CSE 348 - AI Game Programming

Spring 2010

When and where	Tue & Thur, time: 9:20 AM - 10:35 AM, MG 270
Instructor	Héctor Muñoz-Avila, munoz@cse.lehigh.edu,
Instructor's office hours	Wednesdays 4:00-5:00PM, Room 252 Packard Lab

Announcements

** Hall of Fame

Project # 1. Robocode (arcade tank simulation)
- 2012 Winner: Phang, Daniel W., Teoh, Sui Ying ("Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles")
- 2012 Innovation Winner: Phang, Daniel W., Teoh, Sui Ying ("Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles"). Compute minimum risk by taking into account distance from other bots and line of fire. As a result tanks have "emergent"behaviour rather than hard-coded one.
- 2010 Winner: Chris Boston, Kipp Hickmann, Michael Pollock "The Enraged Armored Mob" (TEAM). Surround and destroy one enemy at the time. Detects classes of enemy bots and prioritize which to kills first. Sophisticated targeting algorithm.
- 2010 Innovation winner: Elizabeth Carter. Libby: uses Reinforcement Learning to learn best actionto choose among 12 different combinations of behaviors
- 2008 winner: Aperture Science (Hinkey, Christopher M.; Karneeb, Justin T.; Gillespie, Kellen J).
Project # 2. Pathfinding techniques
Project # 3. Space flight simmulation
Project # 4. Wargus (real-time strategy game similar to Warcraft)
- 2012 Tournament winner: Mitchell, Matthew M., Pennenga, David J., Formica, John M.: Use farms to create choke points, advance resource collection, set patrols as resource gathering units move forward, build advance units: griphons and Mages
- 2010 Innovation winner: Zubair R. Chaudary, Kenneth H. Rentschler, Constantin A. Savtchenko, (sophisticated, automated map analysis)
- 2008 Tournament winner: Gryphon Society (Moukhine, N., Brander, G., and Wojciechowski, C.).

Description

Over the past 20 years computer games have gone through a remarkable evolution in areas such as graphics and multi-player gaming. Another area where some evolution has been made is in the quality of the computer opponent. Despite this evolution, there is a big mismatch between what people in the game industry refer to as the "AI" (roughly, the program controlling the computer opponent) and what AI actually is ("...technology can be controlled especially if it is saturated with intelligence to watch over how it goes, to keep accounts, to prevent errors, and to provide wisdom to each decision"- Allen Newell, 1992). In this course, we will look at contemporary computer games, explore techniques for implementing the AI (from the perspective of the game industry) and study opportunities to use AI (from the research perspective) to enhance the gaming experience. Here are some of the topics that will be covered in the course:

* Pathfinding and Navigation Systems
* Group Movement, Tactics, and Planning
* Applying Action Planning into Games
* Adaptive Games
* FPS, Team-based RTS, and Turn-based games
* Machine Scripting Language for Game Designers
* Player Modeling

Prerequisites: CSE 327 or CSE 109.

Notes:

It is strongly recommended that you take (before, at the same time, or at least afterwards) CSE 327 (AI) because some concepts learned in the AI course are closely related to topics covered in this course.
PROGRAMMING PROFICIENCY is required because there are 4 programming projects in the course. If you do not like to "hack" into some else's code, you should consider dropping this course.

Attendance

Attendance to class is required. I will initiate procedures to drop any student from class should he/she miss 3 classes (i.e., Section 3)

Trivia about Game AI

There is a technique for programming Game AI used in the game industry called "Kung-Fu Attack". It is used not only in many combat games but also in FPS and RTS games. Hint: check this clip from the immortal Bruce Lee. Specifically the part where he fights the 20 or more opponents at the same time. How is he able to beat so many opponents? (note: "because he is Bruce Lee!" is a plausible answer but not the one I am looking for). If you think you know the answer e-mail the instructor with subject "Kung-Fu Attack" (e-mail must come from a Lehigh e-mail account, otherwise it will be ignored).

Reading Material

Book: (recommended)
Title: AI Game Programming Wisdom series
Author: Steve Rabin (Editor)
Publisher: Charles River Media

Communication

All written reports can be downloaded HERE

Topics

Tuesday, January 17: Introduction
Thursday, January 19: Finite State Machines
Tuesday January 24: Robocode project presentation
Thursday January 26: A star
Tuesday January 31:
Thursday February 2: Pathfinding in games
Tuesday February 7: Due date Robocode project
Thursday February 9: Presentation pathfinding project
Tuesday February 14:
Thursday February 16: Planning and games
Tuesday February 21: HTN Planning and games
Thursday February 23: First Person Shooters (Michael Caffrey, Shamus Field, Jon Hardy)
Tuesday February 28: Reinforcement learning and FPS games
Thursday March 1: Due date pathfinding project
Spring Break: March 5-9
Tuesday, March 13: Presentation Space Flight Simulation project
Thursday March 15: Presentation by Large Animal Games
Tuesday March 20: Individual NPC behavior (Daniel Phang, Sui Ying Teoh)
Thursday March 22:
Tuesday, March 27: Due date Space Flight Simmulation project; Turn-based games
Tuesday, March 29: Presentation Wargus project
Tuesday, April 3: Squad tactics (John Formica, Matt Mitchell, David Pennenga)
Thursday, April 5:
Tuesday, April 10: Real-Time Strategy games (Luis Villegas, Dulmovits, Alexander J.)
Thursday, April 12: Sports Games (Daniel Phillips, Dan Ruthrauff)
Tuesday, April 17: Role Playing Games (Josh Westbrook, Ethan Harman)
Thursday, April 19: Other potential applications of machine learning
Tuesday, April 24: Due date Wargus project
Thursday, April 26: Recap

Student's Work

This is a work-heavy course. The following activities will be performed by the students taking this course:

Oral presentations. Groups of 1 to 3 students will prepare and present in class sections from the book series AI Game Programming Wisdom. Guidelines:
- The students are required to meet with the instructor 1 week before the day of the presentation. For this meeting, the student must have completed his/her presentation using MS Powerpoint. I expect to see around 40 slides per presentation.
- The presentation should go beyond the assigned readings. It should include other sources. Consult the references that are cited in the chapter(s). Find your own sources.
- If possible, it will include demo software (the CDs that come with the book are a good starting point)
- Prepare for a whole class presentation. Presentations not well prepared are easy to spot. Start going through the material sooner rather than later.
Written report. Each group will prepare a written report (around 15 pages) about the topics covered in their class presentation. This report will be distributed electronically among classmates for reference material for the final exam together with the powerpoint presentations (including the instructor). Guidelines:
- Use own words. Do not copy-paste from sources
- due: the second class after your presentation
- be as clear as possible. This will be the main source for preparing the exam
Class participation. Attendance to class is required.
Final exam. There will be a written exam about the topics covered in the course. The exam will not be a problem solving exam (e.g., write an algorithm to accomplish a certain task). Rather, the exam will test the overall knowledge from the topics covered in the course (e.g., open questions about the material).
Programming projects. We will implement four programing projects in groups of 2-3 as follows:
1. Project 1: Robocode (arcade tank simulation) (teams). Here are the slides of the project, and here is the web site.
2. Project 2: Pathfinding techniques. Here is the description and here are the slides.
3. Project 3: Space flight simmulation. Here is the software (rar compressed) and here are the slides.
4. Project 4: Wargus (real-time strategy game similar to Warcraft)
  - Here are the slides and a file
  - Your task is to build the AI to defeat an opponent in two maps. The first map is called GoW-small2 (available in the distribution) and the second one will be a mistery map but not too different from GoW-small2.
  - Here are descriptions for units, buildings and strategies.
Guidelines:
- Students will form groups of 2-3 persons. We will try to maintain the groups throughout the semester.
- Projects should be e-mailed to the assigned person the day before the competition is held in class (11:59PM EST).
- Presentation: In class I will select randomly one member of each group to make the presentation of the project. Bring powerpoint slides and if possible install them before the class starts. Do not explain what is the project about. Explain your solution.
- A printout of the code, together with a 5-page report must be turned in at the beginning of the competition.
Percentage distribution: presentation (10%), Written report (5%), 4 programming projects (Projects 1 and 2: 15% each. Project 3: 10%. Project 4: 20%. Total: 60%), Final Exam (25%)

Last update: Tue. May 1, 17:00:33 EST 2012