With “MarioGPT”, a research group has developed an AI that can develop endless levels for Super Mario games in an unusual way. Because the technology is based on the AI text generator GPT-2, they converted the levels into a kind of text reminiscent of ASCII art. Once trained with such transformed cards from Super Mario Bros. and Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels, MarioGPT can generate levels in response to a text (“prompt”). The technology is not yet perfect, but it is a big first step towards controllable generation of varied levels for video games. The software can be downloaded.
Further plans
The representation of the levels as text
Like the group from the IT University of Copenhagen explained in a research article, is far from the first procedural generation of video game content, but “MarioGPT” is the first text-to-level generator. To do this, they converted the two-dimensional game worlds of the cult classic into a series of symbols. Blocks roughly correspond to the letters “X” and “S” depending on whether they are breakable or not, an opponent is represented as an “E”. If you let that print out, it’s reminiscent of ASCII art, the level is easy to recognize. After training with the original level cards, “MarioGPT” is able to create its own levels based on text commands.
Listed examples actually look like real levels. The printed “prompts”, which are said to have been sufficient as a basis, are called something like “many tubes, many opponents, few blocks, low increases” or “no tubes, no opponents, many blocks”. “MarioGPT” also gives a way on which the level for the character should be able to be created. The review showed that more than 88% of the levels generated in this way were actually playable. It is therefore also possible to influence how difficult they are and how much they deviate from the training material. Next, the team wants to implement that the algorithm can learn from human feedback. The levels created in this way could be constantly improved.
GPT-2 (Generative Pretrained Transformer 2) is an AI from the US company OpenAI and a predecessor of ChatGPT, among others. The technology was actually developed to automatically complete English-language texts. The work of Shyam Sudhakaran’s research group now shows that this can also be used for completely different purposes. Their code is available for download on Github and should be added in the future. The training material should also be expanded. So far, only one type of opponent is possible, and “MarioGPT” cannot yet incorporate water.
(mho)
