Anza Island: Novel Gameplay Using ASP

Procedural content generation (PCG) has the potential to create unique artifacts, levels, and gameplay mechanics. However, it remains challenging to generate content that satisfies gameplay constraints: methods to achieve this include generate-and-test, search-based generation, and constructive methods. In this paper, we present a prototype, a simple game, which demonstrates the use of an off-the-shelf logic program solver, Clingo, as an easy and expressive way to model these constraint problems, and find solutions that satisfy gameplay constraints. By delegating the difficult search optimization problem to an external program, we were able to quickly prototype PCG in a low-effort way by expressing the desired content as a set of rules and constraints, keeping the focus on the designer's intentions for the generated content, rather than specific methods used to create or find it. The expressiveness and versatility of this approach is demonstrated by applying this technique to two areas of PCG in the game.