mlsanityData to 14 Oct 2026

Valerant: An Automatic Navigable Game Map Generator via Action-Conditioned World Model Exploration

arXiv 2609.09418 ↗First posted 8 Sep 2026cs.AIcited by 0

On the map: World models → Video-generation world models and simulators

Abstract (arXiv)

World Action Models (WAMs) couple predictive world modeling with action generation, allowing anticipated future states to guide agent behavior. Although WAMs are rapidly advancing embodied AI, general-purpose counterparts remain largely unexplored in games. Existing game-oriented approaches often combine action-conditioned world models with external policies and reward functions to realize WAM-like decision-making, yet they operate mainly in 2D visual observation space and do not instantiate persistent 3D geometry. Extending this paradigm to 3D games introduces a distinct challenge. In autonomous driving and robotics, the physical environment exists independently of the model, providing a persistent 3D world in which selected actions can be executed. Games have no such external substrate; the virtual world itself must be instantiated. Most playable games require a persistent and navigable space, while 3D games additionally require explicit geometry that supports movement and interaction. Action-conditioned video rollouts provide visual observations but not this spatial representation. We present textscValerant, a training-free framework that transforms a pretrained action-conditioned world model into a WAM for exploring and constructing 3D game maps. By coupling predictive visual rollouts with SLAM-based spatial reconstruction and exploration-driven action selection, textscValerant progressively transforms a single image into a persistent 3D game map. This framework extends WAM-based interaction beyond 2D visual simulation and offers a new approach to reducing manual effort in 3D game-map creation.

Key facts. No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026). Placed in Video-generation world models and simulators, one of 11 directions in World models. Builds on 51 of its 58 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 8 Sep 2026.

Builds on

51 of 58 references.

Closest ancestors · 14

Same direction, newest first

  1. 2026HY-World 2.0: A Multi-Modal World Model for Reconstructing, Generating, and Simulating 3D Worlds15 Apr
  2. 2026Matrix-Game 3.0: Real-Time and Streaming Interactive World Model with Long-Horizon Memory10 Apr
  3. 2026Beyond Pixel Histories: World Models with Persistent 3D State3 Mar
  4. 2025Video World Models with Long-term Spatial Memory5 Jun
  5. 2025MineWorld: a Real-Time and Open-Source Interactive World Model on Minecraft11 Apr
  6. 2025Wan: Open and Advanced Large-Scale Video Generative Models26 Mar
  7. 2024GameGen-X: Interactive Open-world Game Video Generation1 Nov
  8. 2024WorldSimBench: Towards Video Generation Models as World Simulators23 Oct
  9. 2024AVID: Adapting Video Diffusion Models to World Models1 Oct
  10. 2024Diffusion Models Are Real-Time Game Engines27 Aug
  11. 2023Learning Interactive Real-World Simulators9 Oct
  12. 2022Scalable Diffusion Models with Transformers19 Dec
2 more
  1. 2022Flow Matching for Generative Modeling6 Oct
  2. 2020Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Models19 Jun

Other references · 37

  1. 2021High-Resolution Image Synthesis with Latent Diffusion Modelscited by 18,863
  2. 2023SDXL: Improving Latent Diffusion Models for High-Resolution Image Synthesiscited by 4,356
  3. 2022Flow Straight and Fast: Learning to Generate and Transfer Data with Rectified Flowcited by 3,700
  4. 2019Dream to Control: Learning Behaviors by Latent Imaginationcited by 1,653
  5. 2018World Modelscited by 1,513
  6. 2018Learning Latent Dynamics for Planning from Pixelscited by 1,264
  7. 2020ORB-SLAM3: An Accurate Open-Source Library for Visual, Visual-Inertial and Multi-Map SLAMcited by 878
  8. 2021DROID-SLAM: Deep Visual SLAM for Monocular, Stereo, and RGB-D Camerascited by 687
  9. 2023Learning Universal Policies via Text-Guided Video Generationcited by 522
  10. 2023TD-MPC2: Scalable, Robust World Models for Continuous Controlcited by 512
  11. 2024Evaluating Real-World Robot Manipulation Policies in Simulationcited by 495
  12. 2025CoT-VLA: Visual Chain-of-Thought Reasoning for Vision-Language-Action Modelscited by 451
25 more
  1. 2023Gaussian Splatting SLAMcited by 415
  2. 2023Driving into the Future: Multiview Visual Forecasting and Planning with World Model for Autonomous Drivingcited by 319
  3. 2020Learning to Explore using Active Neural SLAMcited by 316
  4. 2024Diffusion for World Modeling: Visual Details Matter in Ataricited by 300
  5. 2026Cosmos Policy: Fine-Tuning Video Models for Visuomotor Control and Planningcited by 300
  6. 2024VILA-U: a Unified Foundation Model Integrating Visual Understanding and Generationcited by 295
  7. 2024Navigation World Modelscited by 272
  8. 2025Motus: A Unified Latent Action World Modelcited by 251
  9. 2024MASt3R-SLAM: Real-Time Dense SLAM with 3D Reconstruction Priorscited by 205
  10. 2024iVideoGPT: Interactive VideoGPTs are Scalable World Modelscited by 146
  11. 2025VGGT-SLAM: Dense RGB SLAM Optimized on the SL(4) Manifoldcited by 136
  12. 2026DreamDojo: A Generalist Robot World Model from Large-Scale Human Videoscited by 135
  13. 2025Cosmos-Transfer1: Conditional World Generation with Adaptive Multimodal Controlcited by 106
  14. 2024SLAM3R: Real-Time Dense Scene Reconstruction from Monocular RGB Videoscited by 102
  15. 2024IRASim: A Fine-Grained World Model for Robot Manipulationcited by 100
  16. 2025Hunyuan-GameCraft: High-dynamic Interactive Game Video Generation with Hybrid History Conditioncited by 98
  17. 2025WorldGym: World Model as An Environment for Policy Evaluationcited by 64
  18. 2026World Action Models: The Next Frontier in Embodied AIcited by 50
  19. 2025DriveLaW:Unifying Planning and Video Generation in a Latent Driving Worldcited by 47
  20. 2026UniDrive-WM: Unified Understanding, Planning and Generation World Model for Autonomous Drivingcited by 20
  21. 2023iSLAM: Imperative SLAMcited by 15
  22. 2020Modular Action Concept Grounding in Semantic Video Predictioncited by 12
  23. 2026World Reconstruction From Inconsistent Viewscited by 8
  24. 2026From World Models to World Action Models: A Concise Tutorial for Roboticscited by 4
  25. 2026COMBAT: Conditional World Models for Behavioral Agent Trainingcited by 3

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  3. 2025Learning 3D Persistent Embodied World Models
  4. 2026WorldCam: Interactive Autoregressive 3D Gaming Worlds with Camera Pose as a Unifying Geometric Representation
  5. 2026DashVMC: Real-Time Discrete World Model Control in Geometry Dash
  6. 2026Player-1: Learning to Play from Synthetic Experience
  7. 2026ActWorld: From Explorable to Interactive World Model via Action-Aware Memory
  8. 2026StatePlay: State-Aware Game World Models for Mechanics-Consistent Generation