- author = "Maria {del Mar Zamorano Lopez}",
- title = "Automated Software Transplantation for Procedural Content Generation",
- school = "Department of Computer Science, University College London",
- year = "2025",
- address = "UK",
- month = "18 " # sep,
- keywords = "genetic algorithms, genetic programming, computer video game, Imhotep, Kromaia, SBSE, SBPCG, PCT, NPC, PCG, boss",
-
URL = "
https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10215160",
-
URL = "
https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10215160/1/Mar___Thesis.pdf",
- size = "182 pages",
-
abstract = "Game Software Engineering (GSE) is a specialized
branch of Software Engineering dedicated to the
development of video games. Unlike traditional
software, video game development presents unique
challenges, including the management of diverse
artefacts, differing development paces, limited code
reuse, and difficulties in automated testing. Research
in GSE has grown significantly since 2010, with
contributions appearing in top Software Engineering
venues.
Video games are complex products that blend art and programming, requiring input from designers, programmers, and audio engineers. The industry has rapidly expanded, with a wide variety of titles driving economic growth and cultural influence. However, all games share a common challenge: the immense need for content. Large-scale productions require vast amounts of high-quality assets, leading to costly and time-intensive development cycles. Smaller teams, constrained by limited resources, must carefully balance ambition and feasibility, while games designed for specialized purposes are restricted by domain-specific content requirements.
To address these challenges, researchers have explored Procedural Content Generation (PCG), an approach that automates or semi-automates the creation of game assets. This thesis introduces a novel technique, Procedural Content Transplantation (PCT), which applies Software Transplantation principles to PCG. In software, transplantation involves extracting functional components from one system and integrating them into another. Traditionally, it has been used for program repair, testing, security, and functionality enhancements. Applied to content generation, PCT extracts functional content from a game to integrate it into another content of a game.
PCT employs a search-based algorithm to identify and integrate suitable content fragments from existing games into new contexts, mitigating the challenges of manual content creation. To validate this approach, we designed and implemented the first search-based transplantation algorithm for video game content. Our evaluation, conducted in collaboration with a commercial game studio, assessed the effectiveness of PCT in generating non-playable characters (NPCs) and compared its results with a standard PCG method from the literature",
