Multiobjective Evolutionary Map Design for Cube 2: Sauerbraten

Abstract

Map design is a major challenge in the development of a successful multiplayer first-person shooter. In fact, it has a large impact on the game dynamics and deeply affects the player experience. In this paper, we present a search-based procedural content generation approach to the map design problem in Cube 2: Sauerbraten , an open-source first-person shooter. Extending previous works introduced in the literature, we propose several design objectives to evaluate the maps as well as a novel methodology to compute them. To test our approach, we designed two different design problems that require to deal with conflicting objectives (i.e., balancing, pacing, and achievement of long kill streaks) and with players using different playing styles. The results are promising as they show that our approach, exploiting multiobjective evolution, is able to explore effectively the map design space and to provide maps that feature interesting tradeoffs between the conflicting objectives.