We introduce an alternative method for open-world scene generation. In this thesis, Graph-based Wave Function Collapse (GWFC) is integrated with Space Colonization Algorithm (SCA) and used to place objects in an unstructured 3D environment. This combined algorithm, Space Colonization Graph-based Wave Function Collapse (SC-GWFC), leverages the constraint-based capabilities of GWFC and the ability of SCA to populate arbitrary 3D volumes. We demonstrate that objects of variable scale can be successfully used with SC-GWFC. Since this algorithm is run in an interactive environment, we demonstrate iterative modifications to a partially complete scene and incorporate PCG into a scene editing process. As part of the implementation, we also introduce our Scene Modeling Application for rendering and editing 3D scenes. This modeling application allows for editing and viewing constraints for our SC-GWFC scene generator. We evaluate the performance characteristics of SC-GWFC in the Scene Modeling Application to demonstrate that SC-GWFC can be used interactively. Through the application, users can specify adjacency requirements for objects, and SC-GWFC will attempt to place objects in patterns that respect these rules. We demonstrate the ability to place up to 5000 items on a terrain using our proposed SC-GWFC technique.

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Video games often include various creatures within their games, these creatures often give the world in which they inhabit a richer experience for the player. Creating these creatures can be costly, to lower these costs procedural content generated creatures could be used instead. Creatures created with PCG will have a lower upfront cost but comes with the downside of less control without a large amount of testing. This is a problem, what we have tried to do is lessening the amount of time needed to achieve the desired level of perfection. In this paper we have tried to find patterns which will further help the use of procedural content generated creatures. The game Forest Moon will be introduced to gather data and to find pattern of how players interact from various visual cues. With the data we have gained further understanding on how players react and what kind of emotions they feel when certain visual cues are presented.

Video game players demand a volume of content far in excess of the ability of game designers to create it. For example, a single quest might take a week to develop and test, which means that companies such as Blizzard are spending millions of dollars each month on new content for their games. As a result, both players and developers are frustrated with the inability to meet the demand for new content. By generating content on-demand, it is possible to create custom content for each player based on player preferences. It is also possible to make use of the current world state during generation, something which cannot be done with current techniques. Using developers to create rules and assets for a content generator instead of creating content directly will lower development costs as well as reduce the development time for new game content to seconds rather than days. This work is part of the field of computational creativity, and involves the use of computers to create aesthetically pleasing game content, such as terrain, characters, and quests. I demonstrate agent-based terrain generation, and economic modeling of game spaces. I also demonstrate the autonomous generation of quests for online role playing games, and the ability to play these quests using an emulated Everquest server.

Procedural Content Generation innebär att spelinnehåll automatiskt genereras för att dels både öka variationen i spel dels och minska arbetsbelastningen hos designers. Ett användningsområde för detta är rumbaserad bangenerering. Målet med detta  här arbetet är var att jämföra två algoritmer som gör just detta:; Binary Space Partitioning och Delaunay Triangulation. De kriterier som algoritmerna utvärderades på var tidseffektivitet, variation, likhet och möjligheten att nå alla rum. Resultatet visade att Binary Space Partitioning hade snabbare genereringstid samtidigt som Delaunay Triangulation gav utvecklaren mer valmöjligheter. Vilken algoritm som var att föredra ifall tidsaspekten inte bar mest tyngd blev helt en en mestadels subjektiv fråga där varje enskild utvecklares önskemål kommer påverka svaret. Ifall arbetet skulle fortsättas i framtiden skulle det vara intressant att utföra fler tester med flera olika mätvärden samt använda algoritmerna i ett spel och sedan påta låta spelare testare bedöma kvalitén hos banorna som genereras.

The use of procedural content generation is becoming more and more popular in the video game industry. With games such as Minecraft or No Man’s Sky we have seen the potential of PCG in video game creation but also its challenges. In fact, while the processing power and memory capabilities of our machines are unceasingly growing, human capability for content creation doesn’t seem to be able to follow the same pace. Game developers had then to come up with several techniques and methods that will help them generate lots of content for their games while still keeping a certain level of control on the output. Urbis Terram is a procedural city generation tool for Unity3D that allows the creation of complete cities to be used in video games or simulations made with this engine. The goal of this thesis is to tackle the technical challenge of designing and implementing a PCG tool that will help game developers to quickly generate terrains, road networks and allotment spaces for buildings and other urban areas. The goal is to have a unique complete city generation tool that can enable quick game design iterations and can be used to create complex virtual worlds.

The rising cost in video game content creation, both in terms of man hours and in terms of monetary dollars, restricts the ability of video game developers to create unique, entertaining content. Motivated by how this cost is a direct result of "next-generation graphics", I am motivated to ask: what would a next-generation content creation tool look like? I investigate the problem by constructing several such tools. In particular, I construct a mesh quilting algorithm for random level generation, a rapid level construction toolkit based on the concept of an architectural blueprint but supporting features such as complex silhouette geometry and roof geometry, and a tool for rapidly painting world textures. I also introduce a new system for accessing barycentric coordinate data from within the fragment shader, which can be used in support of real-time 3D image quilting, more accurate normal interpolation, and texture rendering from within the world painting tool. Some history of video game content creation is discussed, and a roadmap is charted for future development. / Graduate

Games are irritating when they are too hard, and boring when they are too easy. Level Eight is a game development company which is, during this project, developing an endless runner. This thesis describes research and implementation of a dynamic difficulty adjustment system in Level Eights’ endless runner by considering several conditions of the player. This was accomplished with the help of the game environment by implementing procedural content generation and combine it with the dynamic difficulty adjustment system. / Spel är irriterande när de är för svåra, och tråkiga när de är för lätta. Level Eight är ett spelutvecklingsföretag som under detta projekt utvecklar ett ändlöst löparspel. Denna avhandling beskriver forskning och genomförande av ett dynamiskt svårighets justeringssystem i Level Eights ändlöst löparspel genom att överväga flera villkor för spelaren. Detta uppnåddes med hjälp av spelmiljön genom att implementera procedurell innehållsgenerering och kombinera den med det dynamiska svårighets justering systemet.

Submitted by Marco Antônio de Ramos Chagas (mchagas@ufv.br) on 2016-09-09T18:25:14Z No. of bitstreams: 1 texto completo.pdf: 2101606 bytes, checksum: c4227b09a3bae62b835f5aabafc917b3 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2016-09-09T18:25:14Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 texto completo.pdf: 2101606 bytes, checksum: c4227b09a3bae62b835f5aabafc917b3 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2016-05-25 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / Neste trabalho apresentamos um modelo computacional baseado em teorias de design para gerar mapas de jogos de plataforma visualmente agradáveis. Nós estudamos o problema de geração de mapas como um problema de otimização e provamos que uma versão simplificada do problema é computacionalmente difícil. Em seguida, propomos uma abordagem de busca heurística para resolver o problema de geração de mapas e utilizamos ela para gerar níveis de um clone do Super Mario Bros (SMB), chamado Infinite Mario Bros (IMB). Antes de avaliar os níveis de IMB gerados pelo nosso sistema, realizamos um estudo detalhado das abordagens comumente utilizadas para avaliar o conteúdo gerado por programas de computador. A avaliação utilizada em trabalhos anteriores utiliza apenas métricas computacionais. Embora esses indicadores são importantes para uma avaliação inicial e exploratória do conteúdo gerado, não é claro se são capazes de capturar a percepção do jogador sobre o conteúdo gerado. Neste trabalho, comparamos os conhecimentos adquiridos a partir de um estudo com seres humanos usando níveis de IMB gerados por diferentes sistemas, com os conhecimentos adquiridos a partir de análise dos valores de métricas computacionais. Os nossos resultados sugerem que as m ́etricas computacionais atuais não devem substituir estudos com seres humanos para avaliar o conteúdo gerado por programas de computador. Usando os conhecimentos adquiridos em nosso experimento anterior, foi realizado outro estudo com seres humanos para avaliar os níveis de IMB gerados pelo nosso método. Os resultados mostram a vantagem do nosso método em relação a outras abordagens em termos de estética visual e diversão. Finalmente, foi realizado outro estudo com seres humanos, mostrando que o nosso método é capaz de gerar níveis de IMB semelhantes aos níveis de SMB criados por designers profissionais. / In this work we introduce a computational model based on theories of graphical design to generate visually pleasing video game maps. We cast the problem of map generation as an optimization problem and prove it to be computationally hard. Then, we propose a heuristic search approach to solve the map generation problem and use it to generate levels of a clone of Super Mario Bros (SMB) called Infinite Mario Bros (IMB). Before evaluating the levels of IMB generated by our system, we perform a detailed study of the approaches commonly used to evaluate the content generated by computer programs. The evaluation used in previous works often relies on computational metrics. While these metrics are important for an initial exploratory evaluation of the content generated, it is not clear whether they are able to capture the player’s perception of the content generated. In this work we compare the insights gained from a user study with IMB levels generated by different systems with the insights gained from analyzing computational metric values. Our results suggest that current computational metrics should not be used in lieu of user studies for evaluating content generated by computer programs. Using the insights gained in our previous experiment, we performed another user study to evaluate the IMB levels generated by our method. The results show the advantage of our method over other approaches in terms of visual aesthetics and enjoyment. Finally, we performed one last user study that showed that our method is able to generate IMB levels with striking similarity to SMB levels created by professional designers. / Autor sem Lattes e arquivo PDF não criptografou

Procedural content generation (PCG) is increasingly used to generate many aspects in a variety of games. AI players, both hand scripted or also generated (by AI methods), are used to evaluate this content. Comparatively little effort is invested in using PCG to generate the whole game, including its rules. In this thesis, we use evolutionary algorithms to generate the game rules, its content and the evaluating AI player on a narrow, but flourishing, genre of endless runners - games where the player is constantly running. For this purpose, we have implemented a framework for creating endless runner games. Our approach could provide more efficiency for game designers, explore completely new game concepts in endless runners, platformer games, and be further generalized to other game genres.