The Procedural Generation of Interesting Sokoban Levels
THE PROCEDURAL GENERATION OF INTERESTING SOKOBAN LEVELS Joshua Taylor, B.S., M.S. Dissertation Prepared for the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY UNIVERSITY OF NORTH TEXAS May 2015 APPROVED: Ian Parberry, Major Professor Robert Akl, Committee Member Armin R. Mikler, Committee Member Robert Renka, Committee Member Barrett R. Bryant, Chair of the Department of Computer Science and Engineering Costas Tsatsoulis, Dean of the College of Engineering and Interim Dean of the Toulouse Graduate School Taylor, Joshua. The Procedural Generation of Interesting Sokoban Levels. Doctor of Philosophy (Computer Science and Engineering), May 2015, 69 pp., 32 tables, 11 figures, references, 46 titles. As video games continue to become larger, more complex, and more costly to produce, research into methods to make game creation easier and faster becomes more valuable. One such research topic is procedural generation, which allows the computer to assist in the creation of content. This dissertation presents a new algorithm for the generation of Sokoban levels. Sokoban is a grid-based transport puzzle which is computational interesting due to being PSPACE-complete. Beyond just generating levels, the question of whether or not the levels created by this algorithm are interesting to human players is explored. A study was carried out comparing player attention while playing hand made levels versus their attention during procedurally generated levels. An auditory Stroop test was used to measure attention without disrupting play. Copyright 2015 by Joshua Taylor ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank Marcus Hof, David Holland, Evgeny Grigoriev, David W. Skinner, and Rick Sladkey for giving me permission to use their Sokoban levels in my study.
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