Slashdot Mirror
IEEE Introduces Mario Level-Generation Competition
bgweber writes "Last year, the IEEE conference on Computational Intelligence and Games hosted a competition to determine who could write the best AI for playing Mario levels (YouTube video). This year, the conference has expanded the competition to include a track on level generation as well, where the goal is to generate new levels online procedurally. Submitting an entry is as easy as implementing a Java interface that performs procedural content generation. The implications of this competition are techniques for greatly increasing the replayability of games, since each gameplay session could present new levels to the player."
Randomly generated dungeons are fine and generally fun because the entire point is to explore. Randomly generated Mario levels are going to be more frustrating than anything else because the AI is going to have very little knowledge of difficulty let alone themes and re-playability.
The entire point of Mario is consistent levels with well timed jumps to reach secrets. I'm not sure if I want levels generated by computers. 50 quality levels are better than 100 AI generated levels.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.