1. Variations Forever: Flexibly Generating Rulesets from a Sculptable Design Space of Mini-games
amsmith@soe.ucsc.edu
CIG 2010 Copenhagen, Denmark
Adam M. Smith (presenter),and Michael Mateas

2. Project goal:Generate a rich space of game rulesets.
3. Offline ruleset generation example
Offline ruleset generation is part of automating the game design process.
Ludi(Browe/Maire, 2010)
Evolved board games
Simulated play for evaluation
commercially published game outputs (ex: Yavalath)
4. Online ruleset generation example
New game design idea: Explore a large space of game designs as an integrated, in-game activity!
ROM CHECK FAIL
Captain Forever
Variations Forever?
5. Inspiring work from CIG 2008
An experiment in automatic game design (Togelius/Schmidhuber at CIG 2008)
Design variables:
time/score limits
numbers of things
movement logics
collision/score effects
Evolutionary optimization of fun metric
A sample game
6. VFs design space
Design elements:
Agent types
Collision effects
Movement models
Procedural obstacle placement
Explicit victory conditions
Camera control

Variable number of agent types (each with own details and interactions)
7. Mini-game demo
8. Representing rulesets as logical terms
Rich rulesets require representing both data structures and code structures.
Symbolic terms from logic programming provide a unified representation.
9. Representing rulesets (1)
Boolean flags:
permadeath.
debug_mode.
disable_teleportation.
10. Representing rulesets (2)
Key-value mappings:
initial_health(100).
radar_range(long).
weather_model(springtime).
11. Representing rulesets (3)
Properties of / relations between objects:
damage(sword_of_might,11).
xp_for_kill(cave_rat,100).
allies(humans,elves).
12. Representing rulesets (4)
Nested expressions:
scripted_event(spawn(boss,temple),120).
achieved_when(quest_complete,and(dead(boss),holding(amulet)).
13. Representing rulesets (5)
Sets:
move(rock).move(paper).move(scissors).move(lizard).move(spock).

Sequences:

14. phase(1,movement). phase(2,combat).phase(3,diplomacy).