A Rogue Dream: Automatically Generating Meaningful Content For Games

Abstract

Procedural content generation is often seen simply as a means to generate stuff, elaborating on or rearranging abstract data types that describe levels or modular pieces of gameplay. Generating content which is situated in an understanding of the real-world is a much harder task; it requires access to large amounts of knowledge, and a good technique for parsing and using that knowledge. In this paper we describe A Rogue Dream, a game prototype which can generate new visual content and change its design based on an input word from the player at the start of the game. We describe the game and the tools it makes use of to do this, and use the game to discuss ways in which such techniques might enable unique kinds of gameplay or new directions for intelligent design tools.