Using estimation of distribution algorithm for procedural content generation in video games

Content generation is one of the major challenges in the modern age. The video game industry is no exception and the ever-increasing demand for bigger titles containing vast volumes of content has become one of the vital challenges for the content generation domain. Conventional game development as a human product is not cost efficient and the need for more intelligent, advanced and procedural methods is evident in this field. In a sense, procedural content generation (PCG) is a Non-deterministic Polynomial-Hard optimization problem in which specific metrics should be optimized. In this paper, we use the Estimation of Distribution Algorithm (EDA) to optimize the task of PCG in digital video games. EDA is an evolutionary stochastic optimization method and the introduction of probabilistic modeling as one of the main features of EDA into this problem domain is a reliable way to mathematically apply human knowledge to the challenging field of content generation. Acceptable performance of the proposed method is reflected in the results, which can inform the academia of PCG and contribute to the game industry.