms, sprite types, and available actions for the player. It is a responsibility of the agents to discover the mechanics of each game, the requirements to obtain a high score and the requisites to finally achieve victory. This paper describes all controllers submitted to the competition, with an in-depth description of four of them by their authors, including the winner and the runner-up entries of the contest. The paper also analyzes the performance of the different approaches submitted, and finally proposes future tracks for the competition

Trinity Tripod, 1976-03-09

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Evolving artificial terrains with automated genetic terrain programing

La industria del videojuego afronta en la actualidad un gran reto: mantener el coste del desarrollo de los proyectos bajo control a medida que estos crecen y se hacen más complejos. La creación de los contenidos de los juegos, que incluye el modelado de personajes, mapas y niveles, texturas, efectos sonoros, etc, representa una parte fundamental del costo final de producción. Por eso, la industria está cada vez más interesada en la utilización de métodos procedurales de generación automática de contenidos. Sin embargo, crear y afinar los métodos procedurales no es una tarea trivial. En esta memoria, se describe un método procedural basado en Programación Genética, que permite la generación automática de terrenos para videojuegos. Los terrenos presentan características estéticas, y no requieren ningún tipo de parametrización para definir su aspecto. Así, el ahorro de tiempo y la reducción de costes en el proceso de producción es notable. Para conseguir los objetivos, se utiliza Programación Genética de Terrenos. La primera implementación de GTP utilizó Evolución Interactiva, en que la presencia del usuario que guía el proceso evolutivo es imprescindible. A pesar de los buenos resultados, el método está limitado por la fatiga del usuario (común en los métodos interactivos). Para resolver esta cuestión se desarrolla un nuevo modelo de GTP en el que el proceso de búsqueda es completamente automático, y dirigido por una función de aptitudo. La función considera accesibilidad de los terrenos y perímetros de los obstáculos. Los resultados obtenidos se incluyeron como parte de un videojuego real.Nowadays video game industry is facing a big challenge: keep costs under control as games become bigger and more complex. Creation of game content, such as character models, maps, levels, textures, sound effects and so on, represent a big slice of total game production cost. Hence, video game industry is increasingly turning to procedural content generation to amplify the cost-effectiveness of video game designers' efforts. However, creating and fine tunning procedural methods for automated content generation is a time consuming task. In this thesis we detail a Genetic Programming based procedural content technique to generate procedural terrains. Those terrains present aesthetic appeal and do not require any parametrization to control its look. Thus, allowing to save time and help reducing production costs. To accomplish these features we devised the Genetic Terrain Programming (GTP) technique. The first implementation of GTP used an Interactive Evolutionary Computation (IEC) approach, were a user guides the evolutionary process. In spite of the good results achieved this way, this approach was limited by user fatigue (common in IEC systems). To address this issue a second version of GTP was developed where the search is automated, being guided by a direct fitness function. That function is composed by two morphological metrics: terrain accessibility and obstacle edge length. The combination of the two metrics allowed us remove the human factor form the evolutionary process and to find a wide range of aesthetic and fit terrains. Procedural terrains produced by GTP are already used in a real video game.Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia (TIN2007-68083-C02-01); (TIN2008-05941); (TIN2011-28627-C04) Junta de Extremadura (GRU-09105); (GR10029) Junta de Andalucía (TIC-6083