Infinite Mario With Dynamic Difficulty Adjustment

bgweber writes "There's been a lot of discussion about whether games should adapt to the skills of players. However, most current techniques limit adaptation to parameter adjustment. But if the parameter adaptation is applied to procedural content generation, then new levels can be generated on-line in response to a player's skill. In this adaptation of Infinite Mario (with source [.JAR]), new levels are generated based on the performance of the player. What other gameplay mechanics are open for adaptation when games adapt to the skills of specific players?"

Interesting Idea

[chonglibloodsport]

But not a whole lot of fun in practice.

Spelunky http://www.spelunkyworld.com/ [spelunkyworld.com] is a way better example of a platformer with randomly generated levels.

Play more games

[Yuioup]

The implementation of some of the monsters is wrong. I died when I tried to jump on a creature which I know can be jumped on.

But that's not all gold

[VincenzoRomano]

If you adapt too much, then the player won't feel challenges anymore. And in games challenges are the things that will demand players to push forward the efforts.

Re:New enemies

[El_Muerte_TDS]

Ok, the worst encounter so far was a flying spiny.

The level generator also creates levels which cannot be completed. It generated a level for me where I started in front of an enemy.

Feed to to Mario AI...

[Yvanhoe]

...and watch the difficulty exponentially rise to reach singularity :-)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DlkMs4ZHHr8 [youtube.com]

Re:Feed to to Mario AI...

[FonzCam]

Looks like he's done it already. http://bweber.posterous.com/infinite-mario-ai-vs-my-level-generator [posterous.com]

Re:Only if it's an option

[noidentity]

One of the fun part of video games is playing the same level as someone else then talking about it, sharing frustrations and strategies. Once every level is different, this becomes much less easily done.

You mean where it allows you to save the level you played and replay it? Not hard to do, just save the RNG seed state (see SimCity classic for example).

What about learning?

[Max Romantschuk]

One of the joys (for me) of playing 2D Mario games is learning how a level progresses and eventually being able to beat it though enough practice. If the level keeps changing this is taken away. I think it would be frustrating...

Then again, I did enjoy Diablo II.