research-article

FUN PLEdGE: a FUNny Platformers LEvels GEnerator

Authors:

Dario Maggiorini,

Mattia Mannalà,

Laura A. RipamontiAuthors Info & Claims

CHItaly '15: Proceedings of the 11th Biannual Conference of the Italian SIGCHI Chapter

Pages 138 - 145

https://doi.org/10.1145/2808435.2808451

Published: 28 September 2015 Publication History

Abstract

In the present work, we tackle the issue of designing, prototyping and testing a general-purpose automated level editor for platform video games. Beside relieving level designers from the burden of repetitive work, Procedural Content Generation can be exploited for optimizing the development process, increasing re-playability, adapting games to specific audiences, and enabling new games mechanics. The tool proposed in this paper is aimed at producing levels that are both playable and fun. At the same time, it should guarantee maximum freedom to the level designer, and suggest corrections functional to the quality of the player experience.

References

[1]

Andrade, G., Ramalho, G., Santana, H., and Corruble, V. 2005. Automatic computer game balancing: a reinforcement learning approach. In AAMAS '05: Proceedings of the fourth international joint conference on Autonomous agents and multiagent systems. New York, NY, USA: ACM.

Digital Library

[2]

Andrade, G.; Ramalho, G.; Santana, H.; and Corruble, V. 2005. Challenge-sensitive action selection: an application to game balancing. In IAT '05: Proc. of the IEEE/WIC/ACM International Conference on Intelligent Agent Technology. Washington, DC, USA.

Digital Library

[3]

Bates, B. 2004. Game Design (2nd ed.). Thomson Course Technology.

Digital Library

[4]

Bleszinski, C. 2000. The art and science of level design, Session #4404 at GDC 2000. San Francisco.

[5]

Compton, K. and Mateas, M. 2006. Procedural Level Design for Platform Games. In Proceedings of AIIDE 2006. Marina del Rey (California).

[6]

Csikszentmihalyi, M. 1990. Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. Harper and Row. New York.

[7]

Dormans, J. 2011. Level Design as Model Transformation: A Strategy for Automated Content Generation. In Proceedings of PCGames 2011 June 28, 2011, Bordeaux, France.

Digital Library

[8]

Fisher, J. 2014. How to Make Insane, Procedural Platformer Levels. Gamasutra, http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/170049/how_to_make_insane_procedural_.php?print=1 (last visit June 6, 2015).

[9]

Fullerton, T. 2014. Game Design Workshop: a Playcentric Approach to Creating Innovative Games. 3rd ed. CRC Press, Taylor & Francis.

[10]

Hastings, E., Guha, R., and Stanley, K. 2009. Demonstrating automatic content generation in the Galactic Arms Race video game. In Proceedings of Artificial Intelligence for Interactive Digital Entertainment Conference.

Digital Library

[11]

Hudlicka, E. 2008. Affective computing for game design. In GAMEON-NA'08: Proceedings of the 4th Intl. North American Conference on Intelligent Games and Simulation.

[12]

Hunicke, R., LeBlanc, M. and Zubek, R. 2004. MDA: A Formal Approach to Game Design and Game Research. In Proceedings of the 2004 AAAI Workshop on Challenges in Game Artificial Intelligence. San Jose, California, July 2004.

[13]

Iyer, V., Bilmes, J., Wessel, D. and Wright, M. 1997. A Novel Representation for Rhythmic Structure. In Proceedings of the 23rd International Computer Music Conference, (Thessaloniki, Hellas, 1997), International Computer Music Association, 97100.

[14]

Koster, R. 2004. Theory of fun for game design. Paraglyph Press.

Digital Library

[15]

Kremers, R. 2009. Level Design: Concept, Theory, and Practice. Boca Raton, FL: Peters/CRC Press.

[16]

Lee, S., and Jung, K. 2006. Dynamic game level design using gaussian mixture model. In PRICAI'06: Proceedings of the 9th Pacific Rim international conference on Artificial intelligence, 955--959. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag.

Digital Library

[17]

Mark, B., Berechet, T., Mahlmann, T. and Togelius, J. 2015. Procedural Generation of 3D Caves for Games on the GPU. In Proceedings of Foundations of Digital Games (FDG).

[18]

Marks, J., and Hom, V. 2007. Automatic design of balanced board games. In Proceedings of AIIDE.

[19]

McEntee, C. 2012. Rational Design: The Core of Rayman Origins, Gamasutra, http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/167214/rational_design_the_core_of_.php. (last visit June 6, 2015).

[20]

Missura, O., and Gartner, T. 2009. Player modeling for intelligent difficulty adjustment. In DS '09: Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Discovery Science, 197--211. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag.

Digital Library

[21]

Persson, M. "Notch" 2011. Terrain generation, Part 1, http://notch.tumblr.com/post/3746989361/terraingenerationpart1 (last visit June 6, 2015).

[22]

Schell, J. 2015. The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses. 2nd ed. CRC Press, Taylor & Francis Group.

[23]

Shaker, N., Yannakakis, G. and Togelius, J. 2010. Towards Automatic Personalized Content Generation for Platform Games. In Proceedings of AIIDE 2010 - 6th AAAI Conf. Artif. Intell. Interact. Digital Entertain., Stanford, CA.

[24]

Smith, G., Gan, E., Othenin-Girard, A. and Whitehead, J. 2010. PCG-based Game Design: Enabling New Play Experiences through Procedural Content Generation. In Proc. of PCGames 2011 June 28, 2011, Bordeaux, France.

Digital Library

[25]

Smith, G., Othenin-Girard, A., Whitehead, J. and Wardrip-Fruin, N. 2012. PCG-Based Game Design: Creating Endless Web. In Proceedings of Foundations of Digital Games 2012 (FDG '12).

Digital Library

[26]

Smith, G.; Treanor, M.; Whitehead, J.; and Mateas, M. 2009. Rhythm-based level generation for 2D platformers. In Proceedings of the 2009 Int'l Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games.

Digital Library

[27]

Smith, G., Whitehead, J., Treanor, M., March, J. and Cha, M. 2011. Launchpad: A Rhythm-Based Level Generator for 2D Platformers. IEEE Transactions on computational intelligence and AI in games, Vol. 3, No. 1.

[28]

Smith, G. and Whitehead, J. 2010. Analyzing the Expressive Range of a Level Generator. In Proceedings of the 2010 Workshop on Procedural Content Generation in Games, New York. ACM.

Digital Library

[29]

Smith, G., Whitehead, J. and Mateas, M. 2011. Tanagra: Reactive Planning and Constraint Solving for Mixed-Initiative Level Design. IEEE Transactions on computational intelligence and AI in games, Vol. 3, No. 3.

[30]

Spronck, P., Ponsen, M., Sprinkhuizen-Kuyper, I. and Postma, E. 2006. Adaptive game AI with dynamic scripting. Mach. Learn. 63(3): 217--248.

Digital Library

[31]

Sweetser, P., Wyeth, P. 2005. GameFlow: A Model for Evaluating Player Enjoyment in Games. Computers in Entertainment (CIE) Theoretical and Pratical Computer Applications in Entertainment, Vol. 3, No. 3.

Digital Library

[32]

Thorn, A. 2010. Game engine design and implementation. 1st ed., London, UK Jones & Bartlett Pub.

[33]

Togelius, J.; De Nardi, R.; and Lucas, S. M. 2007. Towards automatic personalised content creation in racing games. In Proceedings of the IEEE Symposium on Computational Intelligence and Games.

[34]

Togelius, J., Kastbjerg, E., Schedl, D. and Yannakakis, G. N. 2011. What is Procedural Content Generation? Mario on the borderline. In Proceedings of PCGames 2011 June 28, 2011, Bordeaux, France.

Digital Library

[35]

Togelius, J., and Schmidhuber, J. 2008. An experiment in automatic game design. In Proceedings of CIG'08: IEEE Symposium on Computational Intelligence and Games.

[36]

Toy, M. et al., 1980. Rogue (PC Game).

[37]

Yannakakis, G., and Hallam, J. 2009. Real-time Game Adaptation for Optimizing Player Satisfaction. IEEE Transactions on Computational Intelligence and AI in Games 1(2):121--133.

[38]

Maggiorini, D., Nigro, A., Ripamonti, L. A. and Trubian, M. 2012. The Perfect Looting System: looking for a Phoenix? In Proc. IEEE Conference on Computational Intelligence and Games (CIG 2012).

[39]

Maggiorini, D., Nigro, A., Ripamonti, L. A. and Trubian, M. 2012. Loot Distribution in Massive Online Games: Foreseeing Impacts on the Players Base. In Proc. of ICCCN 2012.

[40]

Bartle, R. A. 2003. Designing Virtual Worlds. New Riders Publishing, Indianapolis (Indiana).

Digital Library

Cited By

Nuijten RVan Gorp PKhanshan ALe Blanc Pvan den Berg PKemperman ASimons M(2022)Evaluating the Impact of Adaptive Personalized Goal Setting on Engagement Levels of Government Staff With a Gamified mHealth Tool: Results From a 2-Month Randomized Controlled TrialJMIR mHealth and uHealth10.2196/2880110:3(e28801)Online publication date: 31-Mar-2022
https://doi.org/10.2196/28801
Ripamonti LDistefano FTrubian MMaggiorini DGadia D(2021)DRAGON: diversity regulated adaptive generator onlineMultimedia Tools and Applications10.1007/s11042-021-10620-w80:26-27(34933-34969)Online publication date: 1-Nov-2021
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1007/s11042-021-10620-w
Mazza CRipamonti LMaggiorini DGadia DPaternò FSpano LArdito CSantoro C(2017)FUN PLEdGE 2.0Proceedings of the 12th Biannual Conference on Italian SIGCHI Chapter10.1145/3125571.3125592(1-9)Online publication date: 18-Sep-2017
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3125571.3125592
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

FUN PLEdGE: a FUNny Platformers LEvels GEnerator

Recommendations

FUN PLEdGE 2.0: a FUNny Platformers LEvels GEnerator (Rhythm Based)
CHItaly '17: Proceedings of the 12th Biannual Conference on Italian SIGCHI Chapter

Procedural Content Generation is quite diffused in the field of video games design and development, since it can help in relieving designers from the burden of repetitive work, optimizing the development process, increasing re-playability, adapting ...
The effect of leaderboard ranking on players' perception of gaming fun
OCSC'13: Proceedings of the 5th international conference on Online Communities and Social Computing

Although fun is desirable in nearly all commercial games, defining it and actually getting it into a game can prove difficult. Developers have added multiplayer features to their games since the beginning of the industry in an attempt to create fun, but ...
The interplay between immersion and appeal in video games

A 2í 2 study on immersion and appeal of video games is presented.Immersion and appeal are found to be highly related.Immersion is found to be unaffected by playing experience.Appeal is found to be affected both by game played and playing experience. ...

Comments

Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

cover image ACM Other conferences

CHItaly '15: Proceedings of the 11th Biannual Conference of the Italian SIGCHI Chapter

September 2015

195 pages

ISBN:9781450336840

DOI:10.1145/2808435

General Chairs:
Paolo Bottoni,
Tiziana Catarci,
Program Chairs:
Maria De Marsico,
Daniela Fogli

Copyright © 2015 ACM.

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 ACM 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]

In-Cooperation

Sapienza: Sapienza University of Rome

Publisher

Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 28 September 2015

Permissions

Request permissions for this article.

Request Permissions

Check for updates

Author Tags

Qualifiers

Research-article
Research
Refereed limited

Conference

CHItaly 2015

CHItaly 2015: 11th biannual Conference of the Italian SIGCHI Chapter

September 28 - 30, 2015

Rome, Italy

Acceptance Rates

CHItaly '15 Paper Acceptance Rate 31 of 59 submissions, 53%;

Overall Acceptance Rate 109 of 242 submissions, 45%

Contributors

Other Metrics

View Article Metrics

Bibliometrics & Citations

Bibliometrics

Article Metrics

4
Total Citations
View Citations
153
Total Downloads

Downloads (Last 12 months)12
Downloads (Last 6 weeks)2

Reflects downloads up to 24 Dec 2024

Other Metrics

View Author Metrics

Citations

Cited By

Nuijten RVan Gorp PKhanshan ALe Blanc Pvan den Berg PKemperman ASimons M(2022)Evaluating the Impact of Adaptive Personalized Goal Setting on Engagement Levels of Government Staff With a Gamified mHealth Tool: Results From a 2-Month Randomized Controlled TrialJMIR mHealth and uHealth10.2196/2880110:3(e28801)Online publication date: 31-Mar-2022
https://doi.org/10.2196/28801
Ripamonti LDistefano FTrubian MMaggiorini DGadia D(2021)DRAGON: diversity regulated adaptive generator onlineMultimedia Tools and Applications10.1007/s11042-021-10620-w80:26-27(34933-34969)Online publication date: 1-Nov-2021
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1007/s11042-021-10620-w
Mazza CRipamonti LMaggiorini DGadia DPaternò FSpano LArdito CSantoro C(2017)FUN PLEdGE 2.0Proceedings of the 12th Biannual Conference on Italian SIGCHI Chapter10.1145/3125571.3125592(1-9)Online publication date: 18-Sep-2017
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3125571.3125592
Ripamonti LMannalà MGadia DMaggiorini D(2017)Procedural content generation for platformersMultimedia Tools and Applications10.1007/s11042-016-3636-376:4(5001-5050)Online publication date: 1-Feb-2017
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1007/s11042-016-3636-3

View Options

Login options

Check if you have access through your login credentials or your institution to get full access on this article.

Full Access

Get this Publication

View options

PDF

View or Download as a PDF file.

eReader

View online with eReader.

Media

Figures

Other

Tables

View Table of Contents