An Integrated Framework for AI Assisted Level Design in 2D Platformers

TL;DR

This paper introduces an integrated framework that aids 2D platformer level designers by providing tools to create levels, estimate jump difficulty, and evaluate overall level challenge, validated through human player experiments.

Contribution

It presents a novel comprehensive framework combining level creation, difficulty estimation, and evaluation metrics for 2D platformer game design.

Findings

Metrics accurately predict level difficulty and success rates

Framework effectively assists designers in balancing challenge and fun

Experimental validation confirms the usefulness of the proposed tools

Abstract

The design of video game levels is a complex and critical task. Levels need to elicit fun and challenge while avoiding frustration at all costs. In this paper, we present a framework to assist designers in the creation of levels for 2D platformers. Our framework provides designers with a toolbox (i) to create 2D platformer levels, (ii) to estimate the difficulty and probability of success of single jump actions (the main mechanics of platformer games), and (iii) a set of metrics to evaluate the difficulty and probability of completion of entire levels. At the end, we present the results of a set of experiments we carried out with human players to validate the metrics included in our framework.