arXiv AI

Representing and Generating Levels Over Time through Playtrace Reconstructive Partitioning

arXiv:2607. 12097v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Video games are a dynamic medium experienced over time.

arXiv AI
Sep 15

The Garden of Forking Paths: Threading Narrative Archetype as a Semantic Signal Through Gameplay Planning

The paper introduces Forking Garden, a branching game generation system that threads narrative archetype as a persistent semantic signal throughout the generation pipeline. Narrative progression is modeled with soft Rise/Fall states, guiding the creation of plot nodes, structural constraints, encounter composition, objectives, rewards, and difficulty adaptation. Experiments across ten storylines show that the system produces distinct archetypal trajectories, improves entity diversity, and that Rise/Fall distinctions remain meaningful during play, aiding both narrative understanding and creator interpretation.

By Yunge Wen, Chenliang Huang, Hangyu Zhou, Zhuo Zeng, Yuxuan Weng, Timothy Merino, Julian Togelius, Max Kreminski, Sam Earle
arXiv AI
Jul 14

MAGIC: Transition-Aware Generation of Navigable Multi-Scene Game Worlds with Large Language Models

arXiv:2607. 11594v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Multi-scene navigation (clearing an objective in one bounded space and then crossing a portal into the next) is a defining feature of contemporary 3D games, but authoring it is laborious: every portal must have consistent endpoints on both sides, each interior must remain navigable once it is furnished, and the resulting connectivity must be kept consistent across many files.

By Tsz Hei Fan, Choi Wing Fung, Yuxuan Wan, Shuqing Li, Michael R. Lyu
arXiv Machine Learning
Sep 22

OpenBlock: Constructive and Verified Content Generation for Adaptive Tile-Matching Games

OpenBlock is an open, adaptive tile‑matching platform that uses a dual‑track content‑generation system: a deterministic rule‑based generator and an optional learned generator, both verified to ensure every piece set is fully placeable. A self‑play reinforcement‑learning agent diagnoses that long‑bar pieces become largely unplaceable at high board fill, indicating board‑state degeneration rather than difficulty drives late‑game failure. In live play, the learned track improves day‑1 retention by 1.8 percentage points and session duration by 7% compared to the rule track alone.

By Jiang Jun
arXiv AI
Sep 7

Abstraction Agent

The paper introduces the Abstraction Agent, a zero‑shot pipeline that employs a large language model to automatically generate continuous strategic features from a natural‑language game description, score private states, and cluster them into abstraction buckets without any game‑specific evaluators or training data. The pipeline consists of four phases—feature discovery with calibration anchors, batched private‑state scoring, correlation‑based feature selection, and k‑means clustering—and achieves significant reductions in lifted‑strategy exploitability in heads‑up no‑limit Texas hold’em and outperforms scalar rank baselines in ROVER Trials. The method also transfers to other games such as four‑card Pot‑Limit Omaha, HUNL preflop and flop, and Riichi Mahjong, demonstrating that it can uncover strategic concepts that align with recognized game theory insights.

By Boning Li, Longbo Huang
arXiv AI
Sep 23

Synthesizing Reactive Character Behaviors for Continuous Games via Programmatic Policy Search

The paper introduces a method for creating reactive character behaviors in continuous games as compact, human‑readable programs. It searches over a domain‑specific language that uses reactive geometric decisions and higher‑order constructs to discretize continuous behavior space, while eliminating redundant program forms through synthesis antipatterns. The approach, called agentic sketching, combines bottom‑up symbolic enumeration with top‑down guidance from a coding agent, and outperforms either technique alone on a benchmark of 14 continuous games.

By Maxim Gumin, Hsueh-Ti Derek Liu, Victor Zordan, Daniel Ritchie
arXiv Computation and Language
Aug 27

Code World Model: Coding Agent as World Brain

The paper introduces Code World Model, a framework that decouples world evolution from visual rendering by using a coding agent as a world brain. The agent reasons about events, generates executable code to maintain persistent state, and a proxy representation links this state to a video model for high‑fidelity visual output. Experiments with MiniMax‑H3 show that the system can follow proxy‑based spatiotemporal specifications while preserving rich visual dynamics, illustrating a new approach to open‑ended world modeling.

By Yiwen Chen, Guosheng Lin, Chi Zhang