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A Framework to Even-Out Racetrack Bias

Published: 05 July 2024 Publication History

Abstract

Procedural Content Generation (PCG) has demonstrated its capability to create compelling game content across various domains, including racing games. In this paper, a novel approach utilizing PCG is presented that aims to generate racetracks with the primary objective of ensuring fairness and balanced gameplay regardless of the player’s vehicle choice1. The proposed framework comprises three distinct phases: During the first phase, modular racetrack segments are procedurally generated in order to enhance track variety, which plays a crucial role in providing an engaging gaming experience. In the second phase, AI car controllers are employed on different vehicles to simulate driving through all generated racetrack segments, gathering various statistics. This step allows for the collection of data that will inform decision-making during the final assembly of the complete racetrack. Finally, in the third phase, the collected data is utilized to select and assemble the most suitable racetrack segments, ensuring fairness for all simulated vehicle types by avoiding any potential unfair advantages or disadvantages. To further support this innovative framework, its theoretical foundation is explored, and detailed explanations of each step involved in the process are provided.

References

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Hafizh Adi Prasetya and Nur Maulidevi. 2016. Search -based Procedural Content Generation for Race Tracks in Video Games. International Journal on Electrical Engineering and Informatics 8 (12 2016). https://doi.org/10.15676/ijeei.2016.8.4.6
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Mayank Bansal, Alex Krizhevsky, and Abhijit Ogale. 2018. ChauffeurNet: Learning to Drive by Imitating the Best and Synthesizing the Worst. arxiv:1812.03079 [cs.RO]
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Alexander Becker and Daniel Görlich. 2020. What is Game Balancing? - An Examination of Concepts. ParadigmPlus 1, 1 (Apr. 2020), 22–41. https://doi.org/10.55969/paradigmplus.v1n1a2
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Fabian Behrens and Ulrich Gohner. 2020. Procedural race track generation for domain randomization. (2020), 4 pages.
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Linus Gisslén, Andy Eakins, Camilo Gordillo, Joakim Bergdahl, and Konrad Tollmar. 2021. Adversarial Reinforcement Learning for Procedural Content Generation. CoRR abs/2103.04847 (2021). arXiv:2103.04847https://arxiv.org/abs/2103.04847
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Alexander Benjamin Jaffe. 2013. Understanding Game Balance with Quantitative Methods. PhD thesis. University of Washington. Available at https://digital.lib.washington.edu/researchworks/bitstream/handle/1773/22797/Jaffe_washington_0250E_11528.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y.
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cover image ACM Other conferences
FDG '24: Proceedings of the 19th International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games
May 2024
644 pages
ISBN:9798400709555
DOI:10.1145/3649921
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 the author(s) 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].

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 05 July 2024

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Author Tags

  1. Bias
  2. Gameplay Balance
  3. Procedural Content Generation
  4. Racetrack Generation
  5. Racing
  6. Tiling

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FDG 2024
FDG 2024: Foundations of Digital Games
May 21 - 24, 2024
MA, Worcester, USA

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Overall Acceptance Rate 152 of 415 submissions, 37%

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