Talakat: Bullet Hell Generation through Constrained Map-Elites Ahmed Khalifa Scott Lee New York University New York University New York City, New York New York City, New York [email protected] [email protected] Andy Nealen Julian Togelius New York University New York University New York City, New York New York City, New York [email protected] [email protected] ABSTRACT As such, games sometimes are differentiated based on the qual- We describe a search-based approach to generating new levels for ity and quantity of their content. Some genres and series exhibit bullet hell games, which are action games characterized by and this emphasis on content more strongly than others, and it is in requiring avoidance of a very large amount of projectiles. Levels this space that Procedural Content Generation (PCG) [20] can be are represented using a domain-specific description language, and particularly useful. search in the space defined by this language is performed by anovel Content in the bullet hell genre is often measured by its challenge, variant of the Map-Elites algorithm which incorporates a feasible- so developers often attempt to make their games punishingly hard. infeasible approach to constraint satisfaction. Simulation-based However, players come with a wide variety of skill levels, and so evaluation is used to gauge the fitness of levels, using an agent based many bullet hell games add multiple difficulty levels in the hope on best-first search. The performance of the agent can betuned that the game can present challenging content to a wider variety according to the two dimensions of strategy and dexterity, making of players. It is entirely possible for designers to miss the mark on it possible to search for level configurations that require a specific easier content, making it too close in difficulty to harder content or combination of both. As far as we know, this paper describes the making it too easy to be interesting. This is a fundamental challenge first generator for this game genre, and includes several algorithmic that can arise in game design, and one that may be lightened with innovations. PCG techniques. In this paper, we describe a PCG algorithm implementation de- CCS CONCEPTS signed to generate bullet patterns for bullet hell games. Of particular interest to this work is the infrastructure enabling the algorithm · Theory of computation → Evolutionary algorithms; · Com- to generate the patterns, as well as the algorithm itself, and the puting methodologies → Discrete space search; · Applied means by which created patterns are evaluated. To that end, we computing → Computer games; present Talakat, a description language designed to encapsulate KEYWORDS and describe bullet hell patterns, a variation upon the MAP-Elites algorithm that generates Talakat descriptions, and a simulation Constraint Map-Elites, Description Language, Framework, Bullet evaluation method that guides evolution toward levels of specific Hell challenge along the two dimensions strategy and dexterity. ACM Reference Format: Ahmed Khalifa, Scott Lee, Andy Nealen, and Julian Togelius. 2018. Talakat: Bullet Hell Generation through Constrained Map-Elites. In GECCO ’18: 2 BACKGROUND Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference, July 15–19, 2018, Kyoto, Bullet hell is a subgenre of shoot ’em up games, where player char- Japan. ACM, New York, NY, USA, 8 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3205455. acters fire projectiles at enemies, which similarly fire projectiles 3205470 at the player. The goal of these games is generally to defeat ene- mies while avoiding the projectiles that are fired at them. Notable 1 INTRODUCTION shoot ’em ups include SpaceWar (CoCoPaPa Soft, 1962) and Space Games of the same series or genre often share a number of game- Invaders (Taito, 1978). Bullet hell games share this fundamental play elements and can sometimes feel as if they play very similarly. concept, but are distinguished by a much higher quantity of bullets as well as higher difficulty. Notable recent bullet hell games include Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or Jamestown: Legend of the Lost Colony (Final Form Games, 2011) and classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation Touhou Tenkuushou Hidden Star in Four Seasons (Team Shanghai on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM Alice, 2017). must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, The games of the bullet hell genre typically share a single core to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]. formula [2], and the gameplay of many modern bullet hell games is GECCO ’18, July 15–19, 2018, Kyoto, Japan strikingly similar to that of games from 1995. Instead, many bullet © 2018 Association for Computing Machinery. hell games are differentiated by the quality of their levels. This ACM ISBN 978-1-4503-5618-3/18/07...$15.00 https://doi.org/10.1145/3205455.3205470 does, however, raise the question of what qualities are desirable in 1047 GECCO ’18, July 15–19, 2018, Kyoto, Japan Khalifa et al. a bullet hell level. Principal among these is playability. Games that 2.2 Simulation-based content evaluation are difficult by design often walk a fine line between satisfyingly It is also important to have means to validate and evaluate the challenging and simply impossible to complete. Playtesting is of generated content. One way to evaluate game content is simulation- course important in ensuring playability, but a game that is chal- based evaluation using AI agents. Smith et al. make use of AI agents lenging by design will require highly skilled (and harder to find) to validate the playability of a platformer level in the Tanagra players to validate a game. Additionally, players often expect bullet framework [21]. Isaksen et al. use large-scale simulation-based hell games to be challenging. Some levels heavily emphasize what evaluation to explore the space of Flappy Bird variants and identify is referred to as skillful dodging, which reward high dexterity and sets of variables that result in interesting variants [8]. Silva et al. fast reflexes. Bullet hell levels can also require the identification of also demonstrated the usage of AI-based playtesting in gameplay safe spots or planned paths, and reward intelligent planning and analysis as well as the identification of unexpected imperfections long-term strategy. in the Ticket To Ride (Days of Wonder, 2004) board game [4]. For bullet hells, one of the most important considerations is difficulty. Difficulty, however, is a complex and fraught topic. Jennings-Teats 2.1 Procedural Content Generation et al. present an implementation of Dynamic Difficulty Adjustment Both industry and research groups have developed methods of (DDA) that generates levels with a difficulty specifically tailored procedural content generation in games. In the industry, proce- toward an individual player, creating harder content as the player dural level generation has been particularly prevalent in strategy, improves. This makes use of a feedback-based model, in which dungeon-crawling, and role-playing games. PCG in games dates as player involvment and evaluation is required for the generation of far back as Rogue (Epyx, 1980), and remains a mainstay of modern difficult content [10]. Isaksen et al. present a model of difficulty as a game design. Franchises such as Diablo (Blizzard, 1996), Mystery function of dexterity and strategy, as well as an AI-based approach Dungeon (Spike Chunsoft, 1993), and Disgaea (Nippon Ichi Software, to measuring these quantities [9]. Bullet hell patterns generally fall 2003) have featured level generation as a core feature and a key neatly within this framework, emphasizing either dexterity-in the selling point. The idea of effectively infinite content is an appealing form of surgical movements or quick reactions-or strategy-in the one to both consumers and developers. form of safe spots, paths, and misdirections. Researchers have developed and presented a number of methods that can be used to generate levels in games. Especially popular in 3 TALAKAT this area of research is generation through evolutionary strategies. Talakat 1 is a description language that describes bullet hell levels. Shaker et al discuss a means of generating personalized content for A Talakat script constitutes a single bullet hell level. Figure 1 shows Super Mario Bros through grammatical evolution [19]. Browne et al. the full grammar of Talakat. Figure 2 shows an example of a Talakat present the application of genetic programming toward the proce- script. A single script is divided into two parts: the Spawner section dural generation of games through the Ludi system, resulting in the and the Boss section. development of games such as Yavalath [1]. Sentient Sketchbook utilizes a user-driven evolutionary algorithm to generate levels for 3.1 Spawners Section tile-based games [13]. Closer to the generation of bullet patterns is The spawners section contains information about the bullet spawn- the work presented by Hastings et al., which utilized online user- ers. Bullet spawners are invisible objects that are responsible for driven neuroevolution techniques to procedurally generate novel producing either bullets or additional spawners. The spawners sec- shot types for the game Galactic Arms Race [7]. We aim to use a tion consists of an array of spawner definitions. Each spawner has variation on MAP-Elites [15] with a simulation-based evaluation a unique ‘id’ to identify it, as well as parameters that define its to measure the quality and difficulty of a created level. spawning behavior. These parameters can include angle, speed, A key requirement of most procedural level generation is a rea- number of spawned objects, etc.