A mixed-initiative tool for designing level progressions in games

Butler, Eric; Smith, Adam M.; Liu, Yun-En; Popović, Zoran

doi:10.1145/2501988.2502011

Cited by 42 publications

(28 citation statements)

References 19 publications

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“…These systems were limited to the creation of single levels. Butler et al [10] proposed a mixedinitiative system for end-to-end game production allowing for manual designer intervention at all stages of content generation. By contrast, the present work borrows inspiration from ITS to drive conceptual growth automatically, reducing the need for expertise in the form of manual authoring.…”

Section: Gamesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Automatic Game Progression Design through Analysis of Solution Features

Butler

Andersen

Smith

et al. 2015

Proceedings of the 33rd Annual ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

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A long-term goal of game design research is to achieve endto-end automation of much of the design process, one aspect of which is creating effective level progressions. A key difficulty is getting the player to practice with interesting combinations of learned skills while maintaining their engagement. Although recent work in task generation and sequencing has reduced this effort, we still lack end-to-end automation of the entire content design process. We approach this goal by incorporating ideas from intelligent tutoring systems and proposing progression strategies that seek to achieve mastery of not only base concepts but arbitrary combinations of these concepts. The input to our system is a model of what the player needs to do to complete each level, expressed as either an imperative procedure for producing solutions or a representation of features common to all solutions. The output is a progression of levels that can be adjusted by changing highlevel parameters. We apply our framework to a popular math puzzle game and present results from 2,377 players showing that our automatic level progression is comparable to expertcrafted progression after a few design iterations based on a key engagement metric.

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Section: Gamesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Automatic Game Progression Design through Analysis of Solution Features

Butler

Andersen

Smith

et al. 2015

Proceedings of the 33rd Annual ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

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“…Butler et al used the ASP-based puzzle generator by Smith et al as part of their tool for designing level progressions through mixed-authorship [37]. The tool uses constraints, which are specified by designers and are incorporated into the original generator, to address the generation of a logical progression of levels.…”

Section: F Path-building Puzzlesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Procedural Puzzle Generation: A Survey

Kegel

Haahr

2020

IEEE Trans. Games

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Procedural Content Generation (PCG) for games has existed since the 1980s and is becoming increasingly important for creating gameworlds, backstory and characters across many genres, in particular open-world games such as Minecraft (2011) and No Man's Sky (2016). A particular challenge faced by such games is that the content and/or gameplay may become repetitive. Puzzles constitute an effective technique for improving gameplay by offering players interesting problems to solve, but the use of PCG for generating puzzles has been limited compared with its use for other game elements, and efforts have focused mainly on games that are strictly puzzle games, rather than creating puzzles to be incorporated into other genres. Nevertheless, a significant body of work exists, which allows puzzles of different types to be generated algorithmically, and there is scope for much more research into this area. This paper presents a detailed survey of existing work in PCG for puzzles, reviewing 32 methods within eleven categories of puzzles. For the purpose of analysis, the paper identifies a total of seven salient characteristics related to the methods, which are used to show commonalities and differences between techniques and to chart promising areas for future research.

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“…Another key aspect to dungeon generation is player progression [6]. Designers ensure that the player's experience throughout a level will be coherent and effective, which will be affected by the content they create.…”

Section: Dungeon Design In Videogamesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Fostering creativity in the mixed-initiative evolutionary dungeon designer

Alvarez

Dahlskog

Font

et al. 2018

Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games

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Mixed-initiative systems highlight the collaboration between humans and computers in fostering the generation of more interesting content in game design. In light of the ever-increasing cost of game development, providing mixed-initiative tools can not only significantly reduce the cost but also encourage more creativity amongst game designers. The Evolutionary Dungeon Designer (EDD) [3] is a mixed-initiative tool with a focus on using evolutionary computation to procedurally generate content that adhere to game design patterns. As part of an ongoing project, feedback from a user study on EDD's capabilities as a mixed-initiative design tool pointed out the need for improvement on the tool's functionalities [4]. In this paper we present a review of the principles of the mixedinitiative model, as well as the existing approaches that implement it. The outcome of this analysis allows us to address the appointed needs for improvement by shaping a new version of EDD that we describe here. Finally, we also present the results from a user study carried out with professional game developers, in order to assess EDD's new functionalities. Results show an overall positive evaluation of the tool's intuitiveness and capabilities for empowering game developers' creative skills during the design process of dungeons for adventure games. They also allow us to identify upcoming challenges pattern-based mixed-initiative tools could benefit from. CCS CONCEPTS • Theory of computation → Evolutionary algorithms; • Applied computing → Computer games; • Software and its engineering → Interactive games;

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A mixed-initiative tool for designing level progressions in games

Cited by 42 publications

References 19 publications

Automatic Game Progression Design through Analysis of Solution Features

Automatic Game Progression Design through Analysis of Solution Features

Procedural Puzzle Generation: A Survey

Fostering creativity in the mixed-initiative evolutionary dungeon designer

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