Mike Treanor

Rhythm-based level generation for 2D platformers

We present a rhythm-based method for the automatic generation of levels for 2D platformers, where the rhythm is that which the player feels with his hands while playing. Levels are created using a grammar-based method: first generating rhythms, then generating geometry based on those rhythms. Generation is constrained by a set of style parameters tweakable by a human designer. The approach also minimizes the amount of content that must be manually authored, instead relying on geometry components that are included in the level designers tileset and a set of jump types. Our results show that this method produces an impressive variety of levels, all of which are fully playable.

Launchpad: A Rhythm-Based Level Generator for 2-D Platformers

Launchpad is an autonomous level generator that is based on a formal model of 2-D platformer level design. Levels are built out of small segments called “rhythm groups,” which are generated using a two-tiered, grammar-based approach. These segments are pieced together into complete levels that are then rated according to a set of design heuristics. Generation can be controlled using a set of parameters that influence the level pacing and geometry. The approach minimizes the amount of content that must be manually authored: instead of piecing together large segments of a level, Launchpad uses base components that are commonly found in a number of 2-D platformers. Launchpad produces an impressive variety of levels which are all guaranteed to be playable.

Game-O-Matic: Generating Videogames that Represent Ideas

In this paper, we describe Game-O-Matic, a videogame authoring tool and generator that creates games that represent ideas. Through using a simple concept map input system, networks of nouns connected by verbs, Game-O-Matic is able to assemble simple arcade style game mechanics into videogames that represent the ideas represented in the concept map. Inspired by a view that videogames convey messages through their mechanics, Game-O-Matic makes use of the rhetorical affordances of explicitly defined abstract gameplay patterns, which we call micro-rhetorics. This paper explains how Game-O-Matic uses the concept map input to select appropriate abstract patterns of gameplay and then how these mash ups of patterns are shaped into coherent playable games that can be said to represent the users intent.

Prom Week : social physics as gameplay

In this paper, we present Prom Week, a social simulation game about the interpersonal lives of a group of high school students in the week leading up to their prom. By starting the design of the game with a theory of social interaction, Prom Week is able to present satisfying stories that reflect the players choices in a wide possibility space -- two features that rarely accompany one another. This paper reports the design details of how Prom Week utilizes social physics to achieve rich character specificity while maintaining a highly dynamic story space.

Comme il Faut 2 : a fully realized model for socially-oriented gameplay

Social games---common patterns of character interactions that modify the social environment of the story world---provide a useful abstraction when authoring a story composed of interactive characters, making it possible to create games with deep possibility spaces that are about social interaction (which would be intractable if hand-authoring all the options). In this paper, we detail the workings of a major new version of our social artificial intelligence system, Comme il Faut, that enables social game play in interactive media experiences. The workings of Comme il Faut 2 are shown, with running examples, from both knowledge representation and process perspectives. Finally, the paper concludes with a plan for evaluating and demonstrating Comme il Faut 2 through an implementation of an interactive media experience that consists of a playable social space.

The micro-rhetorics of Game-o-Matic

Micro-rhetorics are the representational units of meaning that emerge from the rhetorical affordances of videogame mechanics, abstract gameplay patterns, and thematic depiction. This paper explains the concept of micro-rhetorics, how game dynamics can be interpreted, and how designers can make use of game mechanics to express ideas through simple videogames. This theoretical framework is informed by the design of Game-O-Matic, a videogame authoring tool that generates games to represent ideas. It takes a network of basic relationships between actors and assembles simple arcade-style game mechanics into videogames that are able to make arguments and depict ideas.

Proceduralist readings: how to find meaning in games with graphical logics

Newsgames and artgames, two genres in which designers wish to communicate messages to players, often deploy procedural representation. Understanding these proceduralist games requires special attention to a games processes as well as how these interact with its theme and aesthetics. In this paper we present a method for proceduralist readings of arcade-like 2D games so that players can determine their range of intended and unintended meanings, critics can assess the strengths and weaknesses of the presented arguments, and designers can identify ways to refine their rhetorical strategies. Through identifying the components of games that can be interpreted and emphasizing where cultural considerations influence interpretations, we present a framework for meaning derivations that strive to take the entirety of a game into consideration. As demonstrated by several examples, this framework requires much more explicit and formal arguments for why a game carries a meaning and precisely where each component of ones argument came from.

Prom week

Prom Week places players in a typical high-school, abuzz with excitement over the upcoming prom. Players indirectly sculpt the social landscape by having these hapless highschoolers engage in social exchanges with each other. The results of these social exchanges are many and varied---ranging from mild fluctuations in respect to characters professing their eternal love for one another---and are informed by over 5,000 sociocultural considerations encoded in first order logic. Through massaging the interpersonal relationships and learning the personal intricacies of the characters, the player can solve a series of social puzzles; such as making the class-nerd the Prom King, or bringing peace between feuding jocks and preppies.

Kaboom! is a many-splendored thing: an interpretation and design methodology for message-driven games using graphical logics

This paper describes an explicit model for how to interpret and create simple 2D games that reasonably communicate messages through a games representational layer in a manner that is consistent with its processes. A few prominent experimental games (e.g. Kabul Kaboom, Passage) have demonstrated that when the rhetorical implications of a games processes and its representational layer are in harmony, worthwhile and coherent messages can be communicated. This paper reports the findings of an extensive analysis of Activisions Kaboom! (1981) [1] that explores its rhetorical design space in the service of developing a general method for the interpretation of simple message-driven games. The paper then shows how the application of this method to even a simple game like Kaboom! reveals an unexpected range of coherent potential messages. The paper concludes with a description of a design process and assistant tool that enables those who are not game designers, or even procedurally literate, to create simple games that present editorial and expressive statements. We see this project as a concrete step forward, both analytically and in enabling production, in the field of procedural rhetoric.