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Level generation

docs/developers/creating_levels/level_generation.md

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Level generation

Levels for DeepMind Lab are Quake III Arena levels. They are packaged into .pk3 files (which are ZIP files) and consist of a number of components, including the following:

  • One .bsp file per level ("binary space partitioning"). This contains the level geometry (the "map").
  • Optionally an accompanying .aas file per level ("area awareness system"). This contains navigation information for the in-game bots of Quake III Arena.
  • Textures. Textures are referenced by maps. DeepMind Lab ships with a number of default textures.

You can use your own maps, zipped up as a .pk3 file, by placing the .pk3 file(s) into your base directory (e.g. $HOME/.deepmind_lab/baselab).

DeepMind Lab includes tools to generate maps: The q3map2 tool converts a .map file into a .bsp file, and the bspc tool generates an .aas file from a .bsp file. The .map format is a human-readable text format that describes a map as a sequence of entities. Map files are cumbersome to edit by hand, but a variety of level editors are freely available (e.g. GtkRadiant).

In addition to built-in and user-provided levels, DeepMind Lab offers additional sources of levels:

  • Procedurally generated levels, which are created on the fly.
  • Text levels, which are simple, human-readable text files that can be compiled into .map files. This can either be done offline, or programmatically inside DeepMind Lab using Lua extensions.