SA
S. Alaka
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Virtual worlds are rapidly increasing in size, enabled by advancements in computing technology, which puts a large burden on designers creating them.
Procedural Content Generation can help alleviate this burden, though lacks precise control, to the detriment of designer intent. Some PCG algorithms, such as Wave Function Collapse (WFC), known for generating tile-based content adhering to certain constraints, are able to induce this control through mixed-initiative editing opportunities, combining the efforts of humans and machines while capturing designer intent. However, stock WFC operates on a flat set of tiles with all their semantics blurred together, which unnecessarily strains designers with additional cognitive load when working with such detailed tiles.
We therefore propose Hierarchical Semantic Wave Function Collapse (HSWFC), a generalized approach to WFC that augments the tileset with a new type of tile, the meta-tile, which represents semantic traits, and then organizes the tileset into a hierarchy akin to a taxonomy induced by such semantic representations: the meta-tree. A cell once collapsed to any tile high up in the meta-tree (such as "forest" or "village"), can further collapse to concrete tiles at the bottom (such as “tree” or “wall”).
We investigate how this extension in data organization affects the original algorithm, and explore several novel editing facilities, including e.g. sketching with semantic tiles, controlling tile distributions, regenerating areas that represent specific semantics, and more. A prototypical HSWFC-driven tile-editor was developed and evaluated through a user study, confirming that such an editor indeed reduces cognitive load compared to its stock WFC counterpart, and that the newly enabled features are highly valued by environment designers. ...
Procedural Content Generation can help alleviate this burden, though lacks precise control, to the detriment of designer intent. Some PCG algorithms, such as Wave Function Collapse (WFC), known for generating tile-based content adhering to certain constraints, are able to induce this control through mixed-initiative editing opportunities, combining the efforts of humans and machines while capturing designer intent. However, stock WFC operates on a flat set of tiles with all their semantics blurred together, which unnecessarily strains designers with additional cognitive load when working with such detailed tiles.
We therefore propose Hierarchical Semantic Wave Function Collapse (HSWFC), a generalized approach to WFC that augments the tileset with a new type of tile, the meta-tile, which represents semantic traits, and then organizes the tileset into a hierarchy akin to a taxonomy induced by such semantic representations: the meta-tree. A cell once collapsed to any tile high up in the meta-tree (such as "forest" or "village"), can further collapse to concrete tiles at the bottom (such as “tree” or “wall”).
We investigate how this extension in data organization affects the original algorithm, and explore several novel editing facilities, including e.g. sketching with semantic tiles, controlling tile distributions, regenerating areas that represent specific semantics, and more. A prototypical HSWFC-driven tile-editor was developed and evaluated through a user study, confirming that such an editor indeed reduces cognitive load compared to its stock WFC counterpart, and that the newly enabled features are highly valued by environment designers. ...
Virtual worlds are rapidly increasing in size, enabled by advancements in computing technology, which puts a large burden on designers creating them.
Procedural Content Generation can help alleviate this burden, though lacks precise control, to the detriment of designer intent. Some PCG algorithms, such as Wave Function Collapse (WFC), known for generating tile-based content adhering to certain constraints, are able to induce this control through mixed-initiative editing opportunities, combining the efforts of humans and machines while capturing designer intent. However, stock WFC operates on a flat set of tiles with all their semantics blurred together, which unnecessarily strains designers with additional cognitive load when working with such detailed tiles.
We therefore propose Hierarchical Semantic Wave Function Collapse (HSWFC), a generalized approach to WFC that augments the tileset with a new type of tile, the meta-tile, which represents semantic traits, and then organizes the tileset into a hierarchy akin to a taxonomy induced by such semantic representations: the meta-tree. A cell once collapsed to any tile high up in the meta-tree (such as "forest" or "village"), can further collapse to concrete tiles at the bottom (such as “tree” or “wall”).
We investigate how this extension in data organization affects the original algorithm, and explore several novel editing facilities, including e.g. sketching with semantic tiles, controlling tile distributions, regenerating areas that represent specific semantics, and more. A prototypical HSWFC-driven tile-editor was developed and evaluated through a user study, confirming that such an editor indeed reduces cognitive load compared to its stock WFC counterpart, and that the newly enabled features are highly valued by environment designers.
Procedural Content Generation can help alleviate this burden, though lacks precise control, to the detriment of designer intent. Some PCG algorithms, such as Wave Function Collapse (WFC), known for generating tile-based content adhering to certain constraints, are able to induce this control through mixed-initiative editing opportunities, combining the efforts of humans and machines while capturing designer intent. However, stock WFC operates on a flat set of tiles with all their semantics blurred together, which unnecessarily strains designers with additional cognitive load when working with such detailed tiles.
We therefore propose Hierarchical Semantic Wave Function Collapse (HSWFC), a generalized approach to WFC that augments the tileset with a new type of tile, the meta-tile, which represents semantic traits, and then organizes the tileset into a hierarchy akin to a taxonomy induced by such semantic representations: the meta-tree. A cell once collapsed to any tile high up in the meta-tree (such as "forest" or "village"), can further collapse to concrete tiles at the bottom (such as “tree” or “wall”).
We investigate how this extension in data organization affects the original algorithm, and explore several novel editing facilities, including e.g. sketching with semantic tiles, controlling tile distributions, regenerating areas that represent specific semantics, and more. A prototypical HSWFC-driven tile-editor was developed and evaluated through a user study, confirming that such an editor indeed reduces cognitive load compared to its stock WFC counterpart, and that the newly enabled features are highly valued by environment designers.
Bachelor thesis
(2018)
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Jop Vermeer, Nico Arjen Miedema, Shaad Alaka, Niels de Bruin, Rafael Bidarra, Stephan Lukosch, Huijuan Wang, Otto Visser
This report describes the development of a superhuman sports multiplayer game that makes use of augmented reality through the HoloLens. The game is a reenvisioning of the original League of Lasers, a pong/football-esque game for Android phones using camera tracking and special headgear for player positioning. The game was specifically redesigned to use neither a camera or a phone, but instead use the HoloLens' spatial localisation features. The goal of the project is to provide a superhuman sports multiplayer experience on the HoloLens. To be able to provide this, a system for managing spatial anchors and a custom networking architecture were developed, making use of a game server, game clients, a master game client and a web server for sharing anchors. Along with this, large-scale playtests were performed, where data was collected. The corresponding game design changes from the original game are described and implemented to ensure an optimal experience. As the game was developed in Unity with the Mixed Reality Toolkit, software quality was kept at adequate levels throughout the project through a custom CI setup, code written with testability and maintainability in mind through the humble object pattern, and rigorous PR reviewing guidelines. For the development process itself, Scrum was used with weekly meetings, a Waffle project board and daily status reports. Numerous problems with the combination of Unity, the Mixed Reality Toolkit and the HoloLens made the project a laborious endeavour, but the final result and design of the game exceeded our initial expectations.
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This report describes the development of a superhuman sports multiplayer game that makes use of augmented reality through the HoloLens. The game is a reenvisioning of the original League of Lasers, a pong/football-esque game for Android phones using camera tracking and special headgear for player positioning. The game was specifically redesigned to use neither a camera or a phone, but instead use the HoloLens' spatial localisation features. The goal of the project is to provide a superhuman sports multiplayer experience on the HoloLens. To be able to provide this, a system for managing spatial anchors and a custom networking architecture were developed, making use of a game server, game clients, a master game client and a web server for sharing anchors. Along with this, large-scale playtests were performed, where data was collected. The corresponding game design changes from the original game are described and implemented to ensure an optimal experience. As the game was developed in Unity with the Mixed Reality Toolkit, software quality was kept at adequate levels throughout the project through a custom CI setup, code written with testability and maintainability in mind through the humble object pattern, and rigorous PR reviewing guidelines. For the development process itself, Scrum was used with weekly meetings, a Waffle project board and daily status reports. Numerous problems with the combination of Unity, the Mixed Reality Toolkit and the HoloLens made the project a laborious endeavour, but the final result and design of the game exceeded our initial expectations.