GAMEON'2015, December 2-4 , 2015, University of Amsterdam (UvA), Amsterdam, The Netherlands, Conference Tutorials

 

Conference Tutorials

Building games with Casanova

 

Mohamed Abbadi, Giuseppe Maggiore and Pieter Spronck
Tilburg University, Tilburg, The Netherlands

"Casanova" -- is a computer language especially developed to create computer games with a quality which is comparable to those of good Indie developers, but without the extensive knowledge required of game development. This language has been developed by PhD students and is freely available for download. It is multi-platform (because it uses Unity as an interface) and its performance is better than C#.

Self-Promotion -- How to tell your story and present yourself or your goal(s) with an interactive game

S.V. Bhikharie, A. Eliëns & M.R. van de Watering

Create your own story-driven interactive game using Ximpel in 1 hour of medium intense work

Level generation based on model transformations

Daniël Karavolos, MSc. and Anders Bouwer
University of Applied Sciences Amsterdam
Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Concept

The goal of the worksop/tutorial is to introduce participants to the fundamentals of Procedural Content Generation (PCG) based on generative grammars, have them experience an example of such a system first-hand, and discuss the potential of this approach for various areas of procedural content generation for games. The principles and examples are based on Ludoscope, a software tool developed at the HvA by Dr. Joris Dormans, e.a.

Duration: 2 hours

Overview

We will use the first 30 minutes to explain the basics of how to use generative grammars to generate levels. The principles of these grammars and model transformations will be demonstrated by means of the level generation system of Spelunky, which we have modeled in Ludoscope.

Spelunky focuses solely on the generation of geometry, but grammar-based systems can also be used to transform more abstract concepts of level design into level geometry. In the next hour, the participants will be able to get some hands-on experience with Ludoscope. The assignment will be to generate a Mario-like level based on specific requirements, adapted to the interests of workshop participants.

Finally, we are interested in the participants’ evaluation of this approach to PCG. We will use the last 20 minutes to discuss alternative techniques, and possible applications to other areas of PCG, like asset creation, scripting and game generation.

Workshop participants are asked to bring a (PC) laptop to work on during the workshop, and are encouraged to work in pairs.