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Talakat: bullet hell generation through constrained map-elites

Published: 02 July 2018 Publication History

Abstract

We describe a search-based approach to generating new levels for bullet hell games, which are action games characterized by and requiring avoidance of a very large amount of projectiles. Levels are represented using a domain-specific description language, and search in the space defined by this language is performed by a novel variant of the Map-Elites algorithm which incorporates a feasible-infeasible approach to constraint satisfaction. Simulation-based evaluation is used to gauge the fitness of levels, using an agent based on best-first search. The performance of the agent can be tuned according to the two dimensions of strategy and dexterity, making it possible to search for level configurations that require a specific combination of both. As far as we know, this paper describes the first generator for this game genre, and includes several algorithmic innovations.

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cover image ACM Conferences
GECCO '18: Proceedings of the Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference
July 2018
1578 pages
ISBN:9781450356183
DOI:10.1145/3205455
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]

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Publication History

Published: 02 July 2018

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Author Tags

  1. bullet hell
  2. constraint map-elites
  3. description language
  4. framework

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Overall Acceptance Rate 1,669 of 4,410 submissions, 38%

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Cited By

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  • (2024)Preference-Learning Emitters for Mixed-Initiative Quality-Diversity AlgorithmsIEEE Transactions on Games10.1109/TG.2023.326445716:2(303-316)Online publication date: Jun-2024
  • (2024)Baba is Y'all 2.0: Design and Investigation of a Collaborative Mixed-Initiative SystemIEEE Transactions on Games10.1109/TG.2022.322352716:1(75-89)Online publication date: Mar-2024
  • (2024)A System for Orchestrating Multiple Procedurally Generated Content for Different Player ProfilesIEEE Transactions on Games10.1109/TG.2022.321378116:1(64-74)Online publication date: Mar-2024
  • (2024)MAP-Elites with Transverse Assessment for Multimodal Problems in Creative DomainsArtificial Intelligence in Music, Sound, Art and Design10.1007/978-3-031-56992-0_26(401-417)Online publication date: 3-Apr-2024
  • (2023)Fast generation of centroids for MAP-ElitesProceedings of the Companion Conference on Genetic and Evolutionary Computation10.1145/3583133.3590726(155-158)Online publication date: 15-Jul-2023
  • (2023)Controllable Exploration of a Design Space via Interactive Quality DiversityProceedings of the Companion Conference on Genetic and Evolutionary Computation10.1145/3583133.3590616(167-170)Online publication date: 15-Jul-2023
  • (2023)Improving the Data Efficiency of Multi-Objective Quality-Diversity through Gradient Assistance and Crowding ExplorationProceedings of the Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference10.1145/3583131.3590470(165-173)Online publication date: 15-Jul-2023
  • (2023)Covariance Matrix Adaptation MAP-AnnealingProceedings of the Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference10.1145/3583131.3590389(456-465)Online publication date: 15-Jul-2023
  • (2023)The Right Variety: Improving Expressive Range Analysis with Metric Selection MethodsProceedings of the 18th International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games10.1145/3582437.3582453(1-11)Online publication date: 12-Apr-2023
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