A Practical Introduction to the Ludii General Game System

2019 IEEE Conference on Games (CoG), 2019

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2019 IEEE Conference on Games (CoG), 2019

Although General Game Playing (GGP) systems can facilitate useful research in Artificial Intelligence (AI) for gameplaying, they are often computationally inefficient and somewhat specialised to a specific class of games. However, since the start of this year, two General Game Systems have emerged that provide efficient alternatives to the academic state of the artthe Game Description Language (GDL). In order of publication, these are the Regular Boardgames language (RBG), and the Ludii system. This paper offers an experimental evaluation of Ludii. Here, we focus mainly on a comparison between the two new systems in terms of two key properties for any GGP system: simplicity/clarity (e.g. human-readability), and efficiency. Index Terms-General Game Playing, knowledge representation, General Game AI.

2019

LUDII is an upcoming digital system that aims to provide a generic implementation for describing a large assortment of traditional games across many different cultures and time periods. This system provides a great opportunity to educate people about game design principles and AI techniques. One example could be as an interactive tool for exercises in lectures, where students must identify suitable rule sets for a game given only a description of the board and pieces. These rules must present a game that is balanced, strategically deep and easy to learn for new players. The LUDII system will also allow for a greater understanding of the lineage of these traditional games and the mathematical concepts that they embody. Analyzing similar design principles between games over a long period of history allows us to model and understand the transmission of ideas across time, place and culture. Using this historical data to construct family trees that demonstrate the phylogenetic relations ...

2020

While current General Game Playing (GGP) systems facilitate useful research in Artificial Intelligence (AI) for game-playing, they are often somewhat specialised and computationally inefficient. In this paper, we describe the "ludemic" general game system Ludii, which has the potential to provide an efficient tool for AI researchers as well as game designers, historians, educators and practitioners in related fields. Ludii defines games as structures of ludemes -- high-level, easily understandable game concepts -- which allows for concise and human-understandable game descriptions. We formally describe Ludii and outline its main benefits: generality, extensibility, understandability and efficiency. Experimentally, Ludii outperforms one of the most efficient Game Description Language (GDL) reasoners, based on a propositional network, in all games available in the Tiltyard GGP repository. Moreover, Ludii is also competitive in terms of performance with the more recently prop...

Gamification - Analysis, Design, Development and Ludification

2007

Generally accepted as an entertainment and leisure activity in daily life, play has existed throughout history and has survived until today with its function covering individual and social life (Vatandaş, 2020, p.915). According to Ehrmann (1968, p.48), there was a game in the beginning. The beginning of play developed when people imitated what they saw in natural life. As a result of primitive people's struggle for survival, they developed hunting rituals by imitating them, and these were effective in the development of many games over time. Nutku (2011, p.17) divides the development of games into three basic principles: Imitation, action and collective participation. Games, which emerged as simple imitative behaviour, started as a simple field of activity and have maintained their continuity until today, becoming part of rituals such as belief, war and art over time . The famous historian Johan Huizinga (2021) defines the importance of playing games in human life as "homo ludens" (man who plays games). In fact, it is possible to consider human life itself as a game , p. 413). Huizinga (2021, p. 23) gives examples from drama and literature and compares the world to a stage where everyone plays their own role. In short, the play is perceived as life and life as a play (Hazar, 2021, p. 8). In addition, Huizinga (2021) defines play as an optional, voluntary action. According to Fink (2015, p. 14), play is not a fringe phenomenon in the realm of human life, a random phenomenon that only occasionally occurs. Play is essentially a part of the ontological structure of human existence; it is a fundamental phenomenon of vital importance. Based on this, it can be said that games have very different personal and social effects, from the physical and mental development of the individual to social development. Games are a favourite activity not only for children but also for young people and adults. This activity is one that supports and completes personal development in the childhood phase that begins with the

2010

years, the research community can already look back on an increasing number of conferences, volumes, research projects, and a lot of comparisons between digital games and cinema, literature, theatre, and arts-nearly every artistic practice was taken into account. Within this period, one can look back not only on the (by now almost classic) controversy between ludology and narratology, but also on several other approaches, for instance the discussion about the character of action and interaction, ethics in computer games, and the interrelationship between games and violence, the social impact of digital games. More recently, the interconnection between space and the visual or the role of the first person perspective, as it was discussed in analytical philosophy, and the question of the dispositive or empowerment, to name but a few, have been topics of discussion.. Some consequences may be drawn from this: Firstly, computer games are a complex issue which has to be analyzed from an interdisciplinary angle. This is why DIGAREC started with a combination of different fields, including Media Studies, Psychology, Law, Art Processes, Design, Computer Science, and others. Secondly, the research of computer games leads not only to insights pertaining to The contribution of Daniel Cermak-Sassenrath (University of Bremen) proposes play as another possible perspective on communication, simulation, interactive narrative and ubiquitous computing in human-computer interaction. In "The Logic of Play in Everyday Human-Computer Interaction", he analyzes how everyday use of the computer increasingly show signs of similarity to play. This is discussed in respect to the playful character of interaction with the computer that has always been part of the exploratory learning process involved with new software and the often creative tasks that are undertaken when using the computer. These observations point to a sense of security, autonomy and freedom for the user which produce play and are, in turn, produced by play. This notion of play refers not to the playing of computer games, but to an implicit, abstract (or symbolic) process that is based on a certain attitude, the play spirit. scribed as a variation of the movement-image. Jochen Venus (University of Siegen) ascertains the characteristics of the representational function of computer games by contrasting them phenomenologically with conventional games on the one hand and cinematic depictions on the other. "Simulation of Selfaction. On the Morphology of Remote-Controlled Role Playing" shows that computer games a) separate the player from the playing field, and b) translate bodily felt concrete actions into situational abstract cinematic depictions. These features add up to the situational abstract presentation of self action experience. Computer games establish an 'artificial sameness' of self action experiences and allow the direct communication of styles of acting. They reveal a potential as a new means of shared cognition which might unfold in the 21 st century and change the being-in-the-world in a similar way as cinematic depiction did in the 20 th century.

Material Game Studies, 2023

This is the first volume to apply insights from the material turn in philosophy to the study of play and games. At a time of renewed interest in analogue gaming, as scholars are looking beyond the digital and virtual for the first time since the inception of game studies in the 1990s, Material Game Studies not only supports the importance of the (re)turn to the analogue, but proposes a materiality of play more broadly. Recognizing the entanglement of physical materiality with cultural meaning, the authors in this volume apply a range of theoretical approaches, from material eco-criticism to animal studies, to examine games and play as existing within worlds of matter. Different chapters focus on the material properties of board, card and role-playing games, how they are designed and made, how they are touched and played with, and how they connect with other human and nonhuman things. Bringing together international scholars, Material Game Studies defines a new field of material game studies and demonstrates how it is a valuable addition to wider debates about the material turn and the place of embodied humans in a material world.