Evolving Dungeon Maps With Locked Door Missions

Abstract

The present paper proposes an evolutionary algorithm for procedural content generation of dungeon maps together with locked door missions. The algorithm evolves a tree structure which contains information of a dungeon. The aim is to converge the generated dungeons as close as possible to the input configuration set by a game designer. The dungeon holds information about rooms such as their number, connections between them and position in a 2D map (also knows as grid). It also contains relevant semantic information for generating narrative properties in the dungeon. Those are the placement of keys and locks in it, in a feasible way. Results show the algorithm is able to create dungeons within the desired configurations for a large set of different inputs. Also, they show the generated maps are perceived as human-designed, and evoke similar opinions of fun and difficulty when compared to human-designed maps.