Abstract
Grammars are fundamental structures in computer science that also have many applications in procedural content generation. This chapter starts by describing a classic type of grammar, the L-system, and its application to generating plants of various types. It then describes how rules and axioms for L-systems can be created through search-based methods. But grammars are not only useful for plants. Two longer examples discuss the generation of action-adventure levels through graph grammars, and the generation of Super Mario Bros. levels through grammatical evolution.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Brown, A.: An introduction to model driven architecture (2004). URL http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/rational/library/3100.html
Byrne, J., Fenton, M., Hemberg, E., McDermott, J., O’Neill, M., Shotton, E., Nally, C.: Combining structural analysis and multi-objective criteria for evolutionary architectural design. Applications of Evolutionary Computation pp. 204–213 (2011)
Chomsky, N.: Three models for the description of language. IRE Transactions on Information Theory 2(3), 113–124 (1956)
Dormans, J.: Adventures in level design: Generating missions and spaces for action adventure games. In: Proceedings of the Foundations of Digital Games Conference (2010)
Dormans, J.: Level design as model transformation: A strategy for automated content generation. In: Proceedings of the Foundations of Digital Games Conference (2011)
Dormans, J., Leijnen, S.: Combinatorial and exploratory creativity in procedural content generation. In: Proceedings of the Foundations of Digital Games Conference (2013)
Hemberg, M., O’Reilly, U.: Extending grammatical evolution to evolve digital surfaces with Genr8. In: Proceedings of the 7th European Conference on Genetic Programming, pp. 299–308 (2004)
Hornby, G., Pollack, J.: The advantages of generative grammatical encodings for physical design. In: Proceedings of the IEEE Congress on Evolutionary Computation, pp. 600–607 (2001)
Lindenmayer, A.: Mathematical models for cellular interactions in development I. filaments with one-sided inputs. Journal of Theoretical Biology 18(3), 280–299 (1968)
Ochoa, G.: On genetic algorithms and Lindenmayer systems. In: Parallel Problem Solving from Nature, pp. 335–344. Springer (1998)
O’Neill, M., Brabazon, A.: Evolving a logo design using Lindenmayer systems, postscript & grammatical evolution. In: Proceedings of the IEEE Congress on Evolutionary Computation, pp. 3788–3794 (2008)
O’Neill, M., Ryan, C.: Grammatical evolution. IEEE Transactions on Evolutionary Computation 5(4), 349–358 (2001)
O’Neill, M., Swafford, J., McDermott, J., Byrne, J., Brabazon, A., Shotton, E., McNally, C., Hemberg, M.: Shape grammars and grammatical evolution for evolutionary design. In: Proceedings of the 11th Conference on Genetic and Evolutionary Computation, pp. 1035–1042 (2009)
Prusinkiewicz, P., Lindenmayer, A.: The Algorithmic Beauty of Plants. Springer (1990)
Rekers, J., Sch¨urr, A.: A graph grammar approach to graphical parsing. In: Proceedings of the 11th IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages, pp. 195–202 (1995)
Rozenberg, G., Salomaa, A. (eds.): Handbook of Formal Languages, vol. 3: Beyond Words. Springer (1997)
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, pp. 304–311 (2012)
Tsoulos, I., Lagaris, I.: Solving differential equations with genetic programming. Genetic Programming and Evolvable Machines 7(1), 33–54 (2006)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2016 Springer International Publishing Switzerland
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Togelius, J., Shaker, N., Dormans, J. (2016). Grammars and L-systems with applications to vegetation and levels. In: Procedural Content Generation in Games. Computational Synthesis and Creative Systems. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-42716-4_5
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-42716-4_5
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)