Worksheet 3

Here is a copy of the worksheet 3 which is a draft copy of my project proposal.

Introduction

1.

The aim of this project is too look at dynamic scripting and try to determine what would be the most suitable method of implementation for use in a commercial real time strategy game. For instance the project will look at offline learning, as well as reinforced learning, evolutionary algorithms and natural networks and try to determine the most suitable combination judged against factors that are important to commercial game developers.

Motivation

For most games, challenging gameplay is equivalent to having high-quality game AI (Laird 2000). Therefore commercial game developers are trying to make sure that there games are using high end AI, and dynamic scripting is an effective method to improve game AI. I think that it’s also important to have a strong AI opponent in games as a human opponent might not always be available and the current level of AI in games is too easy and static so it becomes less challenging and boring over time. Currently the research that has been done into applying dynamic scripting in games has looked at improving the implementation of dynamic scripting (Spronck, Sprinkhuizen-Kuyper & Postma 2004) and the research has already decided upon using an offline form of evolutionary learning, where as I think it may be possible to try using online learning with different forms of adaptive AI to improve the underlying game AI.

Research Question

"Is Dynamic Scripting a suitable method for AI decision making in a real-time strategy game?"

Addressing The Question

To address the question and to show significant results I will be using an open source game called “Wargus” which is a clone of the popular “Blizzard” real time strategy game “Warcraft 2” and I will try some different multiple implementations of dynamic scripting with a different underlying algorithm for the AI of the opponent in the game. Then using a serious of tests in which the game will be played by two AI controlled players one using the original implementation of the game AI and the other controlled by one of the different implementations of dynamic scripting I should be able to show which of the implementations would be best used in a commercial game using a few of that factors that are important to games developers i.e. Fast, Effective, Robust and Efficient (Spronck, Sprinkhuizen-Kuyper & Postma 2004)

Resource Requirements

For the project I am going to use an open source game called “Wargus” which has as its underlying game engine “Stratagus” which is an open source real time strategy engine, and I will be editing the scripts for the AI in “Wargus” which are writing in the scripting language “Lua”. To do this all I will require is a computer with “Wargus” installed and a Lua editor.

References And Bibliography

Bourg, D.M. and Seemann, G. 2004. AI for Game Developers. [online] Available from: http://proquest.safaribooksonline.com/0596005555 [Accessed 07 October 2008]

Ponsen, M.J.V. and Muñoz-Avila, H. And Spronck, P. And Aha, D.W. 2005. Automatically Aquiring Domain Knowledgw For Adaptive Game AI Using Evolutionary Learning. USA: American Association for Artificial Intelligence.

Ponsen, M and Spronck, P. 2004. Improving Adaptive Game AI with Evolutionary Learning. In: University of Wolverhampton.

Rabin, S (ed). 2004. AI Game Programming Wisdom 2. Massachusetts: Charles River Media, Inc.

Spronck, P. and Sprinkhuizen-Kuyper, I. and Postma, E. 2004. Enhancing the Performance of Dynamic Scripting in Computer Games. The Netherlands: Universiteit Maastricht, Institute for Knowledge and Agent Technology.