This project is a system written in python, designed to create levels or 'dungeons' for zelda like games. It takes heavy inspiration from the youtube series Boss Keys created by Mark Brown. This series specifically explores the level design in the legend of zelda games created by nintendo. However, due to the legal and technical difficulty associated with integrating code with a legend of zelda game we chose to use a different game for this project.

Below are several examples of the output of this system. Click on the images to see videos of gameplay.

One of the engines used in the development of this project is Chips Challenge. This is a 1990's era top down puzzle game. In order to integrate this game with our system we use SuperCC, and Tile World. Both of these are reprogramed versions of the original designed to work on modern hardware. SuperCC was used for macOS development and Tile World was used for PC development.

One goal of this system was to make a system that was game agnostic. In other words, the goal was to create a system that could create interesting level designs in games other than Chips Challenge. In order to achieve this we used a game prototyping project called Puzzle Script. This is a great project for creating small simple prototypes of puzzle games. We created a small game with similar mechanics to chips challenge in order to develop the abstraction layer that would let the system design levels for multiple games.

This system uses several 'Aesthetic Settings' in order to determining how a level should be generated. The goal is that these settings control the broad strokes of the levels generation rather than being overly prescriptive on how the final level looks. These settings are used to generate both a level graph (inspired by GMTK's level graphs). As well as a level space. These 2 objects are then combined into a fully realized level. This final level is then evaluated to ensure the level is winnable. Unwinnable levels are rejected and winable levels are passed to the analyser where levels are reviewed to determine their quality. We use several quality metrics to determine the 'difficulty' and 'fun-ness' of each level in this step. Levels are finally organized by difficulty to give the player a fun set of levels with a gradual challenge ramp up.

Level graphs are a key portion of the system and were inspired by GMTK's Boss Keys youtube series This graph represents the abstract critical path through a level. Squares represent barriers that players must overcome and circles represent 'keys' that allow players to overcome an obstacle. Each barrier can have one or more keys and each key must map to exactly one barrier. Barriers can be anything from any enemy to a puzzle to a actual door that must be unlocked. Keys can be actual keys but can also be other weapons or items that allow the player to overcome a barrier. The red lines in the diagram represent the connection between keys and associated barriers. Black lines represent the path a player can take through the graph. These graphs don't prescribe the physical layout, but rather an order in which keys and barriers can be encountered in the level.

The level space is the physical space that the player will move around. This space has no information about the level graph but rather is generated as its own separate step. Each level consists of different sized/ shaped rooms with various connections. With some additional 'noise' added to keep each room unique and interesting. This space is eventually converted into a graph and the level space and level graph are merged using subgraph Isomorphism.

The final output of this system is either a .dat file or an HTML file. the .dat file can be used to player the generated levels in either SuperCC or Tile World. The file follows the conventions of the original chips challenge level files. HTML files contain all the code to play the small game created using Puzzle Script. This file will also contain the levels generated by the system.

A small rating system was included in this project to make it easy to see how tweaks to the aesthetic settings modify the quality of the produced levels. Currently this system is fairly limited and only supports ratings from the two creators of the project.

This project can be configured by creating a config.json file in the working directory of the project. example-config.json is provided as an example of what this file should contain.

This project contains a pdf writeup on how this project qualify itself as computationally creative. you can find the full paper here

• Add enemies
• Allow the user to provide some interesting layout information
• Rate a bunch of levels and try to figure out what makes a level good