Exhaustive Exploration Strategies for NPCs

Automated, exhaustive exploration of game levels is typically based on simple, greedy coverage heuristics, or is directedmore at the problem of locating dynamic targets. In this paper, we present and analyze a method for creating an exploratory tour guaranteed to uncover all parts of a 2D map. First, a set of camera points that collectively ensure full coverage are chosen. A tour visiting these cameras is then constructed using navigation graphs and by employing heuristics based on distance and visual coverage. We identify the different factors that affect this methodology through experiments on maps from commercial games. The strategies proposed can be used by both hostile and non-hostile NPCs in different spatial search scenarios that benefit from full coverage, or to help a player uncover a map in fog-of-war settings.