Evaluating the Perceived Immersion of Procedurally Generated Game Levels

Evaluating the Perceived Immersion of Procedurally Generated Game Levels

Evaluating the perceived immersion of procedurally generated game levels Taura J. Greig A thesis submitted to Auckland University of Technology in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Creative Technologies Table of Contents Table of Contents ............................................................................................................... i List of Figures ................................................................................................................... iii Attestation of Authorship ................................................................................................ iv Acknowledgements ........................................................................................................... v Abstract ........................................................................................................................... vii 1 Introduction .............................................................................................................. 1 2 Literature Review ...................................................................................................... 4 2.1 Games and Design ............................................................................................. 4 2.1.1 Mechanics Dynamics, Aesthetics Framework ............................................... 5 2.2 Artificial Intelligence and Games ...................................................................... 7 2.2.1 AI in commercial games ................................................................................ 8 2.2.2 AI Assisted Game Design ............................................................................. 11 2.3 Procedural Content Generation ...................................................................... 13 2.3.1 Search Based PCG........................................................................................ 16 2.3.2 Experience-Driven PCG and user evaluation .............................................. 20 2.4 Summary ......................................................................................................... 21 3 Methodology ........................................................................................................... 22 3.1 Research Objective .......................................................................................... 22 3.2 Research Methodology ................................................................................... 22 3.3 Experimental Design ....................................................................................... 23 3.3.1 MDA Framework and the use of PCG ......................................................... 23 3.3.2 Game Immersion Questionnaire ................................................................. 27 3.3.3 Hypothesis ................................................................................................... 30 3.3.4 Experimental Structure ............................................................................... 31 4 Implementation ...................................................................................................... 35 4.1 Vektor .............................................................................................................. 35 4.1.1 Objective of the game ................................................................................. 36 4.1.2 Player ........................................................................................................... 37 4.1.3 Hostile NPCs ................................................................................................ 40 4.1.4 Game Design and PCG evaluation ............................................................... 42 4.1.5 Vektor and MDA .......................................................................................... 44 4.2 Genetic Algorithm Implementation ................................................................ 44 4.2.1 Chromosome Representation ..................................................................... 44 4.2.2 Population Generation ................................................................................ 46 4.2.3 Fitness Function and Selection ................................................................... 49 4.2.4 Crossover Function ...................................................................................... 58 4.2.5 Mutation Function ...................................................................................... 60 4.2.6 GA Gameplay elements ............................................................................... 64 4.2.7 GA in PCG Taxonomy................................................................................... 65 4.3 Human Designed Levels .................................................................................. 66 4.4 Summary ......................................................................................................... 67 5 Results ..................................................................................................................... 68 5.1 Participants ..................................................................................................... 68 5.2 Playtesting groups ........................................................................................... 71 5.3 Total Immersion Analysis ................................................................................ 74 5.4 Detailed Questionnaire Analysis ..................................................................... 76 5.5 Discussion of Results ....................................................................................... 80 i 5.5.1 Genetic Algorithm ....................................................................................... 80 5.5.2 Observation of differences between PCG content and Human content .... 81 5.5.3 Individual Questions .................................................................................... 82 6 Conclusion ............................................................................................................... 84 6.1 Potential Limitations ....................................................................................... 84 6.1.1 Play test experiment ................................................................................... 85 6.1.2 Limitation in the GA .................................................................................... 85 6.1.3 Clarity of game design ................................................................................. 86 6.1.4 Game Design understanding across variants .............................................. 86 6.2 Future Work .................................................................................................... 87 6.2.1 Design of the GA ......................................................................................... 87 6.2.2 Game Design Schema and PCG ................................................................... 88 6.2.3 AI assisted game design with GA method ................................................... 89 6.2.4 Further testing............................................................................................. 90 6.3 Summary ......................................................................................................... 90 6.4 References ....................................................................................................... 91 Appendix A: Evolved Levels and Human Levels .............................................................. 97 A.1 Human Designed Level Maps .......................................................................... 97 A.2 Procedurally Generated Level Maps ............................................................. 101 Appendix B: Questionnaires .......................................................................................... 105 B.1 Pre-Participation Questionnaire ................................................................... 105 B.2 Participation Questionnaire .......................................................................... 107 Appendix C: ANOVA Results for individual questions ................................................... 112 ii List of Figures Figure 1: Screenshot of the game Vektor ....................................................................... 36 Figure 2: Image of the player in the game ...................................................................... 37 Figure 3: Image of weapons from the game ................................................................... 39 Figure 4: Examples of different Weapons being fired .................................................... 39 Figure 5: Images of Key and Ammo pickups in the game ............................................... 40 Figure 6: Image of enemies in the game ......................................................................... 41 Figure 7: Level generated by a genetic algorithm ........................................................... 45 Figure 8: An example of the mapping between the chromosome and a level .............. 46 Figure 9: Level with main space highlighted ................................................................... 51 Figure 10: Level with the start (green) and end (red) spaces highlighted ...................... 52 Figure 11: The levels longest possible distance .............................................................. 52 Figure 12: The shortest distance between the start/end and the main space .............. 53 Figure 13: Start

View Full Text

Details

  • File Type
    pdf
  • Upload Time
    -
  • Content Languages
    English
  • Upload User
    Anonymous/Not logged-in
  • File Pages
    129 Page
  • File Size
    -

Download

Channel Download Status
Express Download Enable

Copyright

We respect the copyrights and intellectual property rights of all users. All uploaded documents are either original works of the uploader or authorized works of the rightful owners.

  • Not to be reproduced or distributed without explicit permission.
  • Not used for commercial purposes outside of approved use cases.
  • Not used to infringe on the rights of the original creators.
  • If you believe any content infringes your copyright, please contact us immediately.

Support

For help with questions, suggestions, or problems, please contact us