Title
Towards generating arcade game rules with VGDL
Abstract
We describe an attempt to generate complete arcade games using the Video Game Description Language (VGDL) and the General Video Game Playing environment (GVG-AI). Games are generated by an evolutionary algorithm working on genotypes represented as VGDL descriptions. In order to direct evolution towards good games, we need an evaluation function that accurately estimates game quality. The evaluation function used here is based on the differential performance of several game-playing algorithms, or Relative Algorithm Performance Profiles (RAPP): it is assumed that good games allow good players to play better than bad players. For the purpose of such evaluations, we introduce two new game tree search algorithms, DeepSearch and Explorer; these perform very well on benchmark games and constitute a substantial subsidiary contribution of the paper. In the end, the attempt to generate arcade games is only partially successful, as some of the games have interesting design features but are barely playable as generated. An analysis of these shortcomings yields several suggestions to guide future attempts at arcade game generation.
Year
Venue
Field
2015
IEEE Conference on Computational Intelligence and Games
Video game graphics,Combinatorial game theory,Game mechanics,Video game design,Simulation,Computer science,Video game development,Repeated game,Artificial intelligence,Sequential game,Machine learning,General video game playing
DocType
ISSN
Citations 
Conference
2325-4270
8
PageRank 
References 
Authors
0.51
15
4
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Thorbjørn S. Nielsen1331.93
Gabriella A. B. Barros2555.89
Julian Togelius32765219.94
Mark J. Nelson4364.38