This study employs the cointegrating VAR approach to characterise the relationships between the five exchange rates comprising the TWI and the share market in New Zealand. Weekly data covering January 1999 to June 2006 are analysed. The study discovers there are two types of long-run relationship mimicking the portfolio balance and goods market theories. That implies there is bi-directional causality in the foreign exchange and stock markets in both the short run and long run although different exchange rates may be implicated. In the long run, the empirical results for the relationship between the NZ-US dollar exchange rate and the overall share market index support both the portfolio balance and goods market theories. In the short run, the portfolio balance theory is further supported by all the exchange rates but the goods market theory is supported significantly only by the NZ-Australian dollar exchange rate. Thus the evidence is predominantly in support of the portfolio balance theory and that the firms most at risk of foreign exchange rate exposure are those that export to Australia.

Abstract. This paper introduces a new approach to the procedural generation of maze-like game level layouts by evolving CA. The approach uses a GA to evolve CA rules which, when applied to a maze configuration, produce level layouts with desired maze-like properties. The advantages of this technique is that once a CA rule set has been evolved, it can quickly generate varying instances of maze-like level layouts with similar properties in real time.

Design of level layouts typically involves the production of a set of levels which are different, yet display a consistent style based on the purpose of a particular level. In this paper, a new approach to the generation of unique level layouts, based on a target set of attributes, is presented. These attributes, which are learned automatically from an example layout, are used for the off-line evolution of a set of cellular automata rules. These rules can then be used for the real-time generation of level layouts that meet the target parameters. The approach is demonstrated on a set of maze-like level layouts. Results are presented to show the effect of various CA parameters and rule representation. © 2016 Taylor \u26 Francis

This paper 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' intent in gameplay requirementbased 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 generationthe 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' 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. INDEX TERMS gameplay elements, terrain generation, level design.

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