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."

Comments

Done

[gpf2]

Congratulations adventurer! Your quest is at an end for you have reached the home of NetHack.

Asshole Mario

[cosm]

I fear the day when the singularity occurs and we peons are forced to play machine generated levels like this this for the amusement of our robotic overlords.

feel kind of dumb

[michaelbuddy]

As a non-programmer, this statement is a little intimidating:

"Submitting an entry is as easy as implementing a Java interface that performs procedural content generation."

WTF am I supposed to do with this? I only clicked to this post because I like mario.

Re:feel kind of dumb

[b4k3d b34nz]

That's ok, nobody feels smart implementing a Java interface

Mod +5, Troll

Problems...

[Darkness404]

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.

Re:Problems...

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Umm...I think you might be missing the point of this track of competition. It is a given that haphazard Mario levels would not be fun to plan. Developing algorithms that randomly create fun levels is a difficult problem. Test players will play these levels and rank them. Chances are, there will be some generators that consistently create fun levels, while others will consistently create boring levels. It may be difficult to anticipate the subjective tastes of the testers, but that just adds to the challenge.

Random Levels

[LoudMusic]

I've been saying this for years! Random level generation in first person shooters, racers, and platformers doesn't seem terribly complex to me. Why hasn't anyone introduced this into a game yet?

To expand on it, random levels in first person shooters could also be changing during game play so that the 'round' never resets and the game continues endlessly. Any time a zone is unoccupied it could be redrawn. Or divide the map into a grid and randomly load the grid spaces with pre-designed sections, then when a section is free of players load a new section. The map will be constantly changing and the environment will be challenging. I believe this would effectively eliminate campers who memorize the best spots on maps and just hang out there the whole game.