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There Can Be only One: Evolving RTS Bots via Joust Selection

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Applications of Evolutionary Computation (EvoApplications 2016)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNTCS,volume 9597))

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Abstract

This paper proposes an evolutionary algorithm for evolving game bots that eschews an explicit fitness function using instead a match between individuals called joust and implemented as a selection mechanism where only the winner survives. This algorithm has been designed as an optimization approach to generate the behavioural engine of bots for the RTS game Planet Wars using Genetic Programming and has two objectives: first, to deal with the noisy nature of the fitness function and second, to obtain more general bots than those evolved using a specific opponent. In addition, avoiding the explicit evaluation step reduce the number of combats to perform during the evolution and thus, the algorithm time consumption is decreased. Results show that the approach performs converges, is less sensitive to noise than other methods and it yields very competitive bots in the comparison against other bots available in the literature.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    http://planetwars.aichallenge.org/.

  2. 2.

    Although we use this term, note that the game is always performed in real time.

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Acknowledgments

This work has been supported in part by projects EPHEMECH (TIN2014-56494-C4-3-P, Spanish Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad), PROY-PP2015-06 (Plan Propio 2015 UGR), PETRA (SPIP2014-01437, funded by Dirección General de Tráfico), CEI2015-MP-V17 (awarded by CEI BioTIC Granada), and PRY142/14 (funded by Fundación Pública Andaluza Centro de Estudios Andaluces en la IX Convocatoria de Proyectos de Investigación).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Architecture and Technology, University of Granada, Granada, Spain

    A. Fernández-Ares, P. García-Sánchez, A. M. Mora, P. A. Castillo & J. J. Merelo

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  1. A. Fernández-Ares
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  2. P. García-Sánchez
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  3. A. M. Mora
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  4. P. A. Castillo
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  5. J. J. Merelo
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to A. Fernández-Ares .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Politecnico di Torino, Turin, Italy

    Giovanni Squillero

  2. Aalborg University, Copenhagen, Denmark

    Paolo Burelli

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Fernández-Ares, A., García-Sánchez, P., Mora, A.M., Castillo, P.A., Merelo, J.J. (2016). There Can Be only One: Evolving RTS Bots via Joust Selection. In: Squillero, G., Burelli, P. (eds) Applications of Evolutionary Computation. EvoApplications 2016. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 9597. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-31204-0_35

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-31204-0_35

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