Settlement Generation in Minecraft

Abstract: This paper explores graph grammar and constructive solutions for settlement generation in Minecraft. It uses graph grammar to flatten parts of the surface in order to increase the space for the buildings. Buildings are then generated with a constructive solution that follows a step-by-step model where different parts of the building are created in a certain order. Different parts include the shape of the foundation itself, the walls, the roof and the furniture. The algorithm picks which blocks to use on different parts of the house through an object called district palette. The buildings are divided up into areas called districts, where all the houses within the district follow a similar aesthetic style. The goal is to compare our solution with existing solutions from the Generative Design in Minecraft (GDMC) competition to see how it holds up against the other submissions. To evaluate, a user study was performed where each jury has to score four criteria: adaptivity, functionality, evocative narrative, and aesthetics. The results show that the solution had a strong aesthetics but fell behind in adaptivity, functionality, and evocative narrative. Most of it was due to not being able to generate different structures, and not cleaning up the trees around the buildings and the roads.