Game AI, Summer 2016:
Capstone Option 1: Open ended
Due: 11:55pm the night before scheduled final exam period. NO LATE SUBMISSIONS.
This project is designed to allow students to delve deeper into Game AI development by designing a game that has AI as a core aesthetic component (e.g. Nero, Spy Party, Black and White, etc.). Being creative about how to employ AI in games so that it is not simply used to provide intelligent opponents but becomes an intrinsic part of the game mechanics is a difficult task. For example, designers like Ken Stanley and Peter Molyneux have been leaders in the field of taking risks and incorporating real time machine learning into gameplay. Even more importantly, the ML techniques used are core to the experience their games provide. Your task is to design (or extend) a game such that AI is incorporated as a key element in the gaming experience.
This is an opportunity to take risks, to try new things, and approach game design in a fundamentally different way. This will be a joint effort executed by you and your teammates. Implementation can be done in any platform in any language as long as (a) the source code can be turned in to us and (b) we can access the hardware needed to run it. I encourage all groups to shoot for projects that focus on interesting user interactions and experiences that are created by the AI and game interactions rather than focusing on being flashy, 3D visuals, 5.1 surround sound, mega-tastic networked FPS, etc. etc. games. Scoping your work is heavily important here.
Flash (e.g. tutorial), Unity, and Processing have been common environments in the past. You may also use pygame, the game engine we have used for the homeworks, or MarioPCG (but this better be interesting!). The Unreal Engine is also freely available. You should feel free (via piazza) to share with one-another links to other good engines for modification. In the past, students have also interfaced with a Pokemon engine, a railroad sim engine, and others. Whatever you choose, please remember to spend your time on the game AI bits (interesting user interactions and experiences), not the game itself.
Suggestions
- If you can avoid implementing the game yourself and instead use one off the shelf, do so. This will save you heaps of time and risks.
- Implement or choose your game ASAP. For example, it is non-trivial to implement a board game and will take at LEAST a full week of hard work to do.
- Consider implementing the AI in stages of complexity. Start simple.
- Should you choose to implement a game, use simple visualizations to represent the game. Text is not a horrible option, though the game must be accessible and comprehensible for others to play it.
Some sample ideas:
- Characters that learn, as in Black and White
- Quest generation in a role-playing game
- Dynamic difficulty adjustment in a platformer or shooter
- Reactive character behavior in open-ended, emergent game play
Submission
Submit via T-Square everything needed to run your game, and your writeup.
Grading
Teams will demo their systems during the final exam period. Teams should come prepared to discuss their design and modifications to the game engine.
This project is worth 25% of your final grade, and will be graded along the final criteria:
- Game incorporates AI as a key element in the gaming experience; the AI is not simply used to provide intelligent opponents but becomes an intrinsic part of the game mechanics (P/F).
- Creativity: How interesting, innovative and, most importantly, well thought out is your design? Does it make sense and is it consistent?
- Incorporation: What is the relationship between AI and the user experience? Is there a deep connection?
- Appropriateness: Does the choice of algorithm match your design?
- Software design & execution (absence of bugs, rationale & execution of design): How well does the final game work? The AI? Are there any major bugs?
- Documentation (clarity, coverage): Thorough documentation of both the evolution of your design as well as technical decisions.