Introduction PP

Well it's getting near the end of term now so I've started on my project proposal, what I've done so far is the introduction but I'm still not quite sure what is supposed to be in it so it's possible some of it may have to be moved out into the abstract.

• Introduction

· AI is becoming more important in games development

The games industry used to be primarily focused with showing off new graphics techniques as soon as they were available and as such much of the development cycle was given to the area of a games graphics. However now the Artificial Intelligence (AI) of a game is becoming of more increasing importance as developers and publishers alike realise that game AI, like high end graphics, has the ability to make games seem more realistic and therefore increase its playability (Nareyek 2004) therefore giving a title a unique selling point.

· Evolutionary AI helps to increase enjoyment in a game

Part of AI that is widely overlooked as a means of judging efficient game AI (Rabin 2004) is evolutionary AI, which is the ability of AI to evolve to a higher standard based upon the strongest elements of its previous implementation. Large online communities surrounding a game are becoming more and more common place as more games implement multiplayer capabilities which allow players to play against opponents from anywhere in the world, this places extra demand on developers to develop AI that is of the highest standard so that players are still challenged by opponents that they have faced multiple times, to keep up with the ability of games to offer unique opponents with every game. There are a lot of different methods for implementing learning into AI, however some techniques fail to meet the necessary requirements to be implemented into a commercial computer game and therefore learning AI is treated with a cautious scepticism by developers (Manslow 2002). This is very unbeneficial as evolutionary AI has the ability to be implemented into most genres of computer games and is therefore an area that should be tackled at the highest levels of academia and professional development is resolving the issues that prevent its implementation into commercial games.

• Talk about dynamic scripting

Dynamic scripting is a relatively new method for learning AI that was introduced to be an effective form of reinforced learning for commercial computer games and meets the requirements that currently other forms of learning AI fails too (Spronck and Kuyper and Postma 2004). Dynamic scripting works by using domain knowledge from a rules base, which is populated with predefined rules, and selects rules based upon a weights values and inserts them into the scripts which control AI behaviour. The weights of the rules are calculated based upon a particular rules performance in its last implementation against the human player and the weights are increased or decreased depending upon the success or failure which leads to rules with higher weight values being more likely to be selected (Spronck and Kuyper and Postma 2004).

• Research Question

“Is Dynamic Scripting an effective method of online learning for game AI in RTS games?”

• RTS games use tactics that need to be able to adapt to how the player is playing the game

The reason for testing the implementation of dynamic scripting into real time strategy (RTS) games is, since RTS simulations require players to be able to replay scenarios, this is a term used to describe a RTS match, which are the same in principle, access to the same buildings and troops, but require players to adapt their tactics based upon opponents behaviour, the size of map being played on and the amount of resources available. Therefore for a commercial game to remain challenging and entertaining to a player it is necessary for the computer controlled opponents to adapt to human players tactics, as the common practice for most game players is once they have a tactic that leads to victory they will rarely change it, until it is no longer an effective method of attaining victory.

• Proposal Structure

The proposal structure is still empty because I'm aranging a meeting to see my project supivisor, Dr Ellision, to disscuss whats soposed to be in the proposal, but I'm also going to try taking to Dr Fortuna as well since he has had more experiance marking project proposals.

Will update again after talking to my supivisor,

Later

Stuart