skip to main content
10.1145/1814256.1814259acmotherconferencesArticle/Chapter ViewAbstractPublication PagespcgamesConference Proceedingsconference-collections
research-article

Towards multiobjective procedural map generation

Published: 18 June 2010 Publication History

Abstract

A search-based procedural content generation (SBPCG) algorithm for strategy game maps is proposed. Two representations for strategy game maps are devised, along with a number of objectives relating to predicted player experience. A multiobjective evolutionary algorithm is used for searching the space of maps for candidates that satisfy pairs of these objectives. As the objectives are inherently partially conflicting, the algorithm generates Pareto fronts showing how these objectives can be balanced. Such fronts are argued to be a valuable tool for designers looking to balance various design needs. Choosing appropriate points (manually or automatically) on the Pareto fronts, maps can be found that exhibit good map design according to specified criteria, and could either be used directly in e.g. an RTS game or form the basis for further human design.

References

[1]
T. Adams. Re: Optimization-based versus "constructive" pcg (post to the "procedural content generation" google group).
[2]
A. Agapitos, J. Togelius, S. M. Lucas, J. Schmidhuber, and A. Konstantinides. Generating diverse opponents with multiobjective evolution. In Proceedings of the IEEE Symposium on Computational Intelligence and Games, 2008.
[3]
D. Ashlock, T. Manikas, and K. Ashenayi. Evolving a diverse collection of robot path planning problems. In Proceedings of the Congress On Evolutionary Computation, pages 6728--6735, 2006.
[4]
N. Beume, B. Naujoks, and M. Emmerich. SMS-EMOA: Multiobjective selection based on dominated hypervolume. European Journal of Operational Research, 181(3):1653--1669, 2007.
[5]
N. Beume, B. Naujoks, M. Preuss, G. Rudolph, and T. Wagner. Effects of 1-greedy-metric-selection on innumerably large pareto fronts. In M. E. et al., editor, Evolutionary Multi-Criterion Optimization, 5th International Conference, EMO 2009, Nantes, France, April 7--10, 2009. Proceedings, volume 5467 of Lecture Notes in Computer Science, pages 21--35. Springer, 2009.
[6]
C. Browne. Automatic generation and evaluation of recombination games. PhD thesis, Queensland University of Technology, 2008.
[7]
K. Deb, A. Pratap, and S. Agarwal. A fast and elitist multi-objective genetic algorithm: NSGA-II. IEEE Trans. on Evolutionary Computation, 6(8), 2002.
[8]
J. Doran and I. Parberry. Controllable procedural terrain generation using software agents. IEEE Transactions on Computational Intelligence and AI in Games, 2010.
[9]
M. Frade, F. F. de Vega, and C. Cotta. Evolution of artificial terrains for video games based on accessibility. In Proceedings of the European Conference on Applications of Evolutionary Computation (EvoApplications), volume 6024, pages 90--99. Springer LNCS, 2010.
[10]
E. Hastings, R. Guha, and K. O. Stanley. Evolving content in the galactic arms race video game. In Proceedings of the IEEE Symposium on Computational Intelligence and Games, 2009.
[11]
T. W. Malone. What makes computer games fun? Byte, 6:258--277, 1981.
[12]
G. S. P. Miller. The definition and rendering of terrain maps. In Proceedings of SIGGRAPH, volume 20, 1986.
[13]
J. Olsen. Realtime procedural terrain generation. 2004.
[14]
C. Pedersen, J. Togelius, and G. N. Yannakakis. Modeling player experience in super mario bros. In Proceedings of the IEEE Symposium on Computational Intelligence and Games, 2009.
[15]
G. Rudolph and M. Preuss. A multiobjective approach for finding equivalent inverse images of pareto-optimal objective vectors. In C. Coello Coello, P. Bonissone, and Y. Jin, editors, 2009 IEEE Symposium on Computational Intelligence in Multicriteria Decision-Making (IEEE MCDM 2009), pages 74--79, Piscataway (NJ), 2009. IEEE Press.
[16]
N. Sorenson and P. Pasquier. Towards a generic framework for automated video game level creation. In Proceedings of the European Conference on Applications of Evolutionary Computation (EvoApplications), volume 6024, pages 130--139. Springer LNCS, 2010.
[17]
J. Togelius, R. De Nardi, and S. M. Lucas. Towards automatic personalised content creation in racing games. In Proceedings of the IEEE Symposium on Computational Intelligence and Games, 2007.
[18]
J. Togelius and J. Schmidhuber. An experiment in automatic game design. In Proceedings of the IEEE Symposium on Computational Intelligence and Games, 2008.
[19]
J. Togelius, G. N. Yannakakis, K. O. Stanley, and C. Browne. Search-based procedural content generation. In Proceedings of the European Conference on Applications of Evolutionary Computation (EvoApplications), volume 6024. Springer LNCS, 2010.

Cited By

View all

Recommendations

Comments

Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

cover image ACM Other conferences
PCGames '10: Proceedings of the 2010 Workshop on Procedural Content Generation in Games
June 2010
67 pages
ISBN:9781450300230
DOI:10.1145/1814256
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

Sponsors

  • SASDG: The Society for the Advancement of the Study of Digital Games

In-Cooperation

Publisher

Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 18 June 2010

Permissions

Request permissions for this article.

Check for updates

Qualifiers

  • Research-article

Funding Sources

Conference

FDG '10
Sponsor:
  • SASDG

Acceptance Rates

Overall Acceptance Rate 13 of 15 submissions, 87%

Contributors

Other Metrics

Bibliometrics & Citations

Bibliometrics

Article Metrics

  • Downloads (Last 12 months)103
  • Downloads (Last 6 weeks)13
Reflects downloads up to 23 Dec 2024

Other Metrics

Citations

Cited By

View all

View Options

Login options

View options

PDF

View or Download as a PDF file.

PDF

eReader

View online with eReader.

eReader

Media

Figures

Other

Tables

Share

Share

Share this Publication link

Share on social media