Procedural generation of music-guided weapons

Abstract

Beyond the standard use of music as a passive and, sometimes, optional component of player experience the impact of music as a guide for the procedural generation of game content has not been explored yet. Being a core elicitor of player experience music can be used to drive the generation of personalized game content for a particular musical theme, song or sound effect being played during the game. In this paper we introduce a proof-of-concept game demonstrator exploring the relationship between music and visual game content across different playing behaviors and styles. For that purpose, we created a side-scroller shooter game where players can affect the relationship between projectiles' trajectories and the background music through interactive evolution. By coupling neuroevolution of augmented topologies with interactive evolution we are able to create an initial arsenal of innovative weapons. Those weapons are both interesting to play with and also create novel fusions of visual and musical aesthetics.