Wednesday, March 7, 2012

In The News: AI Designes an Entire Video Game


Procedural generation is nothing new in games.  Minecraft uses AI to generate the game world for the player to mess around in, and games such as Left 4 Dead use AI to place enemies.  Both of these systems follow certain parameters and work from there.  What if you could develop an entire game from scratch using this model?
Of course, this question has piqued the interest of Michael Cook, who then designed an AI system dubbed “Angelina” as a response.  From the ground up, Angelina creates the game by sections, then adding them together in order to produce the final product.  It even goes so far as to playtest each level it creates, attempting to find which ones are the most fun.
So far, the system is unable to generate things such as graphics and sounds.  Still, the final products are often similar in quality to most Facebook games.
A system like this could be invaluable in the game industry.  For one, it could help lower the monumental barrier to entry allowing even more talent and ideas in.  Small time developers, or even individuals, could use the system to help them get their ideas off the ground.  Honestly, the very idea that an AI could be programmed to make a game is intriguing.
Source:  New Scientist
Image from Google

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