Patterns, Dungeons and Generators Steve Dahlskog Staffan Björk Julian Togelius Malmö University Göteborg University New York University Faculty of Technology and Department of Applied Department of Computer Society Information Technology Science and Engineering Malmö, Sweden Göteborg, Sweden New York, NY, U.S.A
[email protected] [email protected] [email protected] ABSTRACT This paper addresses the domain of dungeons, the type of This paper analyses dungeons, of the varieties commonly levels with a spatial puzzle quality first introduced in Dun- found in role-playing games, into several sets of design pat- geons & Dragons [31] and typically found in \roguelikes" terns at different levels of abstraction. The analysis fo- such as Rogue [59], Moria [40], and Hack [24], and com- cuses on mechanical patterns that could be either straight- puter role-playing games (RPGs) such as Bard's Tale [37] forwardly instantiated or recognized by a well-defined pro- and Ultima [28]. We identify a relatively large set of de- cess. At the most concrete level a set of fundamental com- sign patterns at different sizes and levels of abstraction { ponents were identified, followed by a long list of micro- micro-, meso- and macro-patterns. The motivation for car- patterns which can be directly instantiated. Shorter lists rying out this analysis is to find patterns that can be used of meso- and macro-patterns, which can be identified me- for pattern-based or search-based dungeon generation and chanically, are also identified. The direct motivation for for this reason the granularity is finer and the level of de- this analysis is to find building blocks and objectives for tail of the pattern collection is higher than what is typical a search-based procedural dungeon generator, however we for pattern collections.