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Message: 2828

Author: filsoft_2000

Date: 01/05/2002

Subject: Re: Abstract JSW rooms / Psuedo-random JSW designer

 

A (non-trivial) pseudo-random room-generator would have to be
semi-automatic, i.e. it would require human post-editing.

I agree with you. There are many aspects that a human could do better
than a computer (aesthetics for one).

Unfortunately the problem of deciding whether a given MM/JSW room is
possible to pass is NP-complete, i.e. it would require exponential
time to compute. On any given time-frame, there are six possible
moves: do nothing, walk left, walk right, jump, jump left, jump

right.

So in two time-frames there are 6^2 = 36 possible moves, in three
time-frames there are 6^3 = 216, and so on.

What would be very interesting to see is a program that could study
existing MM/JSW games and create new ones based on the rules of
gameplay and design it has learned.

Such a program could theoretically create the most difficult games
ever, and leave Broadsoft behind in the most difficult Miner Willy
games stakes! :-)

I'm interested in self-modifying code. Imagine a MM/JSW game engine
that changes the difficulty (speed and number of guardians, item
location, etc.) according to how the player is progressing.

It would take very strong heuristics to overcome such combinatorial
explosion without loss of soundness (if the algorithm says it's
possible to pass this room then it really is possible) and
completeness (if the room is possible to pass then the algorithm
says so). And yet it's amazing how a human expert can just look at a
room and decide in seconds whether it is possible to pass!

Assuming there are no invisible blocks or teleporters, yes.

But it is an interesting idea to poke random bytes into a room and
massage the resulting chaos into order. I tried it once and came up
with a tunnel-like room, but I didn't save it.

I've explored this idea with both MM and JSW but I haven't saved any
of the results.

I'm sure the technique promises much more interesting rooms when you
hit upon the right functions...

I haven't really explored pseudo-random guardian placement. All of my
experiments have been with platform and item placement. One idea I
may try is to have templates and/or patterns which the program can
use but this may result in formulaic room design, with none of the
random 'lego' design I have seen so far.

I quite like the pseudo-random JSW 48K title screen designer I wrote,
though. It often spews out pleasing garbage.

Phil

 

 

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