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Procedural generation of dungeons’ maps and locked-door missions through an evolutionary algorithm validated with players

2021; Elsevier BV; Volume: 180; Linguagem: Inglês

10.1016/j.eswa.2021.115009

1873-6793

Leonardo T. Pereira, Paulo Victor de Souza Prado, Rafael Miranda Lopes, Cláudio Fabiano Motta Toledo,

Educational Games and Gamification

• Single Evolutionary Algorithm encoding able to create procedural dungeon and mission. • Accurately create feasible dungeons of many sizes, linearity and locked-door puzzles. • A game prototype was developed and used for experiments with players. • Users evaluated the created content as human-made and fun as classic game levels. • Generated content allows a more complete exploration when compared to classic levels. The present research introduces an evolutionary algorithm able to procedurally generate dungeon maps containing locked door missions. The evolutionary algorithm evolves a tree structure, which encodes dungeons, aiming to generate levels close to the input configuration provided by a game designer. The tree structure holds information about the number of rooms, connections between them, and their position within a 2D map. The proposed encoding also allows evolving semantic information about the narrative of the game. This is done by feasibly setting keys and locks throughout the dungeons for locked door missions. The generated dungeons are then evaluated computationally and as a proof of concept using an adventure game prototype. A total of 70 players evaluated the contents and the results show that the procedurally generated levels are perceived as more human-made, fun, and difficult than their human-made counterparts for most cases.