Skip to main content

Mapping Chess Aesthetics onto Procedurally Generated Chess-Like Games

  • Conference paper
  • First Online:
Applications of Evolutionary Computation (EvoApplications 2018)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNTCS,volume 10784))

Abstract

Variants of chess have been generated in many forms and for several reasons, such as testbeds for artificial intelligence research in general game playing. This paper uses the visual properties of chess pieces as inspiration to generate new shapes for other chess-like games, targeting specific visual properties which allude to the pieces’ in-game function. The proposed method uses similarity measures in terms of pieces’ strategic role and movement in a game to identify the new pieces’ closest representatives in chess. Evolution then attempts to minimize the distance from chess pieces’ visual properties, resulting in new shapes which combine one or more chess pieces’ visual identities. While experiments in this paper focus on two chess-like games from previous publications, the method can be used for broader generation of game visuals based on functional similarities of components to known, popular games.

J. Kowalski—Supported in part by the National Science Centre, Poland under project number 2015/17/B/ST6/01893.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 39.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

References

  1. Shaker, N., Togelius, J., Nelson, M.J.: Procedural Content Generation in Games: A Textbook and an Overview of Current Research. Springer, Cham (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-42716-4

    Book  Google Scholar 

  2. Yannakakis, G.N., Togelius, J.: Artificial Intelligence and Games. Springer, New York (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-8188-2. http://gameaibook.org

    Book  Google Scholar 

  3. Perez, D., Samothrakis, S., Togelius, J., Schaul, T., Lucas, S., Couëtoux, A., Lee, J., Lim, C., Thompson, T.: The 2014 general video game playing competition. IEEE Trans. Comput. Intell. AI Games 8(3), 229–243 (2015)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  4. Smith, A.M., Mateas, M.: Variations forever: Flexibly generating rulesets from a sculptable design space of mini-games. In: IEEE Conference on Computational Intelligence and Games (2010)

    Google Scholar 

  5. Smith, G., Whitehead, J., Mateas, M.: Tanagra: reactive planning and constraint solving for mixed-initiative level design. IEEE Trans. Comput. Intell. AI Games 3(3), 201–215 (2011)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  6. Genesereth, M., Love, N., Pell, B.: General game playing: overview of the AAAI competition. AI Mag. 26, 62–72 (2005)

    Google Scholar 

  7. Genesereth, M., Björnsson, Y.: The international general game playing competition. AI Mag. 34(2), 107–111 (2013)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  8. Nielsen, T.S., Barros, G.A.B., Togelius, J., Nelson, M.J.: Towards generating arcade game rules with VGDL. In: IEEE Conference on Computational Intelligence and Games, pp. 185–192 (2015)

    Google Scholar 

  9. Khalifa, A., Perez, D., Lucas, S., Togelius, J.: General video game level generation. In: Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference, pp. 253–259 (2016)

    Google Scholar 

  10. Khalifa, A., Green, M., Perez, D., Togelius, J.: General video game rule generation. In: IEEE Conference on Computational Intelligence and Games (2017)

    Google Scholar 

  11. Pitrat, J.: Realization of a general game-playing program. In: IFIP Congress, pp. 1570–1574 (1968)

    Google Scholar 

  12. Pell, B.: Metagame in symmetric chess-like games. In: Heuristic Programming in Artificial Intelligence: The Third Computer Olympiad (1992)

    Google Scholar 

  13. Björnsson, Y.: Learning rules of simplified boardgames by observing. In: European Conference on Artificial Intelligence, FAIA, vol. 242, pp. 175–180 (2012)

    Google Scholar 

  14. Kowalski, J., Szykuła, M.: Evolving chess-like games using relative algorithm performance profiles. In: Squillero, G., Burelli, P. (eds.) EvoApplications 2016, Part I. LNCS, vol. 9597, pp. 574–589. Springer, Cham (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-31204-0_37

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  15. Lopes, P., Liapis, A., Yannakakis, G.N.: Targeting horror via level and soundscape generation. In: AAAI Artificial Intelligence for Interactive Digital Entertainment Conference (2015)

    Google Scholar 

  16. Karavolos, D., Liapis, A., Yannakakis, G.N.: Learning the patterns of balance in a multi-player shooter game. In: FDG workshop on Procedural Content Generation in Games (2017)

    Google Scholar 

  17. Kowalski, J., Żarczyński, Ł., Kisielewicz, A.: Evaluating chess-like games using generated natural language descriptions. In: Winands, M.H.M., van den Herik, H.J., Kosters, W.A. (eds.) ACG 2017. LNCS, vol. 10664, pp. 127–139. Springer, Cham (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-71649-7_11

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  18. Liapis, A., Yannakakis, G.N., Togelius, J.: Towards a generic method of evaluating game levels. In: AAAI Artificial Intelligence for Interactive Digital Entertainment Conference (2013)

    Google Scholar 

  19. Summerville, A.J., Mateas, M.: Sampling hyrule: multi-technique probabilistic level generation for action role playing games. In: AIIDE Workshop on Experimental AI in Games (2015)

    Google Scholar 

  20. Togelius, J., Yannakakis, G.N., Stanley, K.O., Browne, C.: Search-based procedural content generation: a taxonomy and survey. IEEE Trans. Comput. Intell. AI Games 3(3), 172–186 (2011)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  21. Liapis, A., Yannakakis, G.N., Togelius, J.: Computational game creativity. In: International Conference on Computational Creativity (2014)

    Google Scholar 

  22. Togelius, J., Schmidhuber, J.: An experiment in automatic game design. In: IEEE Symposium on Computational Intelligence and Games (2008)

    Google Scholar 

  23. Cook, M., Colton, S., Raad, A., Gow, J.: Mechanic miner: reflection-driven game mechanic discovery and level design. In: Esparcia-Alcázar, A.I. (ed.) EvoApplications 2013. LNCS, vol. 7835, pp. 284–293. Springer, Heidelberg (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-37192-9_29

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  24. Browne, C., Maire, F.: Evolutionary game design. IEEE Trans. Comput. Intell. AI Games 2(1), 1–16 (2010)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  25. Nielsen, T.S., Barros, G.A.B., Togelius, J., Nelson, M.J.: General video game evaluation using relative algorithm performance profiles. In: Mora, A.M., Squillero, G. (eds.) EvoApplications 2015. LNCS, vol. 9028, pp. 369–380. Springer, Cham (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16549-3_30

    Google Scholar 

  26. Howlett, A., Colton, S., Browne, C.: Evolving pixel shaders for the prototype video game subversion. In: Proceedings of AISB 2010 (2010)

    Google Scholar 

  27. Hastings, E.J., Guha, R.K., Stanley, K.O.: Automatic content generation in the galactic arms race video game. IEEE Trans. Comput. Intell. AI Games 1(4), 245–263 (2009)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  28. Hoover, A.K., Cachia, W., Liapis, A., Yannakakis, G.N.: AudioInSpace: exploring the creative fusion of generative audio, visuals and gameplay. In: Johnson, C., Carballal, A., Correia, J. (eds.) EvoMUSART 2015. LNCS, vol. 9027, pp. 101–112. Springer, Cham (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16498-4_10

    Google Scholar 

  29. Risi, S., Lehman, J., D’Ambrosio, D., Hall, R., Stanley, K.: Petalz: search-based procedural content generation for the casual gamer. IEEE Trans. Comput. Intell. Games 8(3), 244–255 (2015)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  30. Takagi, H.: Interactive evolutionary computation: fusion of the capabilities of EC optimization and human evaluation. Proc. IEEE 9, 1275–1296 (2001)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  31. Liapis, A., Martínez, H.P., Togelius, J., Yannakakis, G.N.: Transforming exploratory creativity with DeLeNoX. In: International Conference on Computational Creativity (2013)

    Google Scholar 

  32. Soule, T., Heck, S., Haynes, T.E., Wood, N., Robison, B.D.: Darwin’s Demons: does evolution improve the game? In: Squillero, G., Sim, K. (eds.) EvoApplications 2017, Part I. LNCS, vol. 10199, pp. 435–451. Springer, Cham (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-55849-3_29

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  33. Liapis, A., Yannakakis, G.N., Togelius, J.: Adapting models of visual aesthetics for personalized content creation. IEEE Trans. Comput. Intell. AI Games 4(3), 213–228 (2012)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  34. Liapis, A.: Exploring the visual styles of arcade game assets. In: Johnson, C., Ciesielski, V., Correia, J., Machado, P. (eds.) EvoMUSART 2016. LNCS, vol. 9596, pp. 92–109. Springer, Cham (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-31008-4_7

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  35. Kowalski, J., Sutowicz, J., Szykuła, M.: Simplified Boardgames. arXiv:1606.02645 (2016). [cs.AI]

  36. Lehman, J., Stanley, K.O.: Abandoning objectives: evolution through the search for novelty alone. Evol. Comput. 19(2), 189–223 (2011)

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Jakub Kowalski .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2018 Springer International Publishing AG, part of Springer Nature

About this paper

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this paper

Kowalski, J., Liapis, A., Żarczyński, Ł. (2018). Mapping Chess Aesthetics onto Procedurally Generated Chess-Like Games. In: Sim, K., Kaufmann, P. (eds) Applications of Evolutionary Computation. EvoApplications 2018. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 10784. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-77538-8_23

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-77538-8_23

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-77537-1

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-77538-8

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics