An Angry Birds Level Generator with Rube Goldberg Machine Mechanisms
Febri Abdullah, Pujana Paliyawan, Ruck Thawonmas, Tomohiro Harada, Fitra Abdurrachman Bachtiar · 2019 IEEE Conference on Games (CoG) · 2019
This study proposes a method for generating Angry Birds-like game levels featuring a domino effect generated based on Rube Goldberg Machine (RGM) mechanisms, which allow them to be completed by one shot of a bird. The proposed method generates a level by selecting predefined segments consisting of several objects arranged in a way that creates a domino effect among them. To increase the variability of generated levels, the proposed method procedurally generates a varying structure on the top of certain blocks in a predefined segment. Our results show that the proposed RGM generator is comparable to two existing generators, including the winner of the 2018 AIBIRDS Level Generation Competition, in terms of stability while it outperforms both baseline generators with respect to running time and an expressivity metric called "dynamic" which is introduced in this work to measure the time period where moving objects, including a shooting bird, reside in a given level. In addition, from the perspective on the destructive power of a shot, the proposed generator can generate levels featuring a successful domino effect with a high probability, in particular for levels with three to four segments.