Hello, I am a student in computer sciences (last year before doctorate, studying complex systems simulation and analysis). I have to write a bibliographical study on "the use of evolutionary algorithms in games" (By 'Evolutionary algorithms' i mean Genetic Algorithms and Genetic Programming - By 'Games' i mean Commercial & real-time games like RTS or FPS, not board games like chess). The goal is to describe the 'state of the art' in this domain (20+ pages). I know you think 'this guy wants us to do his own job' :) no, that's really not the point ;) The real difficulty for me is to find industry related information. I have no contact with people working in such firms. I would like to know for example if those algorithms are used by the game industry or if they plan to do this (if they do, do they use them for very specific goals ?)?! I can understant that the industry wants to keep such things secret, but if you have some information ... Thanks ! Ps: Of course, if you have links or documents for my study, i am also really interested. PPs: Sorry, i didn't write english for a while ...

Hi,

if you want a French answer, feel free to mail me.

About GA/GP in the games industry... well I've heard of no game using it, and from all the people I know in different "big" game companies, no one's planning to use that...

I know this doesn't help much... sorry 'bout that

Cheers

Eric

Galapogas

It was an older game (a few years now - 1995) where you encouraged a small six legged baby robot called Mendel. He was stuck in a place called Galapogas and you had to help mendel escape.

Very hard game.

Anyway, mendels AI started at empty - except clicking gave mendal a hint as to which way to go (curiousity - and if played badly, "curiosity kills the bot") and buy playing with mendel as encouragement.

It uses non-stationary entropic reduction mapping.

I can't find the original homepage (was www.anark.com but it looks like a 3d graphics package company now)


A review is up on this page

http://www.gameai.com/games.html#Gal

aswell as about 30 other reviews of ai in games (what you are looking for).

As for a demo - search at something like a game demo download website or download.com

Evolutionary algorithms have been used in-game, in games like Creatures and Cloak, Dagger and DNA, but have mainly been used as optimization tools, to tweak parameters such as was done for the bots in Quake3.

If you do a search for "Penny Sweetser", (if I remember correctly), I think she has a document on her website that lists games that have utilized EAs and ANNs.

Thanks ! (please continue to answer if you have more information, i'll come back often ;) )

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"but have mainly been used as optimization tools" :

did they use it 'offline' ? I mean did they use EA to optimize before releasing game or during game ?

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My teacher gave me a paper on the use of EA (GP) in unreal bots (not official ones), it's really interesting, but it's a thesis paper (AAlborg university - Danemark) ... In fact, the main interest is to see that it works (not only a pure theoric research) :)

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Do you think people (developpers) in dev studios will answer if i write them an email ? I don't need secret information, just their thoughts on those algorithms (it would be a very positive point for my document). If you know some friendly developers ;)


Thanks a lot ^^

"did they use it 'offline' ? I mean did they use EA to optimize before releasing game or during game ?"

yes, during development

"Do you think people (developpers) in dev studios will answer if i write them an email ? I don't need secret information, just their thoughts on those algorithms (it would be a very positive point for my document). If you know some friendly developers ;)"

I think if you write to developers that have used EAs you have a good chance of getting an answer. Try to ask specific questions though. Why don't you try writing to the guy that coded the Q3 bots? (you can find his thesis here btw)