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General Video Game Playing

Authors: John Levine, Clare Bates Congdon, Marc Ebner, Graham Kendall, Simon M. Lucas, Risto Miikkulainen, Tom Schaul, and Tommy Thompson

Published in: Dagstuhl Follow-Ups, Volume 6, Artificial and Computational Intelligence in Games (2013)

Abstract

One of the grand challenges of AI is to create general intelligence: an agent that can excel at many tasks, not just one. In the area of games, this has given rise to the challenge of General Game Playing (GGP). In GGP, the game (typically a turn-taking board game) is defined declaratively in terms of the logic of the game (what happens when a move is made, how the scoring system works, how the winner is declared, and so on). The AI player then has to work out how to play the game and how to win. In this work, we seek to extend the idea of General Game Playing into the realm of video games, thus forming the area of General Video Game Playing (GVGP). In GVGP, computational agents will be asked to play video games that they have not seen before. At the minimum, the agent will be given the current state of the world and told what actions are applicable. Every game tick the agent will have to decide on its action, and the state will be updated, taking into account the actions of the other agents in the game and the game physics. We envisage running a competition based on GVGP playing, using arcadestyle (e.g. similar to Atari 2600) games as our starting point. These games are rich enough to be a formidable challenge to a GVGP agent, without introducing unnecessary complexity. The competition that we envisage could have a number of tracks, based on the form of the state (frame buffer or object model) and whether or not a forward model of action execution is available. We propose that the existing Physical Travelling Salesman (PTSP) software could be extended for our purposes and that a variety of GVGP games could be created in this framework by AI and Games students and other developers. Beyond this, we envisage the development of a Video Game Description Language (VGDL) as a way of concisely specifying video games. For the competition, we see this as being an interesting challenge in terms of deliberative search, machine learning and transfer of existing knowledge into new domains.

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John Levine, Clare Bates Congdon, Marc Ebner, Graham Kendall, Simon M. Lucas, Risto Miikkulainen, Tom Schaul, and Tommy Thompson. General Video Game Playing. In Artificial and Computational Intelligence in Games. Dagstuhl Follow-Ups, Volume 6, pp. 77-83, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2013)

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@InCollection{levine_et_al:DFU.Vol6.12191.77,
  author =	{Levine, John and Congdon, Clare Bates and Ebner, Marc and Kendall, Graham and Lucas, Simon M. and Miikkulainen, Risto and Schaul, Tom and Thompson, Tommy},
  title =	{{General Video Game Playing}},
  booktitle =	{Artificial and Computational Intelligence in Games},
  pages =	{77--83},
  series =	{Dagstuhl Follow-Ups},
  ISBN =	{978-3-939897-62-0},
  ISSN =	{1868-8977},
  year =	{2013},
  volume =	{6},
  editor =	{Lucas, Simon M. and Mateas, Michael and Preuss, Mike and Spronck, Pieter and Togelius, Julian},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/DFU.Vol6.12191.77},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-43374},
  doi =		{10.4230/DFU.Vol6.12191.77},
  annote =	{Keywords: Video games, artificial intelligence, artificial general intelligence}
}

Document

DOI: 10.4230/DFU.Vol6.12191.85

Towards a Video Game Description Language

Authors: Marc Ebner, John Levine, Simon M. Lucas, Tom Schaul, Tommy Thompson, and Julian Togelius

Published in: Dagstuhl Follow-Ups, Volume 6, Artificial and Computational Intelligence in Games (2013)

Abstract

This chapter is a direct follow-up to the chapter on General Video Game Playing (GVGP). As that group recognised the need to create a Video Game Description Language (VGDL), we formed a group to address that challenge and the results of that group is the current chapter. Unlike the VGDL envisioned in the previous chapter, the language envisioned here is not meant to be supplied to the game-playing agent for automatic reasoning; instead we argue that the agent should learn this from interaction with the system. The main purpose of the language proposed here is to be able to specify complete video games, so that they could be compiled with a special VGDL compiler. Implementing such a compiler could provide numerous opportunities; users could modify existing games very quickly, or have a library of existing implementations defined within the language (e.g. an Asteroids ship or a Mario avatar) that have pre-existing, parameterised behaviours that can be customised for the users specific purposes. Provided the language is fit for purpose, automatic game creation could be explored further through experimentation with machine learning algorithms, furthering research in game creation and design. In order for both of these perceived functions to be realised and to ensure it is suitable for a large user base we recognise that the language carries several key requirements. Not only must it be human-readable, but retain the capability to be both expressive and extensible whilst equally simple as it is general. In our preliminary discussions, we sought to define the key requirements and challenges in constructing a new VGDL that will become part of the GVGP process. From this we have proposed an initial design to the semantics of the language and the components required to define a given game. Furthermore, we applied this approach to represent classic games such as Space Invaders, Lunar Lander and Frogger in an attempt to identify potential problems that may come to light. Work is ongoing to realise the potential of the VGDL for the purposes of Procedural Content Generation, Automatic Game Design and Transfer Learning.

Cite as

Marc Ebner, John Levine, Simon M. Lucas, Tom Schaul, Tommy Thompson, and Julian Togelius. Towards a Video Game Description Language. In Artificial and Computational Intelligence in Games. Dagstuhl Follow-Ups, Volume 6, pp. 85-100, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2013)

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@InCollection{ebner_et_al:DFU.Vol6.12191.85,
  author =	{Ebner, Marc and Levine, John and Lucas, Simon M. and Schaul, Tom and Thompson, Tommy and Togelius, Julian},
  title =	{{Towards a Video Game Description Language}},
  booktitle =	{Artificial and Computational Intelligence in Games},
  pages =	{85--100},
  series =	{Dagstuhl Follow-Ups},
  ISBN =	{978-3-939897-62-0},
  ISSN =	{1868-8977},
  year =	{2013},
  volume =	{6},
  editor =	{Lucas, Simon M. and Mateas, Michael and Preuss, Mike and Spronck, Pieter and Togelius, Julian},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/DFU.Vol6.12191.85},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-43385},
  doi =		{10.4230/DFU.Vol6.12191.85},
  annote =	{Keywords: Video games, description language, language construction}
}

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General Video Game Playing

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Towards a Video Game Description Language

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