TY - GEN

T1 - Darwin's Avatars: a Novel Combination of Gameplay and Procedural Content Generation

AU - Lessin, Dan

AU - Risi, Sebastian

PY - 2015/7/11

Y1 - 2015/7/11

N2 - The co-evolution of morphology and control for virtual creaturesenables the creation of a novel form of gameplay andprocedural content generation. Starting with a creatureevolved to perform a simple task such as locomotion andremoving its brain, the remaining body can be employed ina compelling interactive control problem. Just as we enjoythe challenge and reward of mastering helicopter flightor learning to play a musical instrument, learning to controlsuch a creature through manual activation of its actuatorspresents an engaging and rewarding puzzle. Importantly,the novelty of this challenge is inexhaustible, sincethe evolution of virtual creatures provides a way to procedurallygenerate content for such a game. An endless seriesof creatures can be evolved for a task, then have their brainsremoved to become the game’s next human-control challenge.To demonstrate this new form of gameplay and contentgeneration, a proof-of-concept game—tentatively titledDarwin’s Avatars—was implemented using evolved creaturecontent, and user tested. This implementation also provideda unique opportunity to compare human and evolved controlof evolved virtual creatures, both qualitatively and quantitatively,with interesting implications for improvements andfuture work.

AB - The co-evolution of morphology and control for virtual creaturesenables the creation of a novel form of gameplay andprocedural content generation. Starting with a creatureevolved to perform a simple task such as locomotion andremoving its brain, the remaining body can be employed ina compelling interactive control problem. Just as we enjoythe challenge and reward of mastering helicopter flightor learning to play a musical instrument, learning to controlsuch a creature through manual activation of its actuatorspresents an engaging and rewarding puzzle. Importantly,the novelty of this challenge is inexhaustible, sincethe evolution of virtual creatures provides a way to procedurallygenerate content for such a game. An endless seriesof creatures can be evolved for a task, then have their brainsremoved to become the game’s next human-control challenge.To demonstrate this new form of gameplay and contentgeneration, a proof-of-concept game—tentatively titledDarwin’s Avatars—was implemented using evolved creaturecontent, and user tested. This implementation also provideda unique opportunity to compare human and evolved controlof evolved virtual creatures, both qualitatively and quantitatively,with interesting implications for improvements andfuture work.

UR - http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2739480.2754749

M3 - Article in proceedings

SN - 978-1-4503-3472-3

SP - 329

EP - 336

BT - Proceedings of the Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference (GECCO) 2015

PB - Association for Computing Machinery

ER -