//These are two talks suggested to be seen by anyone in game design by Squirrel Eiserloh in his talk “GDC 2015 – Math for Game Programmers: Fast and Funky 1D Nonlinear Transformations”. They cover general game design topics on making your game feel good no matter the concept.
//Citation: [Lessin & Risi, 2015] D. Lessin and S. Risi, “Darwin’s Avatars: A Novel Combination of Gameplay and Procedural Content Generation,” 2015, pp. 329–336.
Key Terms:
Use evolved virtual creature (EVC) system from Lessin et al. reference to procedurally generate creatures that provided interesting control and locomotion problems. Originally these were piloted by an AI trying to learn how to move, but this “brain” was removed for this paper so that players could run them. Movement was determined by the activation of muscles/actuators between the procedurally generated segments of the creatures. These muscles could range in value from [0, 1], where 0 is fully relaxed and 1 is fully activated. Players would press keys to activate muscles in an attempt to move the creature.
The morphology of the creature was made up of PhysX primitive (cubes, spheres, and capsules). Body in original paper was coevolved with the locomotion system to help ensure that the creature had successful ways to move. The gameplay was compared to QWOP and Incredipede
The conclusions were: novel combination of gameplay and procedural content generation made possible by evolutionary computation, a new way of unique creature control with 3D creatures not created by the user, and game can generate novel control challenges on its own.
Citation: [Risi et al., 2016] S. Risi, J. Lehman, D. B. D’Ambrosio, R. Hall, and K. O. Stanley, “Petalz: Search-Based Procedural Content Generation for the Casual Gamer,” IEEE Transactions on Computational Intelligence and AI in Games, vol. 8, no. 3, pp. 244–255, Sep. 2016.
Key Terms:
This research explored the use of PCG for a casual, social, collection mechanic focused game. In this research it also explored the effects of PCG on markets for in game economies and translation to real world objects with 3D printing.
The game uses procedural generation along with AI to create an Interactive Evolutionary Computation (IEC) system to create the flowers in the game. The generator is a modified compositional pattern producing network (CPPN) and the evolutionary algorithm chosen was Neruoevolution of Augmenting Topologies (NEAT).
The game focuses on users breeding flowers which can be seen by other players. These other players can “like” their flowers or purchase ones that are put up for sale. Breeding is done by three methods: pollination (allow for natural mutation through a single flower), cross pollination (combine traits of two different flowers), and cloning (simply replicate a flower). The player’s selection of what and how to breed is the interactive part of this IEC system, which allows the user to employ a search-based method of exploring the PCG design space.
To help provide a goal for players, this research also looked into creating a guided categorization system using the inherent properties of the parametric PCG technique used to create these flowers. They took advantage of the fact that this technique can lead to spatial design spaces where objects near each other in the design space will also tend to have similar aesthetic attributes. They explore this further with a Self-Organizing Map (SOM).
//Youtube Link to Part 1 of Tutorial
A tutorial to look into for basic procedural generation of a galaxy in Unity. Also has some information on different variable types in C#.
Unity Link to Cellular Automata Tutorial
Tutorial directly from unity on the basics of using the procedural generation technique of cellular automata.
//Youtube Link – Evolving Particle Weapons in Galactic Arms Race | AI and Games
by: AI and Games
AI and Games briefly describes how GAR uses evolutionary algorithms to design weapons that the player likes using. The player takes the place of the fitness function to determine what is “good”. Techniques such as CPPN and cgNEAT are lightly touched upon and offer topics to be further explored.
//Notes:
Juice it or Lose it – by: Martin Jonasson and Petri PurhoThe art of screen shake – by: jan willem Nijman vlambeer
Notes:
//“Essential Mathematics for Games – A Programmers Guide” by James M. Van Verth & Lars M. Bishop
Procedurally generating a mesh starts with creating vertices, and then triangles from these vertices. Normals and UVs can be added to this data for more informed meshes. In Unity, your mesh will need a MeshFilter and MeshRenderer component. Debugging your mesh is important, and some tools in Unity to help with that are the gizmo and debug classes, moving the camera around, and turning on wireframe rendering. There are also several options to look into to either optimize your existing meshes how they are, or compute them more efficiently.
//AI Wish List: What Do Designers Want out of AI? – GDC Vault
GDC Talk with Raph Koster, Dave Mark, Richard Lemarchand, Laralyn McWilliams, Noah Falstein, and Robin Hunicke. They go over what directions they would like AI to move in in the future to further good game development.
//This is just a list of useful terminology for understanding rigid body deformations in the real world in an effort to translate them into a virtual setting, preferably for games. I am currently looking into research that uses finite element analysis and modeling techniques in order to create physically accurate deformations in real-time in a video game setting.
//DefKit – Deformable Bodies Toolkit for Unity [v0.2] – FEM and SBD
Plugin for Unity that uses FEM to deform solid bodies.
Fractuccino – Real time fracturing for Unity
Tool that attempts to allow for real time fracturing of solid objects in Unity. This tool is based on methods that were researched by Matthias Muller, Nuttapong Chentanez, and Tae-Yong Kim in the PhysX team.
//Brackeys Tutorial on ProGrids – Youtube
Progrids is a tool that can be obtained for free on the Unity asset store. It allows you to have a grid-system in Unity for constructing your scenes. This can be useful for basic level design and simply keeping items in line with each other.This can be extremely helpful for prototyping and grayboxing level designs, or even full game creation, especially in a 2D sprite/tile setting.