Procedural content generation using patterns as objectives

Abstract

In this paper we present a search-based approach for procedural generation of game levels that represents levels as sequences of micro-patterns and searched for meso-patterns. The micro-patterns are “slices” of original human-designed levels from an existing game, whereas the meso-patters are abstractions of common design patterns seen in the same levels. This method generates levels that are similar in style to the levels from which the original patterns were extracted, while still allowing for considerable variation in the geometry of the generated levels. The evolutionary method for generating the levels was tested extensively to investigate the distribution of micro-patterns used and meso-patterns found.