Procedural content generation (PCG) can be a useful tool for aiding creativity and efficiency in the process of designing game levels. Mixed-initiative level generation tools where a designer and an algorithm collaborate to iteratively generate game levels have been used for this purpose -taking advantage of the combination of computational efficiency and human intuition and creativity. However, it can be difficult for designers to work with tools that do not respond to the common language of games: game design patterns.It has been demonstrated that game design patterns can be integrated into PCG algorithms, but formally-defined and hierarchically-arranged game design patterns have not yet been used as a means of increasing gameplay-based control in mixedinitiative dungeon generators. We present a method for evolving dungeon rooms using multi-level game design patterns in the objective function of a genetic algorithm, as well as an instantiation of this method in a mixed-initiative dungeon design tool. Our results show that we are able to control the frequency and type of design patterns in generated rooms using pattern-related input parameters, enabling us to create dungeon rooms containing a wide variety of patterns on different levels of abstraction.Results from a small-scale user study of professional game developers suggest that the use of game design patterns in mixed-initiative level design tools can be a promising way of providing a good starting point when designing a level, as well as offering meaningful gameplay related feedback throughout the design process. We also identify challenges that will need to be faced if game design pattern-based mixed-initiative level design tools are to become a part of the game designer's toolkit. Popular Science SummaryModern video game development is time-consuming and costly. As games become larger and consumers expect them to contain varied and frequently updated content, the burden on the creators of this content steadily increases. In the 1980s, games like Rogue and Elite pioneered algorithmic approaches to the automatic creation of game content, known as procedural content generation (PCG), allowing for game worlds vastly larger or more varied than those their developers could have created by hand. Since then, whole genres like the Rogue-inspired roguelike have been built around PCG and algorithmic approaches to game content generation are common in many areas of game development.Recently, researchers have begun to explore the potential of PCG techniques as an aid to human game designers, rather than as purely automated processes. Combining the time-saving and raw computational power of PCG with the intuition and creativity of humans might allow us to take the best of both worlds and produce higher quality game content faster.An open question that we address in this thesis is how best to facilitate the collaboration between human designers and PCG algorithms in the domain of game level generation. We argue that, in order to meet this goal, level generatio...

No abstract

No abstract

No abstract

No abstract