Research Projects

This page lists research projects that apply computational intelligence to video-game related problems such as AI learning and development, art, and content generation.

Galactic Arms Race (GAR)   http://gar.eecs.ucf.edu/

GAR is a 32-player online space action shooter with RPG elements. Unlike typical shooters with limited weapon selection, GAR has virtually unlimited weapons that are automatically generated based on the preferences of players in the game. The weapons are created by the Content-Generating NeuroEvolution of Augmenting Topologies (cgNEAT) machine learning algorithm. In GAR, players fight their way through a huge galaxy against evil aliens (or even against other players) constantly searching for more effective weapons, thus creating a literal galactic arms race.

Lagoon   http://www.cse.unr.edu/~lagoon/

Lagoon is a free open-source component based game engine and can be used as a platform for research and education in artificial and computational intelligence, software engineering, human-computer interaction, and accessibility. Games pervade our society and culture and provide high fidelity physics and graphics - high fidelity virtual worlds. For fields like AI, where research can be well separated from application, game engines provide a platform for research that is more transferable and applicable to real world problems. Like chess and checkers in the past, 3D Game worlds are the next frontier for AI research. Because we are using genetic algorithms and neural networks (computational intelligence approaches), our game engine has features that are not available in other commercial and research engines. Specifically, Lagoon can run the underlying simulation engine without the graphics - for genetic algorithms and neuroevolution, this means that we can evaluate the fitness of a Game AI without needing graphics or having the graphics component slowing things down. You can, of course, run it with the graphics when you play the game.

NeuroEvolving Robot Operatives (NERO)   http://nerogame.org/

A full video game in which players train and evolve a team of Neuro-Evolving Robotic Operative soldiers. In the first phase of the game, individual players deploy robots in a sandbox and train them to some desired tactical doctrine. Once a collection of robots has been trained, a second phase of play allows players to pit their robots in a battle against robots trained by some other player, to see how well their training regimens prepared their robots for battle.

NEAT Particles   http://eplex.cs.ucf.edu/index.php?Itemid=32

NEAT Particles is an Interactive evolutionary computation program that enables users to evolve particle systems intended for use as special effects in video games or movie graphics. Rather than being hand-coded like typical particle systems, the behaviors of NEAT Particle effects are evolved by user preference. Therefore non-programmer, non-artist users may evolve complex and unique special effects in real time. NEAT Particles is intended to augment and assist the time-consuming computer graphics content generation process.