Computational intelligence and tower defence games

2006

Video games provide an opportunity and challenge for the soft computational intelligence methods like the symbolic games did for "good old-fashioned artificial intelligence." This article reviews the achievements and future prospects of one particular approach, that of evolving neural networks, or neuroevolution. This approach can be used to construct adaptive characters in existing video games, and it can serve as a foundation for a new genre of games based on machine learning. Evolution can be guided by human knowledge, allowing the designer to control the kinds of solutions that emerge and encouraging behaviors that appear visibly intelligent to the human player. Such techniques may allow building video games that are more engaging and entertaining than current games, and those that can serve as training environments for people. Techniques developed in these games may also be widely applicable in other fields, such as robotics, resource optimization, and intelligent assistants. *

2009

Games have long been seen as an ideal test-bed for the study of AI. Until recently, most of the academic work in the area focused on traditional board games and card games, the challenge being to beat expert human players. Following the release of Pong in the early 1970s, the last few decades have seen a phenomenal increase in the quality, diversity and pervasiveness of video games.

Abstract This report documents the program and the outcomes of Dagstuhl Seminar 12191 “Artificial and Computational Intelligence in Games”. The aim for the seminar was to bring together creative experts in an intensive meeting with the common goals of gaining a deeper understanding of various aspects of artificial and computational intelligence in games, to help identify the main challenges in game AI research and the most promising venues to deal with them.

With computers becoming ubiquitous and high resolution graphics reaching the next level, computer games have become a major source of entertainment. It has been a tedious task for game developers to measure the entertainment value of the computer games. The entertainment value of a game does depend upon the genre of the game in addition to the game contents. In this paper, we propose a set of entertainment metrics for the platform genre of games. The set of entertainment metrics is proposed based upon certain theories on entertainment in computer games. To test the metrics, we use an evolutionary algorithm for automated generation of game rules which are entertaining. The proposed approach starts with an initial set of randomly generated games and, based upon the proposed metrics as an objective function, guides the evolutionary process. The results produced are counterchecked against the entertainment criteria of humans by conducting a human user survey and a controller learning ability experiment. The proposed metrics and the evolutionary process of generating games can be employed by any platform game for the purpose of automatic generation of interesting games provided an initial search space is given.

Presented are issues in designing smart, believable software agents capable of playing strategy games, with particular emphasis on the design of an agent capable of playing Cyberwar XXI, a complex war game. The architecture of a personality-rich, advise-taking game playing agent that learns to play is described. The suite of computational-intelligence tools used by the advisers include evolutionary computation and neural nets.

International Journal of Interactive Multimedia and Artificial Intelligence, 2015

Videogames are one of the most important and profitable sectors in the industry of entertainment. Nowadays, the creation of a videogame is often a large-scale endeavor and bears many similarities with, e.g., movie production. On the central tasks in the development of a videogame is content generation, namely the definition of maps, terrains, non-player characters (NPCs) and other graphical, musical and AI-related components of the game. Such generation is costly due to its complexity, the great amount of work required and the need of specialized manpower. Hence the relevance of optimizing the process and alleviating costs. In this sense, procedural content generation (PCG) comes in handy as a means of reducing costs by using algorithmic techniques to automatically generate some game contents. PCG also provides advantages in terms of player experience since the contents generated are typically not fixed but can vary in different playing sessions, and can even adapt to the player herself. For this purpose, the underlying algorithmic technique used for PCG must be also flexible and adaptable. This is the case of computational intelligence in general and evolutionary algorithms in particular. In this work we shall provide an overview of the use of evolutionary intelligence for PCG, with special emphasis on its use within the context of realtime strategy games. We shall show how these techniques can address both playability and aesthetics, as well as improving the game AI.

International Journal of Computer Applications

Computer games are an increasingly popular application for Artificial Intelligence(AI) research. This paper discusses some of the most interesting components and challenges faced by developers in designing and creation of a game based on artificial intelligence. Game AI provides players a richer gaming experience by going beyond scripted interactions, responsive interaction systems that are adaptive and intelligent.

Simulation & Gaming, 2009

Games technology has undergone tremendous development. In this article, the authors report the rapid advancement that has been observed in the way games software is being developed, as well as in the development of games content using game engines. One area that has gained special attention is modeling the game environment such as terrain and buildings. This article presents the continuous level of detail terrain modeling techniques that can help generate and render realistic terrain in real time. Deployment of characters in the environment is increasingly common. This requires strategies to map scalable behavior characteristics for characters as well. The authors present two important aspects of crowd simulation: the realism of the crowd behavior and the computational overhead involved. A good simulation of crowd behavior requires delicate balance between these aspects. The focus in this article is on human behavior representation for crowd simulation. To enhance the player experience, the authors present the concept of player adaptive entertainment computing, which provides a personalized experience for each individual when interacting with the game. The current state of game development involves using very small percentage (typically 4% to 12%) of CPU time for game artificial intelligence (AI). Future game AI requires developing computational strategies that have little involvement of CPU for online play, while using CPU's idle capacity when the game is not being played, thereby emphasizing the construction of complex game AI models offline. A framework of such nonconventional game AI models is introduced.

Abstract This report documents the program and the outcomes of Dagstuhl Seminar 12191" Artificial and Computational Intelligence in Games". The aim for the seminar was to bring together creative experts in an intensive meeting with the common goals of gaining a deeper understanding of various aspects of artificial and computational intelligence in games, to help identify the main challenges in game AI research and the most promising venues to deal with them.

Cornell University - arXiv, 2018

Dynamic Difficulty Adjustment (DDA) is a mechanism used in video games that automatically tailors the individual gaming experience to match an appropriate difficulty setting. This is generally achieved by removing pre-defined difficulty tiers such as Easy, Medium and Hard; and instead concentrates on balancing the gameplay to match the challenge to the individual's abilities. The work presented in this paper examines the implementation of DDA in a custom survival game developed by the author, namely Colwell's Castle Defence. The premise of this arcade-style game is to defend a castle from hordes of oncoming enemies. The AI system that we developed adjusts the enemy spawn rate based on the current performance of the player. Specifically, we read the Player Health and Gate Health at the end of each level and then assign the player with an appropriate difficulty tier for the proceeding level. We tested the impact of our technique on thirty human players and concluded, based on questionnaire feedback, that enabling the technique led to more enjoyable gameplay.