Automated Content Generation Dennis Dedaj HAW Informatik Master Anwendungen 2

Agenda Introduction Pervasive Role Play Game Motivation What kind of content? Technologies for Automated Content Generation Map Fragmentation Content distribution 21. September September September 2015Automated Content Generation2

Pervasive Gaming ‘The world Within’ Aspects of PG from [Walt05] Mobile Play everywhere Distributed Player versus Player Persistence The world is always available Transmediality 21. September September September 2015Automated Content Generation3

Motivation Pervasive Gaming Project Pervasive Role-Play-Game ‘The World Within’ Avatars life in an ‘empty’ virtual reality No time to populate the virtual reality No motivation to populate it manually But motivation to populate it automated AW 1 continued… ‘Game Engineering’ Authoring tools 4Automated Content Generation21. September September September 2015

What kind of content? Buildings Hotels, ruins, supermarkets, tool shops, bars … Breed centres Lakes, rivers, caves … Opponents (NPC) Stories Paths through the world annotated with narrative content Quests / Player-Tasks Generation of puzzles 5Automated Content Generation21. September September September 2015

Technologies for Automated Content Generation Map Fragmentation Geographic Information Systems - GIS ColourMaps Content distribution Cellular Automata Agents Simple Random 6Automated Content Generation21. September September September 2015

Map Fragmentation Recognize map areas for content to be generated Define task/quest/story paths Mark unreachable areas Detect environmental parameters 7Automated Content Generation21. September September September 2015

Geographic Information Systems Relative ‘new’ technology Public interfaces under development KML [GoEa09] GML [OpGe09] Huge amount of data … climate / earth related united states and canada Less regional and local data granularitycoverage Do those maps know what fun is? 21. September September September 2015Automated Content Generation8

ColourMaps Martin Flintham, University of Nottingham [Flin05] Authoring of Location-Based Games by simple colouring of physical game maps Association of Location-Based triggers with areas of a physical map Quick configuration of new physical areas Live orchestration of games in real-time Dealing with the inherent uncertainty of GPS 21. September September September 2015Automated Content Generation9

ColourMaps Can You See Me Now? [CaYo08] Mixed Reality Game Goal: Runners have to catch all Players Content: Cities with Buildings 21. September September September 2015Automated Content Generation10 [BeMa05]

ColourMaps 21. September September September 2015Automated Content Generation11 Game Designer defines Start Positions Server searches Map for Start Positions When a player enters the game a random position will be assigned Easy weighting Easy modifying [Flin05]

ColourMaps 21. September September September 2015Automated Content Generation12 Game Designer defines accessable areas Position of runners will be filtered For example: Mapping a forbidden point to the nearest point outside [Flin05]

ColourMaps Uncle Roy All Around You Goal: Players have to find Uncle Roy Content: Cities with clues for defined areas While Player move through cities the system gives clues depending on the position of the player 21. September September September 2015Automated Content Generation13

ColourMaps Clue Trails Game Designer walks through physical area, writes clues and associates a colour 21. September September September 2015Automated Content Generation14 [Flin05]

ColourMaps Clue Trails Game Designer walks through physical area, writes clues and associates a colour Players move through physical or virtual areas Each movement into a different ‘clue area’ throws an event 21. September September September 2015Automated Content Generation15 [Flin05]

ColourMaps Multilevel Clue Trails Player moves into the same area again, a different clue is given 21. September September September 2015Automated Content Generation16 [Flin05]

ColourMaps - Overview Content regions defined in a xml file Multiple layers offer flexibility 21. September September September 2015Automated Content Generation17 [Flin05]

Map Fragmentation Trade-OffColourMaps fast mediation, game designer know the tools not completely automated full immersion control Geographic Information System higher complexity inaccurate completely automated 21. September September September 2015Automated Content Generation18

Content distribution Simple random algorithms Cellular Automata Agents 21. September September September 2015Automated Content Generation19

Simple random algorithms Pro no complexity fast generation Contra lesser fun continous immersion 21. September September September 2015Automated Content Generation20 [MaNo05]

Cellular Automata Pro very different generation probably more fun various immersion Contra can be complex long computation time 21. September September September 2015Automated Content Generation21 [MaNo05]

Agents Pro realistic generation probably more fun various immersion Contra can be complex long computation time complex definition 21. September September September 2015Automated Content Generation22 [MaNo05]

Vision / Ideas Cellular Automata Instancing opponents More dimensions O(n)-complexityAgents Instancing buildings Looks for hotels and other real world entities User mediated content StoriesPaths Instantiation depends on amount of users at specific places 21. September September September 2015Automated Content Generation23

Bibliography [Dedj08]Dedaj, Dennis: Game Engineering, hamburg.de/~ubicomp/projekte/master2008/dedaj/bericht.pdf, access on http://users.informatik.haw- hamburg.de/~ubicomp/projekte/master2008/dedaj/bericht.pdf [pcg08] access on [CaYo08] access on [Frank08] access on [Blas08] access on [UnRo08] access on [Flin05]Flintham, Martin: Painting the Town Red: Configuring Location-Based Games by Colouring Maps, ACE '05: Proceedings of the 2005 ACM SIGCHI International Conference on Advances in computer entertainment technology, pages: 9-18, 2005, Valencia, Spain [Walt05]Walther, Bo Kampmann: Reflections On the Methodology Of Pervasive Gaming, publishedin: ACE’05 Proceedings of the 2005 ACM SIGCHI, pages176‐179, 2005 [BeMa05]Steve Benford and Carsten Magerkurth and Peter Ljungstrand: Bridging the physical and digital in pervasive gaming, Commun. ACM, Vol. 48, No. 3, pages 54-57, 2005, New York, NY, USA [OpGe09] access on [GeEa09] access on [MaNo05 ] Charles M. Macal and Michael J. North: Tutorial on Agent-Based Modelling and Simulation, WSC '05: Proceedings of the 37th conference on Winter simulation, pages 2-15, 2005, Orlando, Florida, USA 21. September September September 2015Automated Content Generation24

Vielen Dank für die Aufmerksamkeit! 21. September September September 2015Automated Content Generation25