Procedural world generator for platform games

Abstract: Creating big games with a lot of content takes time. When it comes to designing levels, two time consuming tasks are creating the content for the levels and placing it in interesting ways. The placing of the content can be done procedurally and is called level generation. By using level generation, the designers need to spend less time working on the levels and if the level generation can be used at run time to create new levels it can also greatly increase the replayability of the game. This thesis is about creating a generator that places platforms and obstacles in an interesting and challenging way which can be affected by parameters that can be set by a level designer. The generator should be fast enough to be used while the game is running and the result should be reproducible. The method used has a strong focus on gameplay and the feeling of flow when playing. It generates what the player should press in the form of a rhythm for the hands. Each press represents the use of one of the character’s abilities which are then converted into appropriate placing of platforms and obstacles that would make the player use the same ability when she plays. The generator can create rooms of arbitrary size with varied difficulty. The chance of certain abilities being used and certain obstacles appearing can be controlled.