# Evolving Flying Machines in Minecraft Using Quality Diversity

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2302.00782 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.00782/

## Key facts

- Cited by 4 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 14 of its 24 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 1 Feb 2023.

## Builds on (most cited first, 14 of 14)

- [Evolution Strategies as a Scalable Alternative to Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1703.03864/) (2017)
- [Robots that can adapt like animals](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1407.3501/) (2014)
- [Covariance Matrix Adaptation for the Rapid Illumination of Behavior Space](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.02400/) (2019)
- [Evolving Mario Levels in the Latent Space of a Deep Convolutional Generative Adversarial Network](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1805.00728/) (2018)
- [Illuminating Mario Scenes in the Latent Space of a Generative Adversarial Network](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.05674/) (2020)
- [Procedural Content Generation through Quality Diversity](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1907.04053/) (2019)
- [Super Mario as a String: Platformer Level Generation Via LSTMs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1603.00930/) (2016)
- [Growing 3D Artefacts and Functional Machines with Neural Cellular Automata](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.08737/) (2021)
- [Approximating Gradients for Differentiable Quality Diversity in Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.03666/) (2022)
- [EvoCraft: A New Challenge for Open-Endedness](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.04751/) (2020)
- [CPPN2GAN: Combining Compositional Pattern Producing Networks and GANs for Large-scale Pattern Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.01703/) (2020)
- [Multi-Emitter MAP-Elites: Improving quality, diversity and convergence speed with heterogeneous sets of emitters](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.05352/) (2020)
- [World-GAN: a Generative Model for Minecraft Worlds](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.10155/) (2021)
- [Open-Ended Evolution for Minecraft Building Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.03108/) (2022)

## Built on by (most cited first, 4 of 4)

- [DreamCraft: Text-Guided Generation of Functional 3D Environments in Minecraft](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.15538/) (2024)
- [Local Optima in Diversity Optimization: Non-trivial Offspring Population is Essential](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.08963/) (2024)
- [Expanding Horizons of Level Diversity via Multi-objective Evolutionary Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.24341/) (2025)
- [Quality Diversity for Reliable Data Driven Time-Use Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.05230/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Minecraft is a great testbed for human creativity that has inspired the design of various structures and even functioning machines, including flying machines. EvoCraft is an API for programmatically generating structures in Minecraft, but the initial work in this domain was not capable of evolving flying machines. This paper applies fitness-based evolution and quality diversity search in order to evolve flying machines. Although fitness alone can occasionally produce flying machines, thanks in part to a more sophisticated fitness function than was used previously, the quality diversity algorithm MAP-Elites is capable of discovering flying machines much more reliably, at least when an appropriate behavior characterization is used to guide the search for diverse solutions.