The Lost World on RobMiles.com

I knew this exists for some time but have not got the time to take a look at it until lately. Rob Miles is one of the lecturers at the University of Hull where I'm doing my MSc Games Programming course. He is also Microsoft's Most Valuable Professional and on the Imagine Cup team. Anyway There is a little photo of me at the end of his journal entry at Return of the Ex Grads. Here is the picture :) if you didn't know, I'm the female on the right.

AI Programming A*, Mini Max, State Machine

The term AI (artificial intelligence) is sometime confusing and misleading. Artificial intelligence defined by Stan Franklin as "Deciding What to Do Next". Artificial in the sense that we try to simulate real life decision making through technology. Intelligences a property of mind that encompasses many related mental abilities, such as the capacities to reason, plan, solve problems, think abstractly, comprehension, and learning.

One half of my one of my MSc course work is AI Programming. At first I've only a vague idea of what AI is in the software world and now I've a stronger idea of what AI is a wider perspective and also its role in games. From here, my little adventure with Mr. PacMan begins.

The assignment is to write an AI controller for PacMan using any AI techniques available. Researching on AI techniques within a short period of time is almost impossible. What I did was to have an overview and conceptual understanding of most of the techniques and settle on the technique I wanted.

Numerous times you will see me shouting and screaming at PacMan for his idiotic moves or weird behaviors. Asking him to move left, up, right or down like he can hear me or heed my call. Even this assignment seem simple, well its PacMan after all is a game we played when we were 5, yet its really interesting and requires a lot of strategy analysis and behavior study. The one thing I learn is the more I intend to fix it the more I broke the controller. This is because as a human programmer it is difficult to separate behavioral characteristics from my programmer's formulated mindset. Observing PacMan is the way to solve this. Yes, staring at PacMan for hours on end.... But basically this is the skeleton of what I went through...

Development steps

1. Understanding searches and A* algorithm.
2. Implementing and independent A* search component.
3. Heuristic map (cost and total cost) implementation.
4. Path map implementation.
   
5. Techniques to find the goal for PacMan. Outward circular loop algorithm from PacMan.
6. Mini Max technique from worst case estimate from Ghost.
7. State Machine for search phases, PacMan movement, hunting mode.
   
8. Rules for danger zones in the game.

More information and demo can be found at my portfolio site.

Currently I've an average of 80% win rate, however more data analysis is required.

Imagine Cup 2008

My lame and simple submission. Due to demands of my (more important) MSc Games Programming course projects, we've (Team D&D) have neglected the development of The Lost World.

Flashback, The Lost World is originally a game design assignment for MSc course 08966 Games Development Architectures. We merged our assignment idea to make it The Lost World, the theme more on my teammate's side.

The Lost World is designed to have the old school style video game look and feel with a dash of RPG mode in it. The aim is to have a fun way to educate the player on how to have and maintain a clean and health environment. The main message conforming to the Imagine Cup 2008 theme "Imagine a world where technology enables a sustainable environment".

What we really want to achieve is to relay our message with a simple and entertaining game without bombastic graphics or hardware requirements. The messages in the game is comprehensive yet short and simple for easy learning.

More information can be found at my portfolio site and our Imagine Cup team site.

Here is a video we made for the Imagine Cup and Microsoft Student Partner day on the 5^th June 2008 in London.

Some screen shots