General video game rule generation

TLDR

The General Video Game Rule Generation problem is the inverse of General Video Game Level Generation, and separating these problems makes the hard task of generating complete games more manageable. The study introduces the General Video Game Rule Generation problem and its software framework, aiming to generate game rules that fit a given level. The framework builds on GVGAI, uses the Video Game Description Language, and offers an API with three rule generators: random, constructive, and search‑based. Early results show the constructive generator produces playable but limited rules, while the search‑based generator yields diverse but unevenly quality rulesets.

Abstract

We introduce the General Video Game Rule Generation problem, and the eponymous software framework which will be used in a new track of the General Video Game AI (GVGAI) competition. The problem is, given a game level as input, to generate the rules of a game that fits that level. This can be seen as the inverse of the General Video Game Level Generation problem. Conceptualizing these two problems as separate helps breaking the very hard problem of generating complete games into smaller, more manageable subproblems. The proposed framework builds on the GVGAI software and thus asks the rule generator for rules defined in the Video Game Description Language. We describe the API, and three different rule generators: a random, a constructive and a search- based generator. Early results indicate that the constructive generator generates playable and somewhat interesting game rules but has a limited expressive range, whereas the search- based generator generates remarkably diverse rulesets, but with an uneven quality.