TY  - CHAP
A1  - Truman, Samuel
A1  - von Mammen, Sebastian
T1  - Interactive Self-Assembling Agent Ensembles
T2  - Proceedings of the 1st Games Technology Summit
N2  - In this paper, we bridge the gap between procedural content generation (PCG) and user-generated content (UGC) by proposing and demonstrating an interactive agent-based model of self-assembling ensembles that can be directed though user input. We motivate these efforts by considering the opportunities technology provides to pursue game designs based on according game design frameworks. We present three different use cases of the proposed model that emphasize its potential to (1) self-assemble into predefined 3D graphical assets, (2) define new structures in the context of virtual environments by self-assembling layers on the surfaces of arbitrary 3D objects, and (3) allow novel structures to self-assemble only considering the model’s configuration and no external dependencies. To address the performance restrictions in computer games, we realized the prototypical model implementation by means of an efficient entity component system (ECS). We conclude the paper with an outlook on future steps to further explore novel interactive, dynamic PCG mechanics and to ensure their efficiency.
KW  - procedural content generation
KW  - user-generated content
KW  - game mechanics
KW  - agent-based models
KW  - self-assembly
Y1  - 2021
U6  - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-246032
ER  -