Biome Generation Tool: A Mixed-Initiative Software for the Procedural Generation of Biomes

Abstract

This article presents the Biome Generation Tool (BGT), a mixed-initiative procedural content generator plugin for the Unity3D game engine that uses an Evolutionary Algorithm (EA) for the creation of biomes in videogames. A double-blind evaluation was performed with 28 videogame developers split into two groups. The experimental group received a standard BGT, while the control group received a version optimizing for the negative of the fitness function. A survey with semantic differential questions focused on AI impact, productivity, and user satisfaction was applied. The experimental group’s appreciation of the AI suggestions, perceived productivity increase, and satisfaction were significantly higher than those of the control group. From the results, we conclude that the BGT succeeds in assisting the development of biomes, generating products of acceptable quality while reducing the designer’s workload. In the future, we expect to confirm these results with a separate group of users evaluating the biomes built using BGT.