Interactive Latent Variable Evolution for the Generation of Minecraft Structures

The open-world sandbox game Minecraft is well-known for applying a wide array of procedural content generation techniques to create unique and expansive game environments. However, procedurally generated buildings are absent in the Minecraft world, thus players must build their own structures to flesh out their worlds. This build process can be extremely time-consuming and appeals to more creatively-inclined players. To aid players in this process, we introduce a tool combining interactive evolution with latent variable evolution to evolve procedurally generated Minecraft structures to a player's aesthetic choices. We employ two separate neural network models to generate structures: a 3D generative model for generating the structure design and an encoding model for applying Minecraft textures to the structure's voxels. We evaluate this tool with a user study incorporating an online interface that allows participants to select, evolve, and guide a population of these generated 3D structures towards a specific design goal.