Skip to main content

The search-based approach

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
Procedural Content Generation in Games

Part of the book series: Computational Synthesis and Creative Systems ((CSACS))

Abstract

Search-based procedural content generation is the use of evolutionary computation and similar methods to generate game content. This chapter gives an overview of this approach to PCG, and lists a number of core considerations for developing a search-based PCG solution. In particular, we discuss how to best represent content so that the content space becomes searchable, and how to create an evaluation function that allows for effective search. Three longer examples of using search-based PCG to evolve content for specific games are given.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 39.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD 69.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Preview

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

References

  1. Blizzard Entertainment, Mass Media: (1998). StarCraft, Blizzard Entertainment and Nintendo

    Google Scholar 

  2. Boden, M.A.: The creative mind: Myths and mechanisms. Psychology Press (2004)

    Google Scholar 

  3. Browne, C., Maire, F.: Evolutionary game design. IEEE Transactions on Computational Intelligence and AI in Games, 2(1), 1–16 (2010)

    Google Scholar 

  4. Cardamone, L., Loiacono, D., Lanzi, P.L.: Interactive evolution for the procedural generation of tracks in a high-end racing game. In: Proceedings of the 13th Annual Conference on Genetic and Evolutionary Computation, pp. 395–402. ACM (2011)

    Google Scholar 

  5. Cardamone, L., Yannakakis, G.N., Togelius, J., Lanzi, P.: Evolving interesting maps for a first person shooter pp. 63–72 (2011)

    Google Scholar 

  6. Csikszentmihalyi, M.: Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. Harper & Row (1991)

    Google Scholar 

  7. Deb, K., Pratap, A., Agarwal, S., Meyarivan, T.: A fast and elitist multiobjective genetic algorithm: NSGA-II. Evolutionary Computation, IEEE Transactions on 6(2), 182–197 (2002)

    Google Scholar 

  8. Eiben, A.E., Smith, J.E.: Introduction to Evolutionary Computing. Springer (2003)

    Google Scholar 

  9. Hansen, N., Ostermeier, A.: Completely derandomized self-adaptation in evolution strategies. Evolutionary Computation 9(2), 159–195 (2001)

    Google Scholar 

  10. Hastings, E.J., Guha, R., Stanley, K.: Evolving content in the Galactic Arms Race video game. In: Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Computational Intelligence and Games, pp. 241–248. IEEE (2009)

    Google Scholar 

  11. Koster, R.: A Theory of Fun for Game Design. Paraglyph Press (2004)

    Google Scholar 

  12. Mahlmann, T., Togelius, J., Yannakakis, G.N.: Modelling and evaluation of complex scenarios with the Strategy Game Description Language. In: Computational Intelligence and Games (CIG), 2011 IEEE Conference on, pp. 174–181. IEEE (2011)

    Google Scholar 

  13. Martinez, H., Yannakakis, G.N.: Mining multimodal sequential patterns: A case study on affect detection. In: Proceedings of the 13th International Conference in Multimodal Interaction. ACM (2011)

    Google Scholar 

  14. Nintendo Creative Department: (1985). Super Mario Bros., Nintendo

    Google Scholar 

  15. O’Neill, M., Ryan, C.: Grammatical evolution. IEEE Transactions on Evolutionary Computation 5(4), 349–358 (2001)

    Google Scholar 

  16. PCG Wiki: Procedural content generation wiki. URL http://pcg.wikidot.com/

  17. Persson, M.: Infinite Mario Bros. URL http://www.mojang.com/notch/mario/

  18. Poli, R., Langdon, W.B., McPhee, N.F.: A Field Guide to Genetic Programming (2008)

    Google Scholar 

  19. Shaker, N., Nicolau, M., Yannakakis, G.N., Togelius, J., O’Neill, M.: Evolving levels for Super Mario Bros. using grammatical evolution. In: Proceedings of the IEEE Conference on Computational Intelligence and Games (CIG), pp. 304–311. IEEE (2012)

    Google Scholar 

  20. Shaker, N., Togelius, J., Yannakakis, G.N.: Towards automatic personalized content generation for platform games. In: Proceedings of the AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Interactive Digital Entertainment (AIIDE). AAAI (2010)

    Google Scholar 

  21. Shaker, N., Yannakakis, G.N., Togelius, J., Nicolau, M., ONeill, M.: Fusing visual and behavioral cues for modeling user experience in games. IEEE Transactions on Systems Man, and Cybernetics 43(6), 1519–1531 (2012)

    Google Scholar 

  22. Sorenson, N., Pasquier, P.: The evolution of fun: Automatic level design through challenge modeling. In: Proceedings of the First International Conference on Computational Creativity (ICCCX), pp. 258–267. ACM (2010)

    Google Scholar 

  23. Sorenson, N., Pasquier, P., DiPaola, S.: A generic approach to challenge modeling for the procedural creation of video game levels. IEEE Transactions on Computational Intelligence and AI in Games 3(3), 229–244 (2011)

    Google Scholar 

  24. Togelius, J., De Nardi, R., Lucas, S.: Towards automatic personalised content creation for racing games. In: IEEE Symposium on Computational Intelligence and Games, 2007. CIG 2007, pp. 252–259. IEEE (2007)

    Google Scholar 

  25. Togelius, J., Nardi, R.D., Lucas, S.M.: Making racing fun through player modeling and track evolution. In: Proceedings of the SAB’06 Workshop on Adaptive Approaches for Optimizing Player Satisfaction in Computer and Physical Games (2006)

    Google Scholar 

  26. Togelius, J., Preuss, M., Beume, N., Wessing, S., Hagelbäck, J., Yannakakis, G.N.: Multiobjective exploration of the StarCraft map space. In: Proceedings of the IEEE Conference on Computational Intelligence and Games (CIG), pp. 265–272 (2010)

    Google Scholar 

  27. Togelius, J., Preuss, M., Beume, N.,Wessing, S., Hagelbäck, J., Yannakakis, G.N., Grappiolo, C.: Controllable procedural map generation via multiobjective evolution. Genetic Programming and Evolvable Machines 14(2), 245–277 (2013)

    Google Scholar 

  28. Togelius, J., Yannakakis, G.N., Stanley, K.O., Browne, C.: Search-based procedural content generation. In: Proceedings of EvoApplications. Springer LNCS (2010)

    Google Scholar 

  29. Woodbury, R.F.: Searching for designs: Paradigm and practice. Building and Environment 26(1), 61–73 (1991)

    Google Scholar 

  30. Wright, W.: The future of content. Talk at the 2005 Game Developers Conference. http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1019981/The-Future-of-Content (2005)

  31. Yannakakis, G.N., Hallam, J.: Entertainment modeling in physical play through physiology beyond heart-rate. Affective Computing and Intelligent Interaction pp. 254–265 (2007)

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Julian Togelius .

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2016 Springer International Publishing Switzerland

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

Togelius, J., Shaker, N. (2016). The search-based approach. In: Procedural Content Generation in Games. Computational Synthesis and Creative Systems. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-42716-4_2

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-42716-4_2

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-42714-0

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-42716-4

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics